Whats the best way to "Grow" one's blog?

[GaryJay]

I only started blogging last april, first of courswe mainly with family and a few close friends, but more and more reaching out to the bloggosphere. I am of the philosophy that "Rome wasn't built in a day", and neither is a personal blog. I am pleased that slowly but methodically my readership is growing.

I am curious to hear how others have gone about growing your traffic, and what you feel is a good methodology to follow.

Gary (old dude)
ThreeScorePlusTen

[petercasier]

Gary, it depends what your goals are. Are you aiming at traffic, or aiming to 'just keep on writing, and if "they" like it, the better'.

It seems you are interested in more traffic. So you are asking the 1 million dollar question for bloggers...

My 5 cents:
- write good and original contents
- write good and original contents (again)
- social bookmarking (addthis.com)
- networking with other bloggers, build a community
- ensure there are more links towards your blog, so your pagerank goes up (which mostly goes with writing good and original contents, but also with social bookmarking). The higher the pagerank, the more googlers you will get. Of those 'discovering' your blog via google, gather maybe 1% will become regular visitors, if your contents is good and original.

Peter

The Road to the Horizon
About being a serial expat, addicted traveller and passionate aid worker.

[ghing]

@gary - the tips that peter gave are some of the ways that I also do in growing my blogs traffic..
and btw, why don't you add a sig for your site's url to appear below your every posts without adding it over and over again in your every post. as you have checked you other post I think one of the mod deleted your url..

@peter - pls. avoid adding your url on your every post as what I have said on the other thread where you leave a comment.. wait till you become an established member..

[GaryJay]

I like to thing I write orignial material, but yes I will make reference to other blogs or articles and link to them to add to my own remarks, is it good material, not sure I know ---pretty damn sure my weak grasp of punctuation and grammar per se leaves my writings pretty sad, but then I expect my readers are there to read the essense of my remarks not check my spelling and punctuation. have you checked my blog---was it anything you would come back and read more of?----(lol)

Gary (old dude)

http://threescoreplusten.blogspot.com/thumbs up

[petercasier]

Your blog reads easily, Gary.

(apart from the fact that I am not too interested in US politics. )

[petercasier]

Originally Posted by ghing

@peter - pls. avoid adding your url on your every post as what I have said on the other thread where you leave a comment.. wait till you become an established member..

Ooops sorry, did not know this house rule!

Peter

[mjclementz]

I'm currently advertising with Google which may or may not help you depending on your subjects. If your blog is just based on your general thoughts and not a particular focus you won't get much out of a text ad. On the other hand, if you have something like a sports blog (like me) you can get a good amount of new directed traffic this way. It's fairly affordable too.

[GaryJay]

Mjclementz:---affordable?? cost nothing to use adsense?

[petercasier]

Originally Posted by GaryJay

cost nothing to use adsense?

Adsense is for free.

Peter.

[Nathan]

I think that one of the best ways to grow a blog is to sign up with Entrecard. Entrecard's online ad sharing service gave me most of my traffic.

I now have about 100-120 visitors a day thanks to a reasonably good Google page ranking and entrecard's traffic.