Getting your blog set up is the easy part of the process. Now comes the difficult part – getting visitors! You need to find traffic to come to your blog or it won’t be a profitable investment of your time.
There are several different places where you can advertise your blog. Some will cost a small amount and others won’t cost you a penny. Start with the free options and as you begin to see a return on your investment of time, you can invest some profits back into marketing your blog with paid options.
Free
1. Join message board communities. This is a simple way to advertise your blog. Interact with your fellow users and advertise your blog in your signature line, if it’s allowed. If it’s not allowed, there’s usually a folder available within that forum that does allow you to advertise your sites. Use them.
2. Join a social networking site. These sites are a good way to network with like-minded people who are interested in the same subject your blog is about. Join the community and get to know the other members and then you can supply them with a link to your blog. Many in social networking circles provide cross-promotions, so you’ll probably accumulate a lot of valuable backlinks to your blog.
3. Utilize social bookmarking sites. Write a great thought provoking post on your blog and submit it to sites like Digg.com or del.icio.us. There are hundreds of people who spend hours at these sites searching for good websites to check out. Your blog can get a surge of traffic through this strategic and viral sharing method.
4. Join a blogging community like Blog Explosion. This offers you a way of connecting with other bloggers who may do a review of your blog on theirs, which would help drive more traffic to your site.
Paid
1. Use advertising campaigns like Google AdWords. Place an ad on the search engine result pages and pay only when someone clicks on the link. Make sure you use the best keywords to get the ad noticed, so that you can drive more traffic to your blog.
2. Use text link advertising. Contact some of the more popular blogs in your niche and see if they would be willing to sell you some advertising space through text links. If the price is right, take the chance to have traffic driven to your site from theirs. Not all sites will be willing to do this, so keep trying different ones until you get one to say yes.
There are certainly more ways to accomplish effective advertising for your blog. You can market it the same way you would any other website online. The key is to keep costs down while maximizing your selling potential within the blog.