In my early days of blogging I wasn't all that interested in how much traffic I received or how to generate it. At some point though I did become interested in traffic to my blogs and how to generate it. The very first thing I realized is generating traffic to blogs is not quite as easy as it would appear. More importantly generating quality traffic to blogs is work! Basically I found generating traffic involves 4 methods:
- word of mouth - This includes friends, family, forum participation, newsgroup participation, backlinks, leaving comments on other blogs and social networking.
- free advertising - This usually is in the form of a 125 x 125 badge exchange. Some of these programs require an large time commitment to be effective and as soon as you stop the program the traffic dwindles off.
- paid advertising - This includes programs such as CMFads, Adgitize and Adwords.
- link exchanges - While these do work they are not to be used with certain affiliate programs and they tend to boost your bounce rate.
The bottom line is generating traffic is work. You are either paying for it through time and effort or you are paying for it via advertising fees. Either way there is a cost involved. In many respects coming right out a paying actual money for advertising is a lot less effort than spending time earning credits that can be used for future advertising. However the most effective way to generate traffic to your blog is a combination of the first 3 methods. My experience has been that paid advertising does give better results but only when combined with word of mouth and free advertising.
Garden Gnome ©2009-2010
No comments:
Post a Comment