So I have a topic here on how I should go about getting traffic. Most people pipe up and say the following things:

Comment on other blogs and leave a link to your site
Post to Social Bookmarking and Networking sites

Quotes from people here:

Leave your url on most other blogs as possible.
Submit to search engines
Join social networking sites

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try forum posting with your signature

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One tip which I knew that a lot of others may not is this:

"Read blogs to write blogs!"

I go around to the "TOP" blogs and even the little guys and see what works and what does not. See how they type and what content gets a lot of comments and just what content the big guys post on their site.

I monitor my traffic with STATCOUNTER and it tells where the traffic is coming from. I have posted comments on other blogs quite a few infact and guess how many hits I have got from the blog posts? Around 10 if that.

I spent a lot of time for just 10 hits. Its pitiful. Plus in case you all did not know the links are useless on the blogs for SEO or whatever as they are NO FOLLOW links! At least on almost all the blogs.

So search engines wont give you any higher rankings no matter how many links you have on those PR5 or greater blog posts.

The next thing I want to discuss is the links in your signature in forums such as this. According to my counter I have only got 4 hits from this site and 3 or so from another site I post on regularly.

So its not very good.

And now social bookmarking,networking and media sites.

Stumbleupon,digg,mixx,propeller and stubbit I have tried.

I have over 90 mutual friends on stumbleupon and unless 50 rate up your content withing a certain amount of time you wont get much more hits than the friends themselves. And you know what else is so bad about this? Stumbleupon makes you send to each one one by one. It takes a while and you after you get so many friends have to scroll each time to get to the bottom of the list.

When they do help you I get on Average of 300 hits or less according to the blog post and how many rate it up. It does not always take 50 thumbs up but it sure helps.

I have heard of people getting 20k or more hits over a period of days or weeks on a article but I have yet to see it since I have joined the site.

Plus the traffic DOES NOT CLICK ads and as of yet has yet to link to my blog or come back on their own that I know of.

Maybe if you had a good article it might would get linked to and take off but the traffic does not click ads so dont expect it to do anything but run your traffic counter up. Numbers on my adsense account is what I want not my counter. I want quality traffic and stumbleupon has yet to give me much. I am sure it has helped people know my site is out there and exists so I cant say its all bad. What I am saying is dont rely on it for your only traffic or you will have to always force your friends to come back to your site and you wont make any money.

Oh one more thing about stumbleupon. The people according to my counter 90% or so come on go in 15 seconds or less. It says its a crude form of measurement but it gives a idea.

I tried digg and the other sites on my list and its the same way. Digg does provide more links to your site but its hard to get to the homepage with all but a super great blog post.

Digg also provides a LOT of spam.

Diggers dont click ads either I was told. Also being in the upcoming section provides little hits in my first test with a blog post so you really have to force it to the homepage with friends which is sad.

Mixx does not give hardly any traffic but the good thing about MIXX is mainly its ability for its links to be "FOLLOWED" by search engines unlike digg and stumbleupon. Its traffic is growing but dont expect to get much and people just are not active so it takes a bucket load of friends to get anywhere.

Propeller sends next to no traffic but may also have a follow style link. Propeller also takes too long to send to your friends as its sharing system stinks.

Stubbit is a new site and I have not tried it with my blog but with my videos. It did not help much so I am not sure what to say about it but its a small site even smaller than mixx so I dont expect much from it for now.

Up next is where somebody said submit the site to search engines.
If you read a bit some say dont do this:
http://www.google.com/search?q=dont+...L_enUS208US209

Get your links out and the top search engines will find YOU all by themselves.
Most use Google,Yahoo and Microsoft anyways so the little traffic you get from those thousands of other engines will be very small. How many people do you know that dont use google or yahoo?


So this has been what I have learned from my time with a site this past 1.5 months or so.

I have made close to 2 bucks though! Yay but I dont expect to make much for a while anyways I just want a little traffic.

So from what you have read I hope you have learned something.

Now any other tips for a new blogger to get the word out?

BRAVO! Atlast someone on internet can say the RIGHT and WRONG.

Don't get the tips , but all i can say "you said exactly what i'm dealing with"

Yeah and it looks like nobody has anything else to say all the sudden. I wish I could talk to some people who actually make money with a blog or at the lest get most of their traffic not from social media sites and who get at least 10000 hits a month.

I haven't checked my stats in months. Last time I looked, it was about 15,000 unique visitors a month, according to awstats. Stumble was typically one of the higher volume referrers. What most web people would call the quality of that traffic fluctuates a lot. If you have a look at my blog, you'll see why it's been slightly popular on Stumble; if you look around the social media sites, you'll see why it's more popular on Stumble than on Digg.

Part of the reason it's managed to spread at all through social media web sites, is that I don't have any ads and I'm not selling anything. You've noticed people from all of these places don't click ads; they aren't there to shop. People come to Facebook to connect with old friends from school, Twitter to tell everybody about the pasta they're dining on, and Stumble to channel surf the web, finding odd and funny pages.

I think I can guess why Stumble makes you send a page to one person at a time ... chances are all of your friends have different taste; blankets shouldn't cover everybody. You might want somebody to visit a page because you have an interest in it being seen, or because you know that person will appreciate that page. They only want the second option going through their system.

Social media can be really good for hobbies. Musicians on MySpace, etc. I've done ok by showing unusual, and good photography. If you're approaching this from an seo standpoint, it's exactly the same as link bait. Give people something interesting, that doesn't cost them a penny, that they aren't wasting their time to look at if they don't spend a penny, and you'll get out the gate.

Thanks for the wonderful and very informative post, im amazed by what you said..

You've made some good observations in a short period of time. I've got a blog that gets about 60k unique visitors/month, and I have experience doing each of the techniques you described. I agree with your analysis of each of them.

The one thing I didn't see you address is content. The overall success of each of the tactics you described -- from social networking to link building -- depends on the content you provide. Good or more compelling content gets more visits/clicks/links than junk content does.

Use your statcounter and identify your posts that received the best response to your traffic building efforts. Try to see what you did correctly in those posts that made them more popular than your other stuff. Pay particular attention (from my experience) to the title, the lead (the first paragraph) and the image or picture that appears above the fold (the top picture in the post).

A few things I've learned about content:

1) The title is the most important part of your post
2) The top image and your overall blog design are vitally important
3) Use big pictures/images
4) Organize your writing with <h> tags, blockquotes and lists
5) Check your spelling
6) Post at least once/day

Hey cowsgonemad you write well and express yourself good. Have you been writing articles and submitting them everywhere? ABC News Discovery channel, sundance channel, test try a few news releases and play on the readers sediments. Good Pluck Just keep trying until you find your niche.