It turns out that almost anyone can make a blog or website these days and make it look pretty darn good. But traffic is another story. What's the use of having that site if no one is around see it and interact with it? And how are your going to differentiate your site from all the other millions of them out there? If you ever hope to sell things on your blog and make a little money you surely can't do it without traffic!



Before you ever start thinking about traffic you should have thought about a theme for your blog. What will make it different and stand out in a crowd? What will make people go to your site and want to keep coming back? What exactly is the purpose and what is your goal with the site? It is best to figure that out right from the beginning, before you are several months in and it is too late.

When you have your site up, you are then faced with that new challenge of getting traffic. I have found that one of the first things you need to do is register your blog with the social blogging sites MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog. It might take a day to get your blog approved and you should use that time to fill out all the info you can. Fill out your profile, put in a picture avatar, fill in all the tags (subjects your blog is about), and fill out your "about me" page.

Once your blog is approved get ready for some serious clicking. What you are going to do is join every community you can and especially add as many "contacts" or "friends" as you can. MyBlogLog will only allow you to add 15 new contacts a day and that will only take you 5 minutes. But that is 5 minutes you want to make sure you do each and every day! BlogCatalog is different and it will allow you to add as many friends as you like. I have added over 300 on occasion and only stopped when I couldn't take it anymore.

How does this get your site traffic? Many of the people you add as friends will be curious to see who is adding them as a friend. They will click on your profile page and then through to your website. Not everyone will do this but I guarantee a fair percentage will. If you add 300 friends on BlogCatalog I will almost guarantee you will get 50 to 100 hits on your website within the next 24 hours. And it is all FREE! Now it may not be the most targeted traffic you will ever get but if you have a nice blog with a good hook, you will get some interest. Just keep adding friends and writing good content and you will be on your way!