So you have your blog up and running. You have some great content that even your mom loves. Now what? You need some readers. His process is one of the hardest and longest processes you will find. There are literally millions of posts on how to get people to come to your site. How do you know which ones work? Start with the big guys. The coveted “A-list” bloggers know what they are doing. They are experts in the field of making money online, having successful businesses, and driving nice cars. Now my MINI Cooper is pretty nice, but I don’t have the other qualifications they have. Everything I learned came from their advice, their posts, and their guest posts (this one is the key).

Guest Posting for Guest Posters

This is a phenomenon when performed correctly can draw large numbers to your site. It’s like opening for Hannah Montana, you know who they are really there to see but if you can get the crowd going before the show they will remember you. When it comes to writing a guest post you have to give it your all. You have to submit your absolute best work. You also need to be relevant to their blog. Submitting a post about how to make the worlds best Jello pudding wouldn’t be a great idea if your sending it to a weight-loss blog. It would be a great post to send to Bill Cosby. Just remember make it great, make it relevant, and just ask. I even recommend just sending it in. It’s easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

And The Next Contestant Is

Contests! Another great way to get your blog started. People love stuff. People love free. Put them together and what do you get? That’s right folks…free stuff! Free stuff can come in the forms of many things. It could be a monetary prize, it could be a free gift, it could be services or even in the form or reviews. Whatever it is your giving away make sure it’s something of value. Value has many different meanings to many different people. Reality is based on your perception. My reality is based on my perception. I see value in spending time with my wife, taking the time to complete a project, or helping other people. Chances are your values are different than mine (especially the first one, I better not catch you spending more time with her than I do). Based on this it’s reasonable to say that not everyone will find your giveaway as something they’d want. Try to be as broad as possible when coming up with your idea, and if all else fails “Cash is King”.

 Now in order to win a contest you will obviously need your readers to do something for you. It could be writing about it in their blog and linking to you, subscribing to their feeds, or something even more mischievous. Whatever it is you require I do have one suggestion. Announce the winner of the contest to subscribers and only on dates specified in the contest. This gives your readers another great reason to subscribe to your threads and to check it regularly.

Comments

What better way to show that you love or hate an article than writing about it in the comments. Not only does this show your interest in a topic, but it also puts your name out in front of everyone else that reads those comments. With this technique shameless plugs do nothing for you. People aren’t going to go to your website just because you spam it in somewhere. You have to be witty, straight to the point, open-minded, or possibly quirky. Just make sure that the comment is relevant to the subject and shows a little of your personality. This way people somewhat know what to expect from you. The second part to this is to make sure you are an active commenter on your blog.  People love to be acknowledged and to know they are heard. I often hear from the “big guys” that there is a tremendous amount of comments left on their blogs and that it’s a nightmare to go through them all. I would love to have that problem. I would love to have so much traffic to my blog that I couldn’t handle it all myself. So bring it on!

The Wrap-Up Show

Seems fairly simple right? It should be, there isn’t a lot to getting yourself out there. What you have to remember however is that it’s a constant battle. You have to constantly be pushing your name, pushing your style, and pushing yourself. It’s easy to give up because you can’t build traffic to your site. You think I’ve never thought about giving up or moving on to something else? Once you start building up steam the momentum will carry you and your site to the next level. I haven’t given away any brilliant revelations (I barely scratched the surface on the topic) and I definitely haven’t told you anything you don’t already know but one thing I will promise to you…I will let you know every technique I use, and how I implemented it in order to build a reader base. Generating traffic is one constantly evolving dynamic that will take a long time to learn, and longer to master. Nice thing is you’ll get every mistake I make, and can use it to learn from.