Http://www.TravisReynolds.com I think my content is good, my theme is fine.. but I only get like 15 - 30 unique visitors a day. I comment on other blogs, am involved in forums that are around my niche, I post videos to youtube. What do I do? Look at these sites, if you look in there archives it says they've reached 50,000 unique views in a few months.. I havent even reached 40,000 yet. Http://www.GlennWolsey.com Http://www.PSTAM.com
Depend on your business model and marketing strategic. Comment on other blogs, forum posting is the "basic tool" and everybody already aware of it. Sometime a combination of online marketing and offline marketing may catch the boat.
UGH. What part of advertising do your posters here not understand, anyway? That is what they are doing. Hopefully you will see the light, start to use your brain and not do such, pretty-much worthless noobie methods, like signatures. ... No offense. Ad-ver-tiiiiiiise.
I think you should stick to one method at a time. Like one week you use Stumble Upon and one week you Forum post. It is all about sticking to your agenda and you will receive more traffic if you focus on certain websites one at a time and you will then be benefiting most out of them.
I do all that. I stumble all my posts, submit to del.ico.us, submit to digg, comment on other blogs, participate in forums in my niche. How do you suggest I advertise a blog that just reviews applications, gadgets and stuff like that. I know how to advertise, I just wouldn't know what to advertise as. You know what I mean. Like I'm not a magazine or something like that. All I'm wondering is how do you guys think they got that many views in just a matter of weeks from starting.
I wouldn't recommend advertising unless you are making enough money from your affiliate programs to cover the costs. If so you can try out some reinvestment into different forms of advertising to see what could work for you. Who knows if they are telling the truth about their number of visitors. They could just be embellishing to make themselves feel good. Anyways it doesn't matter so much how many visitors you get but how much money you can make off of those visitors.
Those two sites you mentioned only gets around a few hundred hits a day. But webmasters who get hits in the thousands on a consistent basis do it with advertising. There is no other way. And, yes, you CAN advertise your site. I'm sure many others that have the same thing as you do so. If you don't think so, then sitck with the noobie methods, like signatures, and whatnot, and get 10 hits a day. Sorry, bud, but I am just keeping it real here. Regardless, I do wish you luck.
Alright well thanks for the input. If you were me, how would you advertise it? I don't think adwords would be the way to go..?
Travis, I think you have some pretty good content, but the difference between the other two sites and yours, in my opinion, is they have more written content than pictures. Yours is very picture heavy which is nice, but as I was reading through it, I skimmed over your words and went from photo to photo to photo. So your blog looks like a lovely photo gallery rather than your typical blog. I would recommend either making your photos as thumbnails within your posts. Or when you blog, put pictures in every third post so the pictures don't seem to overpower the blog. You've got You Tube Videos which are great, but they're right next to other photos. Most people come to blogs to read content. So I would suggest writing more about your particular topic. For example, you were talking about quick silver, but you had a small post about it and a huge photo. I take it you're a pretty visual type of person which is good, but blog-wise, concentrate a little more verbiage. Let the photos accent your writing, not overpower it. Let your voice be heard in your writing, and definitely give your opinions, but direct your posts outward to your reader rather than being inner thoughts you spilled on paper. You've got to keep in mind, "What can the readers benefit from this post?" "Why would they even bother to read my blog?" Is it because you have excellent observations? You're obviously very passionate about the topic; otherwise, you would not have made a blog about it, but what does it do for the reader? Think along those terms. Are you planning to monetize your blog with Google Adsense ads and affiliate links, or were you planning on just having your blog be read? You've received a comment or two already, so that's good? I know I'm not exactly an expert, but from a writer's point of view who likes to write so that readers gain benefit, I would recommend something like that. You've done what you need to send traffic to your site, but do what you need to do to keep them there. I hope that helps. I'd rather offer constructive criticism rather than tell you go look it up. I mean, why bother answering questions in a forum if you don't intend to take the time to analyze a particular problem critically and offer your assistance? I mean, isn't that what forums are for, or is all about holding back enough information so that some poor sap decides to click on someone's signature link? If I were looking for help, I'd go where someone would offer it readily rather than tell me to just go look it up because God knows that some people might have an idea of what they want to do but could just be off kilter and need just a little push in the right direction. That's why nice experts in forums offer their "professional" assistance. Keep doing what you're doing, Travis, in terms of gaining traffic, but also consider ways to monetize your blog if you haven't already done so. At the end of the day, it's about developing a relationship with your readers despite all the SEO, the metatags, keywords and the traffic building--building trust with your readers, the kind of trust that has them coming back to your blog more often. Think on those terms and your unique visitor count will go up. Good luck.
I also recommend you submit your site to blog catalog, if you haven't already done so. Blogcatalog will have to approve your blog first which can take up to two days. If they don't think you have enough content (which I doubt), they will not approve it. Once accepted, look for Groups to join that pertain to your blog. Within those groups, there are many individual subgroups who are willing to look at your blog and leave comments. Many people in Blog Catalog just love to read blogs. Some are there to exchange links. Others are there to gain exposure for the their businesses.
I'm with Augra on this on. You have to get your site more interesting before you start to even look into advertising. But something to think about, to keep your hopes up: JohnChow.com and Shoemoney.com did advertising starting out, and look at them today.
Some people have mentioned "ADVERTISING" ... but can someone give examples of places to advertise ? Specific examples of websites and/or publications would help