I am trying to find good ways to promote my blog so that I can drive traffic and make some adsense money and affiliate commission... so far ive tried doing link exchange websites , and putting link to my site in signatures in forums... what else can work well?
The most important thing is your content. Your content is the best promotion "trick". Without quality content users might visit you but they will never come back. If you think that your content is ok you can bookmark your blog to social bookmarking sites like stumbleupon, be a member of the community, contribute etc You can also run an Adwords campaign for your best post or something.
It's easy, you make an account, you bookmark sites and articles that you like, you gain reputation + friends and through those friends you gain visitors, fame etc ... That's an overall "process" for this kind of sites
For the social bookmarking sites, if you just make the accounts and spend a bit of time at each one, you should start figuring it out. I'd go for content first though, like others have said. Then if you have good content, you can feel confident that you've got decent stuff to link to, etc.
Submit your blog to: - article directories - directories - social bookmarking sites - RSS feed directories - blog directories
update your blog regularly. if you want to add more traffic to your blog then just check my blog and add your blog.
Also use http://onlywire.com once set up it is very useful and saves a lot of time, you can also ask other members to use it to bookmark your sites in return you do the same for them. Hope that helps you James
As others have previously mentioned on the thread, you need to spend time creating quality content. There is such a lack of quality in most niches that anything half decent will be picked up. Don't just start submitting to the social bookmarking sites either. Build up your account first and start submitting other people's content before you submit your own. If you just submit your own content it's unlikely to go anywhere. Try submitting to the smaller sites like Mixx.com before you submit anything to Digg or StumbleUpon. Be careful if you use StumbleUpon as if you submit your own articles too many times you won't get any traffic at all.
I second the article submission recommendations and you want to make sure that you keep it updated with new content that is keyword rich.
You can also promote your blog through pay per post / viral marketing this can be very effective if done correctly.
Ping your blog at pingomatic.com and pingoat.com. Also after you create a new blog post, submit that blog post to digg.com and propeller.com. Also, you should "stumble" your blog post at stumbleupon.com, and I would recommend adding a bookmark to your post at del.icio.us. Additionally, find a forum relevant to your product and become a member. Post useful posts with a sig link leading to your blog. Also, submit your blog to blogcatalog.com. I've received quite a bit of traffic from them. Additionally, write related articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com. Have a link to your blog in the resources box. Do all these things and you'll get traffic. This is exactly what I am doing now.
Content, content, content. If people keep coming back, you will have traffic! Post to your blog, then post a similar article to HupPages and Squidoo> use social bookmarking sites Try to have a number of sites with your link pointing people to your blog, but give them a reason to go there and a reason to return. Good luck. DT