I have written in the past about building website traffic, but I thought I would elaborate specifically on blogging. I consider my blog not only a way to interact with my readers, but also a personal solution for getting things off of my chest.

This blog has done pretty well with building traffic. I am up to many thousands of hits per month (amount classified, sorry). The reason for the regular increase in traffic is that I post regularly, and utilize social networks and social bookmarking websites. I try to get my posts republished when I can, and I write articles for big publications like Associated Content and EzineArticles to name a couple.

Your biggest obstacle for increasing traffic is yourself. It is hard to build a blog when you can’t see people commenting, or more than a few hits in your stats tracking program. Once you realize that it takes time to get a hundred comments on a single post, you can focus more on the content of the posts that you write. If you are able to realize this at the beginning of your blog, then your blog can be filled with quality posts right from the beginning.

Writing quality posts are what attracts links. If your articles are informative, someone who was looking for that information will be more likely to link back to your article from their own blog or website. This is called “viral linking”. You also receive the benefits of viral linking when you write articles for article website like EzineArticles. Those article publishing websites allow republishing of your expert articles, and re-publishers are required to provide the credit to the original author (you). That credit can be a link to the authors website (or blog). You get the benefit of traffic from another webmasters marketing efforts.

After awhile of posting to your blog, you will gain many top 10 rankings for various keywords and keyphrases. Some of which you would be surprised to see in your stats tracking program (I use analytics and google webmaster tools). Because of your continuous posting, you will end up with thousands of pages on your blog being indexed by search engines. You will attract a loyal following and get those illusive reader comments on your blog.

You started a business, you got a website created, and you are ready to open up your internet doors. But wait. What’s that sound? Its crickets… You thought that if you built it, they will come?

Reality is this. There are billions (if not trillions) of web pages on the net. Even if yours had the nicest design, it wouldn’t mean a thing if the customer could not find you. Internet marketing is fairly simple though. I am not saying that to dilute what us marketers do. But for someone like you who is searching for DIY marketing tips, I am here to tell you that you can achieve the success that you are looking for.

Internet marketing takes a lot of time. This isn’t something that you can do in your spare time. Forget what those infomercials tell you about how you can work part time and make millions of dollars with the e-commerce website that they just sold you. The fact is that in order to achieve fast sales, you need to pay for marketing. With e-commerce, pay-per-click is a necessity. You have to sign up with Google Adwords, and have a budget of at least $300 per month just to get a couple of sales. The higher your marketing budget, the more sales you will get. If you don’t have a budget, then you have to rely on nothing more than free marketing methods. And those take time.

Your free internet marketing campaign needs to include the following:

1. Social Networking: Without joining and participating in social networks, you are leaving a huge market of potential clients/customers on the table. Join Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Digg, Delicious, Diigo, and any other social network you can find. Post on these sites, and network with others. It will turn into lots of free traffic for your website.
2. Search Engine Optimization: This is a must. If your website is not search engine friendly, then you don’t really stand a chance in search engine results when competing with other similar companies. Hire a professional to optimize your website. I am one of those professionals. We are everywhere. We are watching you
3. Expert Articles & Press Releases: You need to become an expert in your field. Whatever you are in business for, you need to come up with topics about and write articles that appeal to your customer. You can then post those articles on free article websites and get exposure. They allow you to post a credit under the article that will help bring traffic to your website. Some article websites also pay YOU for the articles (i.e. Associated Content). You can also post free press releases on websites specifically for this purpose. They make their money from the Adsense and other ad revenue, and your name or company name brings them search engine traffic.
4. Directory Listings: These aren’t very important anymore, but there are people who use them still. They are a source of traffic, and link building.

These four methods will get you started. It doesn’t sound like much now, but wait until you start doing these things. You will find that they take up a good chunk of your life. Of course, you can pay a professional like me to handle these tasks for you. If you decide to diy, you will pick up additional methods during your learning process.

I wrote an article today on this blog about popular blogging topics. Minutes later, this site appeared on the 1st page of Google search results with 1,340,000,000 results. See graphic below. Click it to see a larger image.

Notice the search phrase, and the number of results for that phrase. This goes to show that maintaining a blog with original content makes that blog important in the eyes of search engines.

Also note that I use some plugins, but I have yet to install a few on this site that would benefit it, such as the all in one seo plugin.

Incoming search terms:

• topic with 1 billion results

I started this blog intending to one day reach 100,000 daily visits in my stats. Now let me tell you, I have been marketing online for years. But when you are dealing with free internet marketing methods alone, it can be tough to reach that goal. It’s definitely something that takes time.

My goal is to reach the elusive 100k within 1 years time. The methods I will use are rss feeds, blog participation, social networking, directories, articles, press releases, etc. All of the free options. I will try and remember to update this post in exactly one year with the results of my mission.

I have another website with a blog. On the blog, I opened up a non-official software support section for a specific php script and it brought in a large number of questions. It was a huge success for driving traffic to my site.

This is a marketing must for those of you who have knowledge of a specific topic, and some time on your hands to answer questions. Your blog will definitely get readers. An example would be providing solutions for common Microsoft Windows problems. I posted a solution to the problem of “missing icons in the tray”. It was a bug in Windows that made your icons disappear on the bottom right of your screen.

You can bring in the traffic, but is it worth your time? Put some Google Adsense on your blog, and get paid for clicks. Put up an advertiser page and solicit paid advertisements. It can be worth your time once you build up a loyal readership.

Another way to get that traffic by helping people is by providing a free service. You can post free myspace codes, or free templates. You can post free seo tools, or other automated scripts that bring in regular users. You can even start a specialized forum.

I just read a story about how the Texas Motor Sports company offered a radio dj $100,000 to change his name for one year, and to get a tattoo with their .com on himself permanently. With this idea, I am now for sale.

So here’s the deal. I am NOT willing to get the tattoo. My body is valuable real estate. Just ask my wife. But I AM willing to change my name to your .com for 1 year at a price of $100,000. I am NOT JOKING here. I am dead serious. I believe that this will generate HUGE publicity for you, AND for me.

After 1 year, I am going to change my name back legally to my original name. But in the meantime, I will be introducing myself to everyone as YourCompanyURL.com

Interested? Let me know!

I am currently accepting new big name clients for pr campaigns. When I say big name clients, I mean that you must be a celebrity, ceo, or another well known name.

The services I am open for at the moment is internet pr campaigns: damage control, brand promotion, event marketing, etc.

Again you MUST be a big name. My services are not cheap, and I have to be able to provide you with personalized service. If you meet this qualification, leave me a voicemail at 708-414-0343.

Marketing is something you can read about online. There are vast internet resources where you can go to, read, and become an “expert”. But the fact is that if you do not understand that marketing is an ever-changing industry, then your expert title will mean nothing. Being an expert doesn’t mean that you retain information that you read, and regurgitate it on request. Being an expert means being creative, and innovative on a daily basis.

Being creative and innovative sometimes means risking everything. There was that time when marketers left a device in the open public, and everyone thought it was a terrorist attack. I admit, people over-react, and mostly are stupid. The good thing is that you can capitalize on stupidity. But stupidity is not your greatest marketing tool.

Effective marketing stands out. Think about the absurd in current society, then come up with a way to use it in a way that generates attention. This is the formula to a successful marketing campaign that will become viral. Viral marketing explodes into leverage, which means that your advertising dollars have been recouped many times over.

Effective marketing in current society (America) would be some bald dude with a colorful tattoo on his head, and wearing wings or something. It has to stand out apart from the competition. DRTV uses this concept, but unfortunately many campaigns are way below the bar. There are commercials that you remember like the funny Geico lizard. Then there are those obscure commercials that simply remove themselves from your brain the instant that the 30 seconds are up.

Using the effective marketing concept paired with current technology such as social networking, and internet media, you can really make a branding dent with little effort past that of using your creative brain.

Feel free to mention your creative concepts below.