Finally, what you have all been waiting for, the tips on how to get traffic. Hopefully these will benefit you, they certainly did help me. Some of them are rather brief, but I think they all include important things, that we can all benefit from. Feel free to comment with which ones you think are the most helpful, so that I can make sure to tell them, or you can just swing over to their sites and tell them yourself. So without further stalling…

How to get Traffic by the Top Bloggers

Jason – www.theuniversitykid.com

When I started out, there were three main ways I got traffic to the blog:

Contests

Comments

Forums

I ran contests with prizes (mostly donated, and easily gotten like ad
spots, eBooks, consultation etc)… now although the prizes were not that
valuable, I made sure I got a lot of them so that the contest dollar
amount was a big one, which attracted more sponsors and readers.

I commented on other blogs extensively – often around 40 – 50 per day -
NOT A-listers, which is the mistake that many make, but smaller blogs of a
similar / slightly bigger level. This way, I was able to build
friendships, which helped me a lot – those bloggers then mentioned me and
I reciprocated.

Lastly, I used to put in a few solid hours daily on forums, which sent me
around 5,000 uniques per month. Around 40-50 posts per day spread across
various large webmaster and marketing forums like Digital Point, Warrior
Forum, Sitepoint etc.

Around a month or two ago, I added another main way of promotion to the
mix – viral marketing, where I told people to refer 3-5 friends to
subscribe to receive the password to a post where I laid out step by step
how I made $7,500 in a few months and could guarantee it. This sent in
around 200-300 subscribers in less than a week, which was a substantial
increase for me and I’ll be looking at more viral marketing for the site
soon.

Glen Allsopp – www.viperchill.com

Want to know how to get traffic? Drive traffic to others. Stumble peoples pages, give them links and flatter their ego. There’s something about humans that makes us want to give back to those who are helping us, even re-tweet peoples tweets. I’ve seen countless examples of those who are social and helping getting everything back (and more) in return. Of course, make sure you have something good for others to promote, but make sure you give before you expect to receive.

Collin – www.collinlahay.com

Here is a simple post that sums up what my blog talks about:

The best way to make money online for any website in any niche is to rank on the first page of the search engine results.  To accomplish this task, you need to know how to build links so that Google and other search engines know that your blog or website is the authority for that keyword phrase.  There are hundreds of ways to build links on the internet, and my blog is all about showing you where to find them.  Link building is the greatest form of internet marketing because the effects are permanent and once you rank #1 for a result, so long as you continue to build links, you will be receiving the most targeted traffic you could possibly hope for and you will be earning money for doing the least amount of work.  If you want free link building strategies to get you started, check out my blog at CollinLaHay.com

Jim – www.thenetfool.com

The Net Fool on Web Traffic

Getting traffic to a blog is one of the more difficult subjects sought after by beginners. For one, the first few months of my blogging career was spent fruitlessly trying to place links in attractive places to get a visit here or there… as I burned through my working hours just talking with other players in my niche area. I believe that receiving traffic to your blog is going to be largely catered to your ability to generate RSS subscribers and have them come back day after day. What this means to you, is that you will need to make it EASY for people to subscribe to your blog… but also, you want it to be something they just plain want to do.

What am I getting at? The number one way to get traffic to your blog is to be a good blogger! Yes, it sounds cliché… but in reality there is no better way to get traffic then by having a personality. Nobody wants to come by day after day reading re-hashed material. If you blog like that, than you WILL be the one staying up all night spamming forums and commenting our of your mind. Now I’m not saying you shouldn’t be commenting, but it will only count if the article you link people to is something they like and will pass on to your friends. Have a personality, retain your RSS subscribers, and you’ll get an unbeatable recurring traffic flow to your website.

Yan – www.thoushallblog.com

Unless you have perfected the art of SEO, the single most effective method of generating targeted traffic that has stood the test of time is blog commenting. Not only it helps to create the initial exposure and awareness, more importantly it does build long-term relationship with fellow bloggers.

Keeping in mind that getting the initial traffic is the easy part, converting them to be your returning visitors probably takes more than just commenting alone. Whilst commenting is considered to be the push factor, it remains true that your content is the key pull factor. Therefore, the best scenario is to know how to maximize both to your blogging advantage.

Jim – www.jimkukral.com

Stop worrying about traffic. Write good content. Differentiate. Be unique. And do it consistently. Traffic will come. Yes, it will take time, but if you think you can have instant success online just by “getting traffic”, you’re mistaken. Probably not what anyone wants to hear, but it’s true.

Danny – www.linkersblog.com

Two Ways I got Traffic for Free!

Forum Marketing

A lot of the bigger bloggers completely ignore forum marketing as they don’t believe it’s worth the effort. The truth is that forum marketing is worth all the effort and much more! A simple way to get started with forum marketing is to join a forum, think of a catchy title for one of your blog posts, and put a link in your forum signature.

Once you have created an account try to jazz it up a bit, add a profile picture and a little bio about yourself. On large forums such as digital point they get hundreds of new members a day so it is important to make yourself stand out from the rest.

After you have made your profile all pretty it’s time to start posting. The best technique to get people to click the link in your signature is to reply on threads related to the post you are trying to promote, although you won’t find this gains you thousands of new visitors instantly, it will bring you very targeted visitors.

After you have built your forum reputation a bit you may decided that you actually want to start threads of your own, if you do it right this can be a great method of gaining traffic for free, I personally have gained between 1,000 and 2,000 visitors in the past two months from a forum related to my niche.

Blog Commentating

Anyone who knows me will know that I am huge believer in the power of blog commentating. Not only do I preach the power of blog commenting, I also practice the art too.

I could go into blog commenting until the sun goes down, but for your sake I’m not going to go into it too much. What I can say is that if you are looking to gain traffic, friends, links and subscribers then you will definitely want to give it a try. The best advice I can give you in a line or two is just be yourself. Get out there and use commenting as way of introducing yourself to other bloggers, and the rest will just happen

If you liked this post please subscribe to my RSS feed so you can learn more on how to blog. I have several great post ideas that I am very excited about, and will be releasing this month, so make sure your receiving them!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 at 2:12 am and is filed under Site Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.