Beginners Guide to Driving Traffic to Your Blog
October 30th, 2007 | Published in Increasing Traffic | 26 Comments
It’s been 15 days of blogging; building content, improving design and mostly trying to get some traffic. Even if you find and write down the solution for “World Peace” you won’t get any visitors without some effort. There is lot of “what to do” lists to drive traffic and I applied most of them (trying to stay away from spamming) and will review the short term results.
Social Bookmarking Services
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StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is a toolbar which you can use to stumble through web pages people liked and it will drive traffic to your page if you have a good content. StumbleUpon is the source of the most traffic to my blog. It is superior than other social bookmarking services because it can’t be spoiled. Most of the social bookmarking services depend on you to promote your link and ask people for votes. StumbleUpon prevents such actions because it bans your account if you submit your own pages too much. If you have a good content people will favor it by clicking “I like it!” and your page is displayed to other stumblers and attract more audience. Even if you find a way to promote your page from several accounts or stumble exchanges people who stumble your page will rate it and the traffic will vanish in time if there is no good content. To benefit from StumbleUpon you must be a good stumbler and contribute to the system. (You can start being a giver by giving a thumb up for this post if you liked:) I will write a more detailed review about StumbleUpon in following days, it deserves more attention.
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Digg
Digg is another social network service which has its own ups and downs. It has good integrating with your blog and widely used system among bloggers but I think that it’s losing it’s purpose. If you are not in the first page of digg there isn’t much chance that you will get traffic and to get into first page you must ask people for diggs. I think that this service isn’t the dream service for beginner bloggers because you have to spend too much effort for getting diggs and I beleive it is better to spend this time blogging.
-Sphinn
Sphinn is a new social bookmarking service just like Digg, but unlike Digg it is not spoiled yet. There are people actually commenting and reviewing each others submits and I think it is a great place for starters. For me it doesn’t drive much traffic but better days are to come 
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Del.icio.us
Del.icio.us introduced the tag system for internet searches and still widely used del.icio.us creates traffic to your submitted posts.
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Reddit is another social bookmarking service with a cute logo and they create some traffic. Compared to the effort you spend on other services this one is an easy to go service. Just use it.
Blog Networks
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Technorati
Technorati is a blog search engine working with a voting system for submitted posts and you can fave your favorite blogs. (You can favorite BloggerDollar by the image above) Technorati is actually ranking each blog by a ranking system called authority which is actually number of links to your blog. So as a new blogger you will have a low authority which means low traffic. I had one of my topics in Hot WTF’s for days but still didn’t get any noticeable traffic. They have canceled submitting new WTF’s lately so I guess there will be a change in their system.
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BlogCatalog
Although named as a blog directory, blogcatalog has a good forum like network where you can meet new bloggers or ask for diggs and votes.
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Bumpzee
Bumpzee is a more advanced bloggers network letting you use a widget for viewing the recent visitors to your blog and they have a community system like in blogcatalog.
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BlogRush
Blogrush is an eye candy widget displaying posts from other bloggers on your sidebar. You earn credit for your traffic and your posts are displayed in other blogs. They recently started cleaning out their users for a higher quality of posts. I started receiving a little traffic from them so I try to see the light at the end of tunnel. They also have a referral system so that people who sign up from your blog earns credits for you also. So why don’t you be a good boy and sign up from here (Don’t worry it doesn’t effect your credits)
Blog Directories
There are also lot of blog directories that I signed up which you can see in the side bar. Some of them require placing their link on your blog, some of them don’t (I put them all in my sidebar to share with you). They don’t create much traffic but a good way to increase your blogs visibility in search engines.
Socializing
If you are a blogger and you want attention to your blog then you must pay attention to other blogs. Visiting other blogs and commenting on their posts will both spread out your name and also motivate people to visit your blog. As I said before don’t be a taker be a giver.
Most of the listed services won’t bring you traffic immediately (Actually StumbleUpon does) but those methods will help you in long term so participate in each service and experience it yourself. If you have any other services you want to recommend please comment.
October 31st, 2007 at 5:24 am (#)
Great advice and will be trying some of them out on my blogs
October 31st, 2007 at 10:13 pm (#)
Nice post mate! I need some new Stumble Friends…
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:27 am (#)
Beginners Guide to Driving Traffic to Your Blog…
Even if you find and write down the solution for “World Peace” you won’t get any visitors without some effort. There is lot of “what to do” lists to drive traffic and I applied most of them (trying to stay away from spamming) and will review …
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:54 am (#)
this pretty much sums up what I’ve been reading the pats couple of days, and then some. nice to see information being reinforced and presented differently.
i’m a new blogger myself and all this information is invaluable! you listed a bunch of information and sources for potential traffic that will take at least a week for me to check out. thanks again!
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:57 am (#)
just subscribed to your blog . . . but I must admit, I had some trouble finding the RSS icon! once again, great post.
November 2nd, 2007 at 4:25 am (#)
BlogRush ‘cleaned out’ a lot of legit blogs and left in a lot of “made for affiliate offer” blogs. You’re showing a couple of them in your widget right now.
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:37 am (#)
turtie thanks for the effort for finding RSS icon, I just can’t get to find the SUPER RSS icon
November 2nd, 2007 at 9:39 am (#)
Frank C BlogRush had this cleaning operation for removal of non content only affiliate blogs as far as I know and they are claiming that the Click Rates have improved afterwards. I think that they may have made some mistakes to clean out good blogs too but no harm to apply again.
November 2nd, 2007 at 11:07 am (#)
Thank you for this. There are tons of social networks out there
November 3rd, 2007 at 5:09 pm (#)
Hey Thanks! And have a nice day….Love Jolande
November 4th, 2007 at 1:32 am (#)
Nice site. I just found you from bloggingzoom. I am adding you as a friend.
November 6th, 2007 at 7:10 pm (#)
Articles and web2.0 techniques are bringing a lot of traffic.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:46 am (#)
Yep, Web 2.0 craziness still getting some attention.
November 9th, 2007 at 9:37 pm (#)
I think that you list too many services. For most sites, Digg or Reddit will be the only ones sending real traffic. Of course, specialty niche sites will have other sources of traffic, but you can’t possibly list all those here.
November 16th, 2007 at 7:27 am (#)
This is what I have been waiting for, a finer description of these social marketing sites. Now at least I know more what to choose coz you see I have joined many of these but it seems that I should concentrate on a more specific site. By the way, I am just wondering why you did not include trafficswarm? I am currently participating on them, that’s why I asked…thannks!
November 16th, 2007 at 8:26 am (#)
Guardian Angel - Thanks for the comments, I will check traffic swarm thanks for the suggestion.
November 21st, 2007 at 11:25 am (#)
Great tips, thank you for this
December 2nd, 2007 at 5:20 pm (#)
Nice tips…. las week I’ve received more than 6000 visits from stumbleupon.. you can see my stats here… http://www.pachecus.com/i-have-received-6165-visits-in-1-day/
Thank for share these tips.. great article!!
December 8th, 2007 at 10:39 am (#)
Hi there, i am looking for info on online education but i am left wondering how is your post nnial 2007 - salvatore iaconesi - del.icio.us poetry related to that ? .
January 4th, 2008 at 10:18 pm (#)
This is a great post. I have just started a blog with the aim of discovering web 2.0 for myself, learning to blog and learning to make money online. I must say, my site has a long way to go before it can deliver such good quality content as you have done here. Thank you very much for these tips. I will social bookmark this site as much as possible. Definitely deserved… There really is so much rubbish “information” out there and it is good to find this page.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:43 am (#)
nice job on helping us newbies! continue the good work.
June 3rd, 2009 at 8:43 pm (#)
Great advice will be joining some of these places and hopefully increasing my traffic soon
October 11th, 2009 at 7:57 pm (#)
Great advice indeed. I have only recently been introduced to Stumble Upon and I am hooked. Very important to make use of all these to promote your blog. I am fairly new at blogging, still learning a lot. Every day almost there is something new that I learn and it is exciting. Slowly but surely I am growing as a blogger. Keep up the good work and good luck to all new bloggers out there!
December 12th, 2009 at 8:27 pm (#)
i like using digg and stumble up on
January 6th, 2010 at 6:19 am (#)
Very useful to me,thankyou
May 3rd, 2010 at 5:45 pm (#)
it is really hard to build massive traffic on a website. you need to promote your website by blog commenting or PPC advertising.,;