Increasing Traffic on your Blog

In honor of the 9,000th visitor to Saving Some Green today (woo hoo!), I decided to share some ideas with my fellow newbie bloggers about how to get visits your blog. While this blogging thing is mainly just a fun outlet for me, there is a bit of money to be made with it (notice the ads in the margins)! Chances are you won't get rich, but it helps to actually have people visiting your blog. The networking part of blogging is so fun too!

Getting visits to your blog isn't like Field of Dreams (if you build it they will come) (am I showing my age here?). It's more like my version - if you build it and share it they will come! Here are just a few of the things I do/have done to increase my blog traffic:

Tell your friends! Tell everyone you know about your blog. They will look at it out of obligation, but will hopefully stay because they like to read it. If they really like it they will tell their friends, who will tell their friends, etc., etc., etc!

Leave comments on other blogs! Don't lurk! Make yourself known. Chances are the readers of the other blog and the blog owner will check out your profile, then check out your blog. If they like it, they will visit again - maybe bookmark it - maybe subscribe. You never know!

Participate in other blog's Mr. Linky post events. This is where another blog hosts a weekly event such as The Centsible Sawyer's Drugstore Divas where they post something then offer readers to post something similar IF they leave a link on their blog back to the original event post. This is a win-win for both the host and the blogger. I regularly participate in The Grocery Cart Challenge's Recipe Swap and Rocks in my Dryer's Works for me Wednesday.

Host a giveaway! Everyone loves FREE stuff and everyone loves winning stuff. Why not host a giveaway on your blog? Money Saving Mom has a weekly post called Giveaways Galore where you can post a giveaway. She has a lot of regular readers (myself included!) and they all love a giveaway (myself included!). There are other blogs out there that also host giveaway Mr. Linky's. One thing that has also been successful for me is to offer a 2nd entry in the giveaway if the person posts about my giveaway on their blog - this ensures traffic from their readers as well.

I'm sure there are many more things that you can do to increase the traffic on your blog, but these are the things that have really helped me since I started Saving Some Green at the end of July. The important thing is to do what works for you!

Look for some upcoming posts about how to earn some money while blogging and how to find time for blogging in your busy schedule!