It's been about a month since I starting heavily promoting my automotive blog (I started in middle to late February), although I have to admit that the first week or so was mostly spent tweaking my blog. I did my research and joined some social bookmarking sites: technorati, Reddit, Zimbio, Twitter, Digg, blogcatelog and Delicious (or whatever). After joining this forum, I joined Ezine articles and GoArticle -- I posted several articles on them. The most successful has been reddit -- the articles I posted on it show appear on google and I actually get a few visitors come from there. I have joined several forums on my niche, and so far they have been the largest traffic drivers. I see the largest spikes when I post an article or two on these forums. I posted an article yesterday and so far I have about 600 visitors on my blog today. The problem with these forums is that your account might get deleted for "spamming", and as hard as I try to look legit (I'm actually legit) on these forums, I have been called a spammer on two occasions. I opened a youtube and facebook account for my blog, hoping that they will greatly improve my page rank, but I guess I have to work on them for while before I see anything. According to Adsense, I have an average of 216 visitors a day. I have made a total of $6.21 from my ads. I don't really think that's good. My goal is to have at least 1000 visitors a day before April. What was your traffic like in your first month of marketing? I need a marketing guideline, something that has worked for you guys. Does anyone have an automotive blog? Your help will be strongly appreciated. Website: www.autotribute.com
I've already stated this in a post I just made, starting out is always tough, but you get used to it (If you create multipul websites) and sooner or later all this hard work does pay off! With the forums, how are you advertising? I wouldn't like it very much if somebody came onto my forum and left a backlink to their blog every other post, just stick your website URL in your forum sig and be active on the forum, try to make at least 10 new posts a day and you'll be gaining some traffic from this, keep with everything else your doing (Don't want to rel ist what you've said) and it will increase your traffic. I tend to set my goals at the end of each month, for example at the end of January I may of had 10,000 unique hits, so I set a goal of 20,000 unique hits by the end of February etc.
Alex Brooks, I have been advised to stick with one blog until you get some decent traffic, otherwise it will be too much work. How many blogs do you have and how far part did you start them? Here is my strategy with forums: 1) post an article from my blog after I've made two or three replies in another thread that isn't mine and 2) after posting my article, I stay in it and participate to get a discussion going. I then visit two or three other threads and leave replies to cover (from the moderators and whistle-blowers) my posted article so not to look suspicious. But I might take your advice and just put my url in signature.
AutoKwame, blogging isn't hard it just takes time that most people dare not to put into one website. After 5 or 6 months most bloggers give up. I have been blogging for also a year and there was like 2 months I was away from internet. I didn't give up. So my advice to you is stay with it and stay focus.
What I really meant was that there so much to do in what appears to be so little time. Then again, my time management isn't really that good. Thanks for your words of motivation.
There are too many ways to market online but I suggest picking three methods you like the best that give you the results you want and experimenting with campaigns. I used to automatically bookmark or use other types of social media. Then I switched to other things. I'm sure I'll switch again. Do what works or do what you are motivated to do at the moment.
have you tried publish press release? Type in "free press release submission" at Google. Keep submitting 1 press release per week. You just need one newspaper to publish your account and you all set.
Yeah, I was the same way when I first began blogging. Time management is not one of my good skills. You will get the hang of things. You welcome.