Generating traffic for newbie blogs

Most bloggers say that the first thousand visitors is often the toughest and for any blog, as organic search engine traffic would definitely take 3 – 4 months. But once you start to get those 1000 visitors your blog will start promoting itself socially or by what people call as ‘the word of mouth’. Now you have a good blog, with a good design and awesome content, now the goal is to make people come and read that content and persuade them to make a bookmark or showcase it on their blogs.  This post is not going to teach you to persuade your readers to spread your blog virally, its going to explain how to generate the first leads to your site.

It was just last month when my blog touched 1000 visitors and its already reaching 3000 this month, that is why I said the first 1000 is often the toughest. From the past 4 months that is since I started this blog I have used many traffic generation techniques, most of them have worked, but only a few gave me targeted traffic. I had also mentioned in one previous post that my blogs bounce rate was as high as 80%, so I started to experiment with each traffic source and figured the target level, bounce rate and usability of each.   After two weeks i have made my list,

Forum posting

Something that still has great potential for targeted traffic is forums. This has helped me a lot from the past 3 months and it was also one of the reasons why my blog made it to PR 4 in just two months. You have to actively get involved in discussions and try to be as resourceful as possible, most of the discussion forums allow you to post links in your signature these links help you to drive visitors to your site. I am usually active on Digital Point and Warrior Forums, both are one of the best in my niche, and I usually get upto 30 visitors everyday from both. Other than just a link in your signature Digital Point also allows you to put up your own blog posts as threads and send up to 4 links towards your blog. I could have used this to send thousands of visitors to my site overnight, but I kept getting banned for certain issues which reduced my blogs growth, so make sure you read the terms carefully, this is my 5th Digital Point account ).

You can start off by finding a forum that suits your niche on BigBoards, this site lists hundreds of forums arranged according to categories and traffic. Select a few sites which are popular, have less restrictions, and have plenty of active visitors. Keep posting threads everyday and answer others questions, and very soon you will have a good reputation in the forum leading to plenty of visitors. One trick I used to get more subscribers was to use the WordPress greet box, I created an option that would send out a message to new visitors from some forums, which would persuade them to subscribe. This method was effective as my subscriber count jumped from a merry 104 to around 300.

Blog commenting

Most of the initial traffic to my blog came from comments I had left on other blogs, it was surprising to see 100s of visitors just by commenting on 5 to 6 blogs related to my niche. In just a matter of time comments began to drive 40% of my visitor count and over 70% of my backlinks. I usually commented on some blogs such as Problogger, Dailyblogtips, Mashable, and Shoemoney, which are all related to my niche. For driving traffic through comments you should succeed in grabbing attention, getting leads and building an audience. This can be done if you manage

You can start off by finding the biggest blogs in your niche, make sure they are very productive and have less comment policies. Take up only 4 to 5 blogs and work to make up a base on those blogs, after you have found them try to find their usual time of posting and try to be at the top 5, write a resourceful comment and gain as much attention as possible. Other than the link which is lead by your name, some blogs also allow you to post a link below your comment. The comments which drove me the most traffic were those in which I questioned, argued and disagreed with the author and such comments usually get me a lot of replies.

Generating traffic through comments works mainly in the tech and internet related niches, other niches may not have much success. So, if your from such a niche then its not advisable to comment on only 3 to 4 blogs, you can comment on every post in your niche which you find interesting. The idea is to  get involved in any interesting discussion related to your niche, most people use Backtype, a service which allows you to check recent discussions around the internet in your niche. (For more read this article : Attracting traffic through comments)

Guest posts

When I started this blog and had only 20 posts, the first thing I did was to submit some of my posts to other blogs which have allowed guest posts. I created six 600 word posts and submitted it to 3 main sites which are Smartbloggerz, Dailyblogtips and Moneymakerinfo, all the 3 gave me atleast 100 uniques each and also good quality anchor links which were crucial for my blogs search rankings. There are a lot more advantages of guest posting, one of it was that I could make relationships with many bloggers, who were ready to help me with my questions anytime in the future.

Most of the blogs I have posted on allowed guest posts and they had publicly stated that, but when your looking to approach a blogger who hasn’t stated that he allows guest posts, you’ll have to provide a good first impression and the article has to be as catchy as possible. I’m sure you’ll find tons of blogs awaiting guest posts, but its your duty to analyze and predict the blog and its visitors. After your post is published make sure you interact and respond to your comments, promote the post by social bookmarking and viral marketing.

Ask for as many benefits as possible from the blogger, as its your post you definitely deserve one link towards your site, but you can convince some bloggers for more. Don’t sound too arrogant, try to be persuasive and remember the way you write to the blogger matters too.

Spread virally through tweets

I started using Twitter around 6 months ago and till now I have managed to get only 700 followers, but Twitter has constantly provided me with steady traffic and every month upto 200 visitors come from Twitter. This is because of the power of Twitter to spread virally. Some of my previous articles have received up to 11 retweets which are enough to get some targeted visitors for my site. This is because most of my followers are interested in my tweets and almost all of them are active Twitter users and are always ready to tweet an interesting post.

Your first main goal should be to touch 1000 followers, which is a bit tough these days as there have been many policies imposed by Twitter. Now you can only build your followership by tweeting interesting things and getting retweeted by users having plenty of followers, you can use your blog to make people follow you on Twitter.

Once you have a high followership your tweets will be spread automatically, but until then start tweeting interesting stuff, the tweets which perform the best are those which have facts questions and riddles. Start posting magnetic titles and one thing that would double your retweets is the Tweetmeme retweet button. If you invest your time and work hard you are sure to make a strong Twitter profile. (For more read this article : How to increase Twitter Retweets?)

StumbleUpon, Digg and Sphinn

I haven’t had much success with any of these social sites, but all the 3 have sent minute amount of traffic to my site and that was regular for a few days. Many people have told me that StumbleUpon is a great source of traffic as it provides huge amount of traffic with just a few thumbs-ups, a few thumbs-ups which I have not been able to gain. Sphinn is a internet marketing bookmarking site, so you can hit that only when you have an article related to internet marketing.

However, my social traffic did develop once I got good traffic to my blog from blog comments and forum posts and when I started to use bookmarking buttons. I have also tried other small bookmarking sites such as Blogengage, Dzone, and propeller. (Get more information in this article : A bloggers guide to StumbleUpon).

On to our readers

These were some of the techniques I used to generate traffic to my blog when it was a startup, you are free to post any other methods or criticize the above methods in th comments below. Dumb Little Blogger is a fast paced blog, so to keep up with our posts please do subscribe to our feeds. Get more information through Twitter by following me on Twitter.

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