Free traffic requires hard work
December 22nd, 2007
Free traffic with minimum effort is a fairy tale! In this 3 month of blogging, I’ve learned that free traffic requires hard work. And by this, I mean free traffic requires a lot of time to get it. Of course, there are many people and sites promising a large amount of traffic just by adding, for example, a widget in a sidebar. But this is crap. I fall in this trap at the beginning, with BlogRush. Despite its promises, it brings me 3 visits/month. Yay! A lot of visits 
I’ve tried different ways to bring to my blog free traffic. I’ll list here what I’ve tried with some good results.
1. StumbleUpon
It’s no doubt for everyone that StumbleUpon brings more free traffic for a site than anything else. Though, you should know that if you submit (discover) many pages from a single site/blog one after another (nobody knows the exact number), you fall under their anti-spam policy and the further pages from that site will not receive anymore traffic (well, maybe just 5-10 visits/day) even if you have many thumbs up. For this not going to happened, you must discover other sites/pages as well. In order to do that, you must have many friends/fans to stumble through their favorites and more topics to stumble through them.
Writing this article, I’ve searched why is so important to become a Top stumbler, but I cannot find something interesting. Maybe someone will enlighten me 
. Instead, I’ve found an article who explains why not to bother to become a Top stumbler: How to Become a Top StumbleUpon User (or Why You Really Shouldn’t Bother).
So, I think I’ll not bother to become a top stumbler, but submitting/discovering articles/sites, stumbling other articles/sites and making friends takes time.
For the last 30 days I had from StumbleUpon 3240 visits.
2. BlogCatalog
Even if I’ve sign up to BlogCatalog about 3 month ago, I’ve begin to use it recently. I find a little hard to use it. But it’s really a good source of free traffic. Let’s see why (though many of you probably know all this stuff):
- You can make as many friends you want. About 30-40% will visit your blog to see who you are and what are you writing about and add you as their friends as well.
- To those who added you as friend, you have the possibility to send a broadcast. What is this? Broadcasts allow you to unobtrusively send a mass message to all users who have added you to their BlogCatalog friends list.
So, let’s say you’ve added about 2000 friends (you can reach this number in about a week). About 600-800 of them will add you back as their friends. That’s mean, when you send a broadcast, 600-800 people will receive an email saying that you have posted a new broadcast. About 10% will visit your broadcast and then visit your blog. That’s mean 60-80 visitors. It doesn’t seams too much, but if you send a broadcast with every post you write, it means something.
Another way you can get free traffic is to participate to discussions. There are many groups where you can participate and become an active member.
So, it’s all about creating a big network and to become an active member. That’s requires some time.
For the last 30 days I had from BlogCatalog 500 visits.
3. MyBlogLog
I can’t say how many visits I’ve got from MyBlogLog. Or should I say, because of MyBlogLog. Many MyBlogLog Members have that widget installed, where they can see who visit their blog. Many of them are curious to see who the new visitors are and return the visit. In order to receive a significant amount of traffic from MyBlogLog members, you should visit as many blogs as you can. This takes time.
4. BloggingZoom
I’ve subscribed to BloggingZoom just 4 days ago but I like it until know. You can promote on BloggingZoom all your articles, without any limitations. You can vote for other articles and in exchange, many users will vote for yours. And visit your blog. You need time to vote all upcoming articles which you find interesting; in that way you will get more visits and more votes. You should try it. I’ve found many interesting articles in BloggingZoom.
I had 60 visits from BloggingZoom in 4 days.
5. DigitalPoint Forum
Forums are another source for free traffic. I’ve choose DigitalPoint because there are many members asking for help or answering to your question. So it easy enough to be active on DP. You can put your blog in signature and your last post name is also displayed. But you must be very active in order to receive traffic from DP, because there are many member, as you all know, all are posting something and your own posts are going away from the first page very quickly, and you are harder to be found. Posting often takes time.
I had about 70 visits from DP in the last month, though I wasn’t very active.
6. LinkReferral
I’ve wrote some time ago about Linkreferral as a source of free traffic for your blog. You must make 5 reviews/day, visit 30 blogs/day, 1 post in forum/day in order to increase the rank of your blog and increase its visibility. Many people will return the visit or the review. But this also takes some time.
I had about 200 visits from LinkReferral in the last month, though I wasn’t active at all.
7. Comments
Commenting in other blogs is another source of free traffic. Many people will return to your blog and leave a comment too. But, of course, this means you have to read many articles and to comment on them. And I talk about meaningful comment, not “it’s nice”, “interesting” etc. And this takes time.
You see, I’ve tried many methods to bring free traffic to my blog, but at one point, I felt overwhelming and depressed, because I thought I never handle all these. So I’ve decided to make a daily schedule. If I spend at least a half an hour for every method, it means up to 4 hours. And if I make this every day, I think I’ll bring a lot of traffic to my blog. And if I’ll write some good articles, maybe I can keep them.
So, I’ll ask you: what method do you use to bring free traffic to your blog? What do you like more? And how do you handle all these stuff? Because I think many of you have also a job/business, kids and daily obligations.
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Entry Filed under: Blogging
You’ll probly notice the widget on many bloggers now, but Entrecard has been bringing quite a lot of visitors. Many say its the next BlogExplosion, but it atleast works to bring in some new faces. It brought in about 30 visitors a day when I started, and I’m now getting around 70ish a day from it from people dropping off cards. You can also buy a 125×125 ad space, from sites like John Chow or Problogger with credits that you can earn for free.
I’m running a contest with the Entrecard credits, and its given me some links back, and a little buzz in traffic so its all good. While most people just stop by to drop a card there’s some that do stay and read. People with catchy post titles and such will do better than my default template blog I thinks. Anyways 800 visitors over 3 weeks ain’t too shabby for free traffic either
Mitch at Money News’s last blog post..Took a While, but I Finally Hit 20,000 World of Warcraft Gold
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I’ve seen Entrecard widget on some blogs but I haven’t time yet to study it. Though, I’ve read an article with some advice on how to make visitors from Entrecard to stay longer on a blog and not just to leave something.
About BlogExplosion: I’ve submitted my blog a while ago, it isn’t approved yet, still I’ve received 55 visits in a month from BE. I don’t know why
Hello Diana. U might want to try digg and reddit every now and then when you post interesting articles, especially that your blog is in English. All the best si un an nou fericit!
marius radu’s last blog post..Cum asa? Din senin!
I’ve tried them already, but I haven’t much traffic from them. Maybe for digg I haven’t the right articles, and for reddit I have no patience to try it more time. What it’s your experience with reddit? What amount of traffic it brings to you?
Sarbatori fericite si La multi ani!
well to be completely honest, i’ve only tried them a few times just to check them out. since my blog is not in english i only submitted films and pictures. digg brought me like 200/day per new article and like 50 more/week from the archives. on the other hand reddit brought me over 400 the first time(when for the same article digg only 200sthg) but since then not even one visit. i’ll try to change my redddit account since i cannot see the articles i submit as submitted in the “new” page of each category. anyway i’m not really interested in this kind of traffic since most of the visitors are one time only and since i don’t have any ads to be clicked on my page, but i need as many clicks as possible so my alexa rank will rise(that’s one of the things i’m interested in). All the best and <strong>carpe noctem!</strong>
marius radu’s last blog post..Cum asa? Din senin!
Diana,
for me, Facebook has been great to gain subscribers..he he sure Blogrush is a so so widget..the widget design is great thing, but only few refer to my blog.
The most traffic I get is from Deviantart, and the 2nd is BlogCatalog and 3rd traffic sources are coming from other sites which I’ve done link exchange with the site’s authors.
I think beside post title, you should consider how to put right keywords related to your post, and equiped your image with ‘alt’ tag so it become easily recognized by search engine like Google or Yahoo..traffic from search engines are worth to maintain also.
Cheers
A u d e e’s last blog post..How to Create Water Droplets in Photoshop
Interesting post and I’ve tried most of this methods, it’s hard but I have to say that it’s giving me some fun too
ive just remembered something. you can try this program to add your technorati fans. it works perfectly. all you have to do is run it and it will add as favorites all those who faved you. by the way, i’ve already added you.
marius radu’s last blog post..Super idee
EntreCard is working well for me. I’ve met some great bloggers and got some new RSS subscribers as well as steady traffic. You should give it a try sometime Diane.
AntiBarbie’s last blog post..The Downward Spiral
I have used most of the sites you mentioned with similar results.
One blog reading exchange that brings good numbers but more importantly is fun: Blog Explosion
Please use this link: http://www.blogexplosion.com/index.php?ref=paroshep
Cheers,
Michael Shepherd’s last blog post..Photos, Videos, YouTube
@marius: Hmmm, I’ve submitted several articles to reddit and I have none visitors from it. Though I saw many posts with a lot of votes. Probably I didn’t insist too much. Thanks for adding me, I will try that program too.
@Audee: I’ve subscribed Facebook too, but I didn’t work on it. Deviantart? I should try it. I should work harder on my SEO. I’ve wrote a Little SEO guide, but I didn’t follow always my own advice
@Virtual Millenium: Its fun, indeed, and I’ve found many interesting articles through them. But besides fun, I want some traffic, too, because I want to monetize my blog a little. I’m guilty of that
@AntiBarbie: Ok, I’ll definitely try it.
@Michael: Unfortunately, I’ve subscribed BlogExplosion 3 month ago. Just my blog wasn’t approved. I understood that there were some changes in the administration team. Though I’ve receive about 55 visits from BlogExplosion. I don’t know how
Hi Diana,
I have to say that above and beyond all the social networking sites you’ve mentioned, visiting and commenting on other blogs has brought me more traffic and subscribers than anything else.
I’m not very enthusiastic about using “broadcasts” in Blogcatalog or MyBlogLog, because I’ve had to turn off my notifications because of being bombarded with email notices of another……broadcast. The worst ones are people who broadcast and leave you a message saying “thanks for stopping by my blog” when I have never, ever…been to their site. Now I will most definitely NOT ever visit their site.
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Thanks for mentioning us. Happy holidays from Blogging Zoom.
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More information on traffiking and I will also try the entrecard.
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[...] I have joined Entrecard about 2 weeks ago, and I must give some credits for that to Antibarbie, because I’ve joined after her comment on my article Free traffic requires hard work. [...]
See this is an old blog post, but still very relevant - the holy grail of the web, building traffic especially relevant traffic!
For me the obsession with traffic for my sites has been an obsession about making money (or not as the case has been)
Without doubt I wanted to increase traffic to my sites, hoping that increased traffic would result in increased sales/subscriptions! However as you mentioned trying to bring traffic in through the grapevine is hard work! The most I achieved (I think) was about 3,000 visitors in one month - this turned into a large number of 2 sales, I didn’t spend days trying to get traffic, but I still put some serious hours into it, all in all it failed.
I kind of see the web today as a vicious circle of failure for a lot of us.
1. You need traffic in order to monetize your site
2. You need to spend some serious time trying to get your name out there, hoping for traffic to arrive
3. You need to build significant backlinks in order for search engines to give you some love
4. You need to build great content in order to get people coming to your site…
however you also need part 3 in order for search engines to take notice of your site, which in turn requires part 2, because promoting your site should reflect in an increased amount of links pointing back to your site which brings us back to point 1 - needing traffic to monetize your site?
So obviously if you are spending some serious hours promoting your site and trying to achieve great backlinks, what time do you have to write decent content and spend time looking at your stats to identify key areas and improved weaknesses, let alone keyword research?
Good post though - I was then looking to start back with Link Referral, if only to use it to gain some website feedback