Originally Posted by jaymondo

A good software program I use is Blog-blaster... its around 45.00 but you can pick your niche, write an artical, and send it out to millions.

www blog-blast com

Sounds interesting... How are the articles sent? By e-mail? Does it send just the url?

Anything with the word blast might be taken with a grain of salt. I am sorry, but that is just a fact of life. If you don't want to get Google and other search engines ban you, then avoid using any blackhat techniques.

Well, in blasting blog comments, the effect may not be that destructive but still that is not ethical..

I have to agree that the best way to gain traffic is to really focus on both producing quality content that's unique to your site and participating in the blogosphere by reading other weblogs and adding, smart, thoughtful, informative comments.

I also have a weekly blog insider tips newsletter that I send out and you're all invited to sign up - it's free - and see some of my approaches and techniques: Blogsmart News

Originally Posted by Dave Taylor

I have to agree that the best way to gain traffic is to really focus on both producing quality content that's unique to your site and participating in the blogosphere by reading other weblogs and adding, smart, thoughtful, informative comments.

I also have a weekly blog insider tips newsletter that I send out and you're all invited to sign up - it's free - and see some of my approaches and techniques: Blogsmart News

Once again thanks for the link Dave.

adwords ?

Originally Posted by bodrick

I've been using Blog Exchanges, and they don't always work. I wrote a post on my blog detailing this, but basically the traffic is not targeted, so you get all sorts of folk reading your blog, but maybe only 1% of them are actually interested and may come back.

Example for me is last Saturday my "credits" ran out, I received no traffic at all that day where the day before I got over 50 uniques, and had that sort of traffic for a few days. It was clearly obvious that the hits I was getting where just thanks to the exchange and no one was interested.

From my observations, they work when your blog is very new, but the better way to drive traffic is through other means, i.e commenting on other blogs is a good way, or by posting on forums, or by using postbacks on articles on other blogs.

That depends on what type of blog you are currently writing. There are a blog I've seen from Blog Exchange (a.k.a BlogExplosion) which have consistent 5 comments per post (including me) and I've even subscribe to his/her feed thanks for his hilarious post. (it's not business blog, it just a personal blog). That's from what I've seen.

Thanks for the link! I am new to blogging and right now focusing on advertising my blog through link exchanges

Originally Posted by Hex

I am new to blogging, just launched mine. I was wondering some tips on how to advertise your blog? Right now I am just looking to do some link exchanging. I dont know if I would ever buy paid advertising for a personal blog tho. Any thoughts?

Hi Hex, I covered some tactics recently (I'd prefer to link to, rather than repeat what I said ..) so have a look.

hxxp://workboxers.com/2006/08/21/developing-traffic-revised/

and scrivs wrote a brilliant article a good while back, but worth checking out as well.
hxxp://workboxers.com/2004/08/11/developing-traffic/

I had some luck driving traffic to my blog via a group writing project on problogger.net, and I have read good things about some blog carnivals. There is a huge list of them at blogcarnival.com.