The basic methods to gain traffic for your blog

Note that these are not the only ways to get traffic, in fact there are much more. But these are what I believe to be the most basic methods.

1) Make sure the information on your site is actually useful. Because the more useful it is, the further it will spread by "word of mouth", which causes a chain reaction. One person mentions it on the internet, atleast 10 other people see it, and it just keeps branching off. At this stage you do not really have to worry about this, just make sure that you have the content as quality as YOU can get it. I mention this stage because although it isn't really "basic", it is core. So later on remember this, when you can provide more useful content. Do it.

2) Article Marketing. There is an entire branch of marketing in which you write articles about something, then post it in what is called an "Article Directory". This is the best free traffic you can get, and I will give details on this in another post. You can get between hundreds and thousands of hits for one article depending on what your skill is. Some of the real pros have over 10'000 views from 1 article. You can get over 100 in just one day. This will require its own seperate post. This is the most important method to gain traffic that I have mentioned here.

3) If you are a member of any forum, include a link to your blog in your signatures. This will bring little traffic PROBABLY but it is worth it because it is easy, as long as your an active member in that forum.

4) Do mention your blog in a post on craigslist. Just make sure to adhere to craigslist's rules.

5) On Yahoo answers, if possible, search for questions that are relevant to your site, answer them and include a link to your site. Yahoo answers has a very high page ranking.

6) Leave comments on blogs that you know of and blogs that rank high in google search, leave a link to your site.

7) Submit your site to Google and other search engines. Google does not have your site listed with them automatically, you have to manually add it. But that is not the case with blogger.com, since it is owned by google your blog is automatically submitted. But for future reference, remember this. If you move away from blogger (and eventually you will have to if you want to increase your profits) you will need to submit your URL of your site monthly for best results. There is a service that does this automatically for you, faster and better than what can be done by hand. It submits it monthly for you to many search engines and directories. If you ever decide you need it, you can find it here.

There are many other ways to get traffic but these should be plenty to keep you busy for a while. I recommend you read the upcoming post on Article Marketing.

Also number 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 all build backlinks. This will be explained in a short upcoming post.

A useful free tool for submitting your blog to blog directories is Pingomatic.com. Basically you put the name of your blog, its address, then check all available boxes and submit it. Results are not instant but it is worth it. Remember, the rest of the internet doesn't just magically know you exist, same as google. You have to TELL them you exist. This tool will help with that.