How to promote a blogging site *quickly*?

Hi there,

I am on the web since the dark ages ('95 or so?), but so far I have only created sites that address the professional IT-community.

Now, as an experiment (and partly fun), I have entered the blogging sphere, which I have been quite ignorant of before. I would like to see if it is possible to monetize a niche blog. I am a space addict and will be visiting the October, 23rd space shuttle launch in Florida.

I've thought that's a good topic for a travel blog that will show all my preparations (frustrations) as well as the actual trip and provide some tips for others while doing so.

Question now: how to best promote such a site? As I said, I am not so much in in social networking sites, but I believe this is the best thing to use. Obviously, SEO doesn't really work, as the primary time frame of relevance is just from now until shuttle launch. So I need something that helps getting attraction quickly.

I have never done traffic building in such an environment and wonder if it is possible to do it. Any feedback is deeply appreciated.

If you'd like to see my blog, visit

shuttlelaunch dot gerhards.net

(mangled because I've just entered the forum and not yet been granted live links privileges).

Thanks,
Rainer

 

Register on digg, stumbleupon, delicious and similar social networking and bookmarking websites... also be active on DP and include ur URL in the signature link of DP...

 

OK, I've seen I can now put live links into my sig. Looks like it paid to answer a few posts . My blog is:

http://shuttlelaunch.gerhards.net

I'll folllow your advice. I wonder if spaces like MySpace are also worth the trouble. Any advise on them?

 

Welcome to the blogworld. The best way to get readers for your blog is to become part of a community of like-minded bloggers. Find other blogs about aerospace, make comments on them, get to know the bloggers, invite a few to do guest posts on yours, interview a few of them. Also see if you can find a blog carnival on your subject and submit a post.

Those will all get you started. The hard part is keeping things going. I'd say the average life of the new blog is about 3 months, after that people get bored easily and the blog dies. Don't let yours end up that way.

 

As donnareed says - find some related blogs and start interacting - also search for related forums and do the same (include a link to your site in your sig').

Space seems quite popular on places like Digg so submit some of your posts to Digg and other SB sites (stumbleupon.com etc)

Cat'

PS. Some great photos on your blog

 

Why dont you submit to free directories?

http://www.omg-1.com

 

i dont suggest you to promote your site quickly.

in my opinion, quick promoting means quick search engine ban

 

Well, I see the issue with the search engines. But the blog is really "hot" for only rougly the next 4 to 6 weeks (maybe 8 if I follow the mission). After that, it can of course receive search results, but I don't think the topic itself is of so much interest any longer.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I am trying things out right now. If you have any more, I am more to welcome to read them.

Thanks to all,
Rainer

 

use social bookmarking service. Submit article to digg.

 

My wife and I have created a travel blog about our backpacking trip. It has been up and running for a few weeks now and we have found that the best way(and most time consuming) is to post on similar blogs and invite people to visit our new blog. It generates related links and uniques that are actually more likely to click on the travel-related ads we have selected. From what I have been told the crawl to the edge of the sandbox takes about six months.

Just my humble suggestion

 

try submitting your blog's rss feed to
pingoat.com OR pingomatic.com

They will ping many other websites and you will see results in a few days. You can even automate the pinging by writing a small php/cron scripts (thats what I do)

 

First thing first ping your blog submit it to a blog directory.By the ways link building is the other way of promoting your site.

 

Here's what I do when I write an article:

1. I write the post naturally and make sure that it is all edited.
2. I stumble it and then have a few friends of mine stumble it as well.
3. I throw it up on digg.com and hope it takes off. I've yet to have success from it, but I can anticipate a change in that soon.
4. I then go and post on other blogs. I tend to post on other blogs RIGHT after I have written an article so that there is something new for them to read.

Now, you mentioned myspace...Myspace could definitely work BUT you would need to keep it extremely niche related. If you were to join space/astronomy/space shuttle type of groups, you may be able to get more traffic to your blog. But, that also depends on how you execute it...Don't spam people because that'll tick them off, but don't be passive. Let them know what's up. Let them know when you've updated or just do it once every three days. But, don't spam.

 

How about submitting your posts to free article submission directories ? I really don't know if one should be doing it or not - if someone with an experience on traffic building comment on this.

 

I disagree. You can promote as fast as you want. You won't banned as long as you don't resort to spamming.

 

I would not submit the posts that go on your blog, but if you were to write other articles and submit them to these, that's alright. You don't want to get flagged for not having unique content.

 

can't go wrong with social bookmarking

 

Thanks for all suggestions. Been on the road yesterday, thus the late reply.

One interesting fact is that I am *currently* not in the sandbox and the site is actually showing up on google. I am not sure if it has anything to do with the domain (gerhards.net), which is several years old. But the sitename shuttlelaunch.gerhards.net is brand-new.

Rainer