Open Forum: Discussion On How To Gain Blog Traffic

As someone who is interested in earning passive income and documenting and sharing this tremendous journey, I’m find myself juggling different skill sets. To earn money passively online, you have to be the type of person who is not afraid to dissect and test things. You have to become part programmer, part entrepreneur, part designer, part writer, and so on. One of the biggest challenges for me, at this point, is increasing the audience for Experiments In Passive Income. In this post, I will share with you the one main strategy that has worked for me and what other strategies I plan on testing. In fact, this open forum is a call for all of you out there to share your opinions on what I should do to gain readers.

Let’s first discuss the strategies that I will be tackling (or am thinking of!) to increase my blog traffic.

#1: Put Yourself Out THERE ->

You know, out “there”, meaning outside of your comfort zone. I always read online “if you declare your goals to your friends, family, or on your blog, you will hold yourself accountable and follow-through”. I always cringed when reading similar advice, but now I understand. I get it. (Be patient, I’m about to make a point here). When I suggest you put yourself out there, I actually am referring to guest blogging. When I think of guest blogging, I find myself having negative thoughts along these lines “What do you have to offer? You’re new to this!”, or better yet, the self-esteem killer thought, “Noone will want to read what you’re writing about!!” If I get past these thoughts somehow, then I worry about what topic(s) to focus on.

When you’re guest blogging, you’re putting yourself out there, in front of a whole new audience. You don’t know if they will like your material, hate it, or love it. But you know what? This is the world wide web for the love of [insert deity]! If people don’t like your content, more than likely they will ignore it. If they love it, oh look, you gained a few readers. Either way, you are putting your blog out there and getting some of that fine link juice back to your blog.

Again, as repetitive as this is, man up (or woman up!) and create guest posts. At the very least, you get a link back to your blog, and at the very best, you will gain a few more readers. Other benefits? It should help with your self-confidence and improve your writing, since you’ll be putting your best “out there”.

#2: Use that Twitter Thing?

I am going to be honest here: I am not sure how I can leverage Twitter to gain more readers to my blog. I have a very basic strategy here: network with people who are interested in what I’m talking about. How can I/you go about doing this? Start by networking with people whose content you read on a daily basis. What I have also done is check out the lists of these “gurus” of your field and start following their followers. This is probably not the best way to attract readers to your blog, since you don’t know if the people you are following will actually follow you back. How have you leveraged Twitter into gaining followers for your blog? We all know that people will follow you once you gain their trust, but what about in the very beginning? What has worked for you? I need your $0.02! Seems to be a catch-22.

#3: Should We Care About Facebook?

There was a really interesting article by Pat Flynnwhich discusses why Facebook is still a serious contender, which really was a revelation for me. In my opinion, nothing is more convenient than Twitter. Quick updates have made MySpace and Facebook obsolete to me, but apparently, that’s foolish thinking on my part.

What’s the next step? Create a fan page on Facebook? Do I really want to do that when I don’t have many readers? That seems a bit silly, but perhaps that is what makes the pros stand out. Let’s face it: impressions mean everything to a new reader. If I create a fan page, hopefully you all will join me there. If I have 10 regular readers and each one can get me one new reader (simply by exposing my blog by joining my fan page), then that’s twice the readers I have ended up with. Let’s not forget the domino effect: if the new readers can get me more of an audience and so on… hm, something to definitely think about! Might be a bit “easier” to take on than Twitter at the moment.

#4: Leave Comments On Other Blogs

Experiments In Passive Income is not even three months old yet. After I posted the first couple of articles, I did the only thing I knew how: leave comments on my favourite blogs. I left comments relating to the author’s post, adding value to their discussions, and asked them to drop by when they had any free time. This simple little investment seems to be paying off as I’m receiving a few comments on each post, which is remarkable (considering it’s only two months old). After I left these comments, the next two days were the worst: noone had left me a comment. Naturally, this led me to believe that my investment in leaving comments on other blogs had been a waste.

I am glad to say I couldn’t be more wrong. As you can see, I don’t get a lot of comments but I am consistently receiving a few on every post. It really helps knowing that someone out there is reading what I have to say; plus, the discussion is the fun part. I get new post ideas from these discussions as well as get to know my readers. In case this hasn’t been pointed out: please respond to your readers’ comments. It can add value to the discussion and will make your audience feel part of a community: your community.

By the way, this is the crown jewel of my blog traffic strategies. Seek like-minded individuals and connect with your peers; it’s the best way you can help your blog grow. In fact, starting this blog and discovering similar blogs is the best single thing I could have done on my journey. After interacting with these people and reading their stories, I have realized that these people are just like me. I am a few steps away from achieving my goals as they already have. It helps you to connect and is always a motivating factor.

My two minutes are up! Hopefully you’ve learned something from this post, and if you haven’t and know more about attracting readers to your blog, why not teach the rest of us a thing or two?

I would love to get some ideas here: what has worked for you? What strategy was a complete time waster? What single strategy has attracted herds of new readers to your blog?

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