Free traffic for your blog
Ok! You have started your own blog, you have written a few articles and you want to start to earn some money. Now what?
You have to know that the most monetization methods require some traffic. So, even if many of you know how to drive free traffic to your blogs, I want to make a little recap, for those of you who just have started. I want to mention that every method listed here, was tested by me, so I know what I’m talking about.
This list is ongoing, because while I was writing this article, I have found some other sources of free traffic, like free advertising. So after I make some tests with them, I will write about them (or not).
1. Social networking sites
There are a lot of social networking websites around the web, and I don’t want to list them all, since Maki from DoshDosh has completed a great list of 47 Social News Websites You Can Use with a little review for everyone. Now, it’s a little hard to subscribe to all this social websites, especially because not every one brings a lot of traffic for your blog. I haven’t tried all these social websites listed by Maky, but I’ll list what I’ve tried with pretty much success. For those social networking sites I’ll list here, I’ll also get some traffic dates, so you can have an image about them.
- StumbleUpon - Page Rank: 8 | Alexa Rank: 311 | Compete monthly visitors: 1,478,103.
By submitting your articles to StumbleUpon, you will receive a lot of traffic. But it’s a kind of traffic easy come, easy go. I mean very few people will actually stay on your blog and read your articles. Still, this traffic is good for increasing your Alexa traffic rank (required for some pay per post programs) and it’s good for CPM (abbreviation for cost per mille, which means cost per thousand page impressions) programs. - Digg - Page Rank: 8 | Alexa Rank: 146 | Compete monthly visitors: 17,452,496.
All you need is to sign up in order to use it. When you like a page, you can submit it, so it will appear in the upcoming sites section. If other people like it and vote for it (digg it), your story may be promoted to the front page, bringing you tens of thousands visitors over the following hours. - Del.icio.us - Page Rank: 8 | Alexa Rank: 414 | Compete monthly visitors: 1,318,183.
Del.icio.us can help you keep your bookmarks online. If many people bookmark the same page, it goes to the front page, resulting in a lot of traffic. - MyBlogLog - Page Rank: 7 | Alexa Rank: 818 | Compete monthly visitors: 886,787.
Using MyBlogLog is easy. You must subscribe, put your face in there, put a widget on your blog, and then you’ll be able to see who is visiting your site. Your blog will become a community. Other people will be able to subscribe to your community. Similarly, you can subscribe to other communities. It can bring some additional traffic to your blog, but don’t expect it to be huge. - BlogCatalog - Page Rank: 7 | Alexa Rank: 1,421 | Compete monthly visitors: 492,838.
As a member of BlogCatalog you can make as many friends you want. About 30-40% will visit your blog to see who you are and what are you writing about and add you as their friends as well. To those who added you as friend, you have the possibility to send broadcasts (mass messages send unobtrusively to all users who have added you to their BlogCatalog friends list). You can also participate to discussions. There are many groups where you can participate and become an active member. The traffic from BlogCatalog isn’t so huge like the traffic from StumbleUpon, but the visitors stays longer on your blog, and, why not, maybe even subscribe to your RSS feed. - BloggingZoom - Page Rank: 4 | Alexa Rank: 16,329 | Compete monthly visitors: 39,335.
BloggingZoom is pretty new on the Blogosphere but its growing fast. You can promote on BloggingZoom all your articles, without any limitations. You can vote for other articles and in exchange, many users will vote for yours. And visit your blog. - LinkReferral - Page Rank: 5 | Alexa Rank: 5,323 | Compete monthly visitors: 208,448
By joining LinkReferral, you will be included in the members’ directory which is visited by over 140,000 members, and thousands of outside visitors on a daily basis. You’ll have the opportunity to earn a ranking at the top of your category, just by visiting a maximum of 30 sites and making 5 reviews in a 24 hour period! You can receive valuable feedback from visitors of your website, network with your peers, and give your opinion on other websites in the directory. The more you participate, the more traffic you will get.
2. Forums
By participating on forums, you have the chance to receive a lot of free traffic, as well as inbound links. On many forums you can ad your blog as a signature and also many forums will show your last post. Now, there are a lot of forums on net. All you have to do is to choose the right forum for you, even if there are general forums or niche forums and to be an active member. I will list here some known forums.
- Digital Point - Page Rank: 6 | Alexa Rank: 267 | Compete monthly visitors: 704,282.
Digital Point is one of the most active forums for webmasters, where you can talk about search engine, marketing, business, design and development, products and tools. - DeviantART - Page Rank: 7 | Alexa Rank: 57 | Compete monthly visitors: 2,924,745.
It’s a community of artists and those devoted to art. You can discuss about digital art, skin art, themes, wallpaper art, traditional art, photography, poetry/prose, art prints. - SitePoint Forums - Page Rank: 7 | Alexa Rank: 772 | Compete monthly visitors: 502,476.
SitePoint forums are for webmasters and you can discuss about design, CSS, XHTML, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, affiliate marketing, ASP.NET, promotion. - Search Engine Forums - Page Rank: 6 | Alexa Rank: 47,949 | Compete monthly visitors: 27,342.
On Search Engine Forums you can discuss about search engine optimization techniques and search engine marketing industry. - Digital Photography School Forum - Page Rank: 5 | Alexa Rank: 18,458 | Compete monthly visitors: 104,902.
It is, obviously, a forum for Photographers where you can talk about digital camera reviews, digital photography techniques, tips and advice and you can share your photos that you require critique on. - Bloggeries - Page Rank: 3 | Alexa Rank: 26,873 | Compete monthly visitors: 14,654.
Bloggeries is a forum especially for bloggers. You can receive reviews for your blog. You can find here great resources for a blogger, especially for a newbie one, like useful plugins, how to promote your blog, how you can make money online, free blog templates and wordpress themes, discussion about podcasting and much more.
3. Comments
Commenting in other blogs is another source of free traffic. Many people will return “the favor” and will leave a comment on your blog. Of course, you must leave some meaningful comment, not “it’s nice”, “interesting” etc. You have more chances to receive traffic and comments by commenting on small blogs. People will be always happy to see that someone is commenting on their blog. People who run big blogs don’t have time to answer to 100 comments, for example, and to visit all the commenter blogs.
4. Free advertising
- Entrecard - Page Rank: 5 | Alexa Rank: 3,241 | Compete monthly visitors: 166,610.
Entrecard is a free exchange network for 125×125 ads. Through this platform, you can advertise your own 125×125 Entrecard on any blog in the network, for free, for a number of days. You pay for this advertising with Entrecard Credits, that you earn for free by visiting blogs and dropping your card for other bloggers. If your blog is new, just launched or you have low traffic, Entrecard is a good way to drive traffic to your blog and to get known. You don’t have to work too hard for this and you can advertise on high traffic blogs without spending any money. - I will complete later this free advertising list, after I’ll test some free advertising programs.
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Hi Diana. I’ve been reading Simonne’s blog and today saw the link to this new blogging venture. Good luck with it!
One question I do have is about EntreCard. Have you done any analysis yet as to whether it is actually bringing you good visitors? I’m thinking about getting one to help drive traffic to my site, but I just dont like the look of the EntreCard “widget” yet…It seems a little ugly and doesn’t totally fit with my site.
Thanks!
Tim
Tim’s last blog post..ING DIRECT Savings Drops Rate to 3.40%
Thanks a lot!
Actually, I have some good traffic from Entrecard, both commentators and RSS subscribers.
I saw you have already the Entrecard widget on your blog. Maybe my review about entrecard will help you, especially some tips I left there.
http://www.134u.com/free-advertising-with-entrecard/
Well, I went ahead and got myself setup with entrecard today anyways and put it on my site. So far it has generated extra traffic to my site. I’m not sure about the quality of traffic though, I’ll have to watch the stats for a few more days. Most people seem to come, drop their entrecard, and then leave.
I also set myself up with a project wonderful account today too. We’ll see if that generates any extra revenue!
Tim’s last blog post..Microsoft Bids For Yahoo! Google Might Notice.
We have written at the same time
The good traffic didn’t come from people who just came to drop an entrecard, but from your ads on other blogs. Take a look on my article above, the one with entrecard, and see on what blogs to advertise for some good traffic.
In case you don’t have time to read the full article, here are the tips:
1. When you choose blogs where you want to advertise on, try to choose those that have the Entrecard widget displayed on the first visible screen, for their visitors to see you better. If the widget is displayed on the bottom of the page, your chance to be seen is lower.
2. Try to place your ad on those blogs who have a good Alexa Rank (a good traffic). I have Alexa Toolbar installed and I follow pretty easy the blog’s Alexa Rank. I choose to advertise on blogs with an Alexa Rank up to 5-600,000.
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[…] As a conclusion (one of the many), the more clicks you get, the more conversions you will have. The more impressions (page views) you have, the more clicks you’ll get. So we came back to the traffic which is so hard (or so expensive to get). Traffic makes online money for you, so you may want to revise again these free traffic sources for your blog. […]
that is a really nice post, looking forward to the rest of the list
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Great article, very informative and it help to generate free traffics to you website almost instantly. Thanks…
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I really should have stumbled by your site much sooner. Such valuable information all in one site. Thank you so much. I am subscribing to your feed.
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