Free Traffic for Your Blog

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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.

a. StumbleUpon
     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.

b. Digg
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.

c. Del.icio.us
      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.

d. MyBlogLog
      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.

e. BlogCatalog
      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.

f. BloggingZoom
      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.

g. LinkReferral
      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.

a. Digital Point
      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.

b. DeviantART
      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.

c. SitePoint Forums
      SitePoint forums are for webmasters and you can discuss about design, CSS, XHTML, PHP, Ruby, JavaScript, affiliate marketing, ASP.NET, promotion.

d. Search Engine Forums
      On Search Engine Forums you can discuss about search engine optimization techniques and search engine marketing industry.

 e. Digital Photography School Forum
      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.

f. Bloggeries
      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
   
a. 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.

b. I will complete later this free advertising list, after I’ll test some free advertising programs.



Resource: http://www.ezmoneyon.net/free-traffic-for-your-blog/