I posted a recap of this week's WebmasterRadio.fm NetIncome show on my blog (sockmoney.com)... it featured Darren Rowse of Problogger.net (and Shoemoney of course). They had some good tips for promoting and growing a new blog: Use Technorati's top 100 to find and market your new stories to related blogs... Setup alerts on google for types of content you are interested in blogging about to keep up on what is new Frequency of posts is based on your content and readership... If you are posting very thorough articles/posts... less is better... perhaps 4-5 week. If you are just commenting on news articles/links... you can do more since they are easier to digest... 103bees.com - Helps generate ideas for new topics for your blog while analyzing how folks found you... StumbleUpon traffic seems to linger longer and convert better... try to get stumbled Stay on top of where big traffic spikes are coming in from... (ie - Digg) and update those entry pages temporarily to also promote your RSS feed... newsletter... etc... to try and retain as much of the traffic as you can... Paid links/ads are OK if they are relevant... steer clear of unrelevant text link ads...
Sockmoney, nice post...however i dont agree with ur stumbleupon traffic...i think its useless unless you have a pron site ...really i mean people keep on stumbling..My site was stumbled some time back and i got around 50 odd hits in a short time but when i checked the stats...out of 50 almost 45 people were on my site for less than 5 secs.. Now does that even count as TRAFFIC? we will better off without it. But rest of the points are cool..especially 103bees..i didnt know of them till you told us:d..good one
Yeah, I personally have not seen big success with stumbleupon... The one I'm pretty interested in trying out is the idea of trying to capture return visitors from big traffic spikes from digg, or where ever. Seems like a simple idea that is often overlooked. Most folks might try to dump a bunch of ad banners on their site the day they get dugg... but in reality they need to trim back on the ads and focus on trying to retain some of those visitors...
I always found offering a contest of some kind to be a good way to increase traffic and promote your site. The hard part is getting the word out though.