I wrote a list of 101 ways to get traffic to your blog a while back. I decided to narrow that list down to the ten best ways I have found to get traffic to my blogs.

1. SEO

Without a doubt SEO has been my favorite way to get traffic to my blogs. The Google algorithm loves blogs, which makes SEO a very good way to get traffic to your blog.

2. Commenting

Leaving comments on blogs in related niches is a great way to get new targeted traffic to your blog. It is also an excellent way to build relationships with other bloggers which leads me to number 3…

3. Networking

Networking is possibly the single most important skill for making big money online. It is also a great way to build traffic to your blog.

4. Word of Mouth

Simply tell your friends and family about your blog and/or specific posts on your blog. You will be surprised by how much traffic that can generate.

5. Linkbait

Create posts that are designed to grab people’s attention. Controversial posts are often associated with linkbait, but there are plenty of other ways to create linkbait. 101 lists make for good linkbait and so do posts that are out of the ordinary in some way.

6. Link Out

Link liberally to other blogs in your posts. Many bloggers keep track of incoming links to their blog and will come check out your blog when you link to them. This can also help you get comments.

7. Stumbleupon/Digg

am a big fan of using stumbleupon for getting traffic to your blog. If you haven’t signed up for it you should. Stumbleupon is this blogs third best traffic source, behind retuning visitors, and Google.

8. List Posts

I have found that posts with lists (like this one) generate more traffic to your blog. They tend to get bookmarked and voted on more on social sites. The more list posts you write the more traffic you will get.

9. Blog Meme

Create a blog meme and tag other bloggers. Participating in blog memes has definitely increased my blog traffic. One blog meme in particular really helped this blog out and I never even participated in it.

10. Quality Content

Quality content is the key to keep people coming back for more. If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will come back regularly to read your posts. Having regular readers is a great way to increase blog traffic.

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This seems to be asked daily, how do I choose the right niche for my blog? And once you pick you're niche, you're probably wondering "How do I get more traffic"?

The first step to get solid traffic to your blog is to choose the right niche.

There is no surefire way to pick a profitable niche. Even professional bloggers admit that they sometimes choose a niche that doesn’t get enough traffic or make enough money to make it worthwhile. So don’t worry if the first blog you start flops. Just try again. Perserverance is the key to success.

Here are 7 simple steps to choosing a niche that is right for you:

1. Make A List Of Your Passions

Write down all the things you are passionate about. If you aren’t passionate about the topic you write about, it will show! Passion is one of the biggest keys to keeping people interested in your blog (yourself included). This is the most important step in choosing a niche. If you don’t follow any of the other steps in this post, make sure you write about something you are passionate about.

Here is an Example List of Passions

1. Video Games

2. Photography

3. Internet Marketing

4. American Idol

5. Reality TV

6. Politics

7. Software Development

2. Make A List Of Things You Do Well

Write down all the things you do well. It is advisable to ask other people for input on this. Find out what other people think you are good at. They might mention things you haven’t thought of. You might also show the final list to your friends and family to get further input on the list.

An example list of things you do well:

1. Video Games

2. Cooking

3. Photography

4. Teaching

5. Sailing

3. Merge The First Two Lists

Take the lists you made in steps 1 and 2. Write down all the things that are in both list 1 and list 2. This will give you a good idea of things you can blog about as an expert. However, you don’t have to be an expert to blog about something. If you are really passionate about something, but aren’t good at it or are just learning about it, you can still blog about that topic from the perspective of someone trying to improve in that area.

4. Choose Your Favorite 3-5 Niches

Out of the list you compiled from step 3 (above), which ones are you MOST interested in blogging about? It doesn’t matter if other people write about it. It doesn’t matter if it’s extremely competitive. Just write down the top 3-5 things that YOU want to blog about. It’s okay if you are down to 1 niche at this point, but 3-5 would be better.

NOTE: At this point you have at least one niche you could start writing about. However, if you want to make money from your blog, you need to do more research.

5. Determine The Traffic Potential

There are a lot of ways to do keyword research and determine the traffic potential for a niche. To simplify things, you aren’t going to worry about competition, you are only going to concern yourself with demand.

Go the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool (which seems to be working again). Type in the primary keyword(s) for the niches you selected in step 4. Then you will come up with a list of keyword phrases and their search numbers for last month on Yahoo owned Search Engines.

Note: If Overture doesn’t work, try the free wordtracker keyword tool.

In my opinion, you really want to see more than 10,000 searches a month on Overture for the main keyword, otherwise it’s going to be really hard to get decent traffic to your blog.

On the contrary, you don't want to choose a niche that is oversaturated, meaning there is already thousands of other sites with the same content.

6. Determine The Blog’s Money Making Potential

Common sense might suggest to you that there are products to be sold to people looking for each of the things in our example, but is there a way to be sure?

Here is a quick and easy method you can use to help determine a blog’s money making potential. Go to Google or Yahoo and do a search for your primary keywords. The more advertisers you see paying for sponsored results (PPC) the better. If you don’t see anyone bidding on those keywords then it may be more difficult to monetize your blog but not necessarily impossible.

The sponsored results are the ads that show on Google and Yahoo at the very top and the right hand side of the Search Engine results, under the title “Sponsored Links” on Google and “Sponsor Results” on Yahoo.

7. Make Sure You Have Time For The Niche

Is the topic so broad that you just don’t have time to blog about it yourself?

For instance, if you choose basketball as your niche, do you really have enough time to cover ALL basketball news on your blog? If not, then you either need to:

A. Start a group blog with enough other people to cover the topic.

B. Narrow the focus of your blog. In our example, maybe basketball is too broad for you to cover. If so, you might choose to cover your favorite basketball team or write about funny basketball moments, etc.

There you have it, 7 steps to choosing a niche for your blog.

Making Money Online used to require you to have your own web site, products to sell, and some marketing experience or savvyness, but a new generation of dot-coms have arisen that will pay you for what you know and who you know without you having to be a web designer or a marketing genius.

But often it's hard to tell hype from the real deal. I did a search for "make money online" and "making money online", and much of the information I found out there is just promoting various infoproducts, mostly about Internet marketing. This is the vary reason I decided to create this guide, so everyone has a chance at making money online.

This Article Will Introduce You To Legitimate Companies that Offer Business Opportunities That:

- Pay Cash, Not Points Towards Rewards
- Doesn't Require You To Own A Web-Domain or Your Own Products
- Doesn't Involve Any Hard-Selling
- Yield A High Return for Your Time Investment

Getting Started
Many of us (myself included) start our quest to make money online by reading about it online. You will read about SEO, Internet marketing, making money on eBay, making money with affiliate marketing, and anything else you can find to help you make money online, but how do you know what is the real-deal?

There are hundreds of ways of person can earn money through the Internet, but too a beginner it may be a little confusing. Whether you want to make a few extra bucks or whether you want to generate a comfortable income there are ways. Here are some things you can do to make money online.

In My Experience, These Are The Best Ways To Make Money Online.

1 - Affiliate Programs: The very first thing you should to do is sign up with 1 or two affiliate programs. Such as Clickbank and Commission Junction. As an affiliate you will be promoting other peoples products online and you will receive a set commission (usually around $14-$25). You will then need to find ways of driving traffic to your affiliate pages. If you can get enough people to the sales page then you will get a sale.

Usually for every 200 people that see the page, 1 of them will buy. So as an estimate for every 1000 people you refer to the page 5 of them will buy, and if your making $20 commission then that's $100. There are many different ways you can drive traffic to your affiliate page. Here are some ideas

2 - Bum marketing: is essentially a form of "niche marketing". The theory revolves around search engine optimization (ranking high in google) for articles that include your affiliate link. What you would do is research keywords on sites like Wordtracker that get a decent amount of searches per day, but that don't have that many results (typically under 50,000 when using quotes). After this you would head over to Clickbank and find a product to sell that matches the key phrase / niche. Make sure the product is appealing to your audience.

Then you would write a short 400-600 word article and include the keyword or key-phrase in your title and a few random times through out the body. You would also include a link to your affiliate product at the end of the article. If you submit it to popular article sites like GoArticles, Digg, or Reddit, then there is a good chance that Google will index the your article and include it within the top results for the key-phrase you selected. Once this happens people will click on your article through Google and hopefully some of them will click on your affiliate link and buy your product. Remember, the more people that see your site, the more sales you are likely to achieve.

3 - Blogging: If you've been on the Internet for any short length of time then chances are you know what a blog is. Blogging can be a great way of generating income and a great way to sell affiliate products. There are many different ways of earning money through blogging, and affiliate sales are only one of them. This method takes a little longer than the "Bum Marketing" method, but it pays off nicely over time.

All you have to do is pick a topic that your interested and start writing about it. You can use free blog services, such as Blogger. Once you have a topic (Such as celebrities, horses, cars, etc) all you have to do is start writing away! Once the search engines index your site you will start receiving visitors. In order to make money at this you would need to promote affiliate products in some of the articles you right.

You can also set up Google Adsense which pays your every time someone clicks a link. I highly recommend using Google Adsense on any blog you are writing, sites such as Blogger allow you to incorporate Adsense without ANY html experience, which is great for beginners!

That's it for now, I'll be writing some more detailed articles soon so check back!