Journey for the Holy Grail…More Blog Traffic | Bruces Money Rants

Blogs have become more popular. Tens of thousands of blog go live each month. Colleges are even starting to make blogs part of college courses. Some blogs are meant to be for entertainment only. Some are trying to share information with like minded people. Others are trying to make money online. Common ways of making money blogging is by commission from affiliate marketing or ad revenue. Whether you are just wanting to share information or generate income, you must be able to generate traffic to your site. Generating higher blog traffic has become the Holy Grail of blogging. These are lessons I have learned in my quest for the Blogger’s Holy Grail.

Learn from mentors that are already successful. One of the quickest ways to be successful, in any endeavor, is to learn from people who are already successful. In days past, this required meeting these people or knowing someone who could introduce you. The internet has made it much easier to find mentors. When it comes to generating blog traffic, there are several sites you should become familiar including; Zac Johnson’s blog, Shoe Money’s Affiliate Marketing Ideas, Seth Godin’s Blogging Success Tips, and RemarkaBlogger’s Guide to Jumpstarting Your Blog. These are just a few sites that offer great blog traffic ideas. What do we learn from these sites?

I was a fan of mentors long before starting a blog. When I decided to start a blog, I began by searching for successful blogs about making money. I subscribed to the RSS feeds of each of these sites. I use a rss feed aggregated (Bloglines) to allow me to quickly see the blogs that have new posts, read the posts, and save the interesting ones. Not only do I learn from successful bloggers, I also get ideas for articles and reviews.

Email Subscriptions – Repeat visitors is one of the keys to generating an income blogging. Pay Per Click Journal reports, “Traditional marketers know that a person has to see an offer seven times before they act on it” (Can You Re-Engage Nonconverting Traffic Through PPC?, 2009). Email subscriptions are a great way to draw visitors back into your site. Email subscribers are notified when new posts are published. Subscribers do not have to consciously visit your site to get the newest information. They just have to open their email. You can use many services to setup email subscriptions. A free, and very popular, site is Feedburner.

Early on, I did not place much stock in email subscriptions. I thought that having a link for RSS subscriptions would be enough. I missed several important factors. You need to ask visitors to subscribe. You want the subscription link to be easy to see. You want to ask visitors to subscribe more than once.

Become an Expert – Today, people are inundated with information. They want to find the information they need quickly. They want to find it from expert sources. A great way to generate traffic is to position yourself as an expert. This may seem a monumental feat, especially for new bloggers. However, you can begin by picking one area of your topic and learning all that you can. For example, you could choose Search Engine Optimization (SEO), begin reading and researching the topic, try different techniques with your own sites, document what works and what did not work so well. Publish and distribute your findings. You will gain credibility and increase your position as an expert.

Participate on Other Blogs – Identify successful blog in the same area as yours. Begin placing comments on their blogs. This will provide much needed backlinks to your site. Show Money explains, “great way to increase the popularity of your blog is to find all your competitor blogs and start participating on them” (5 Simple Ways To Get More Blog Traffic In 2008, 2008). These links will assist readers in finding your blog. These visitors will be targeted because they are coming from a site with a similar topic.

Be Consistent – Many bloggers make the mistake of becoming discouraged. They expect fast results. When those results do not come, they stop posting altogether. Search Engines are becoming more sophisticated in their searches. They like sites that have been around for awhile. They like sites that are updated frequently. You must be consistent in your postings and practice some patience.

Identify Your Edge – People want their information but they also want to be entertained. How will you differentiate yourself from the hundreds of thousands of blogs in existence? Your writing style is one way to set yourself apart. Writing styles can be as different as fingerprints. Find a style and voice that draws your readers in.

Email subscriptions allow you to remind people to read new blog posts. Setting yourself as an expert makes it easier to build a readersip. Participating on other blogs helps to build backlinks and visibility for your site. Consistency is key, visitors like blogs that offer fresh informtion. Consistency also is important for increasing search engine traffic. Identify your voice. Cultivate a voice that sets you apart from the pack. By no means is this every idea for generating traffic. These are some blogging lessons that I have learned. I hope that this will help you to avoid the potholes that I fell in. Please, return often to learn more about my blogging experience.

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