Okay, you’ve finally decided to start your own blog. The blog has been installed, style sheets edited to fit your personality and you have been working tirelessly adding high-quality original content. Mission completed.

Now you just sit back and wait for the money to start rolling in right? Ummm… not quite. Sorry.

It’s a common misconception many new bloggers (and website owners in general) have. Create a nice looking site, add good content to it and magically, the search engines will spider your pages and visitors will appear.

The truth is, gaining traffic and readers can be hard work. Work you must complete if you want your blog to succeed. And since I am assuming you want to profit from your blog - you know, make money from it - you must be successful. So how do you increase traffic to your blog?

There are thousands of articles on the net regarding traffic and tips to bring more of it in, but here are tips I give my own clients (many who are working from home to make extra money) after installing a blog for them.

Make Technorati your new best friend
Head on over to www.technorati.com and register your blog. It’s free, takes only a few seconds and I personally consider it essential for bringing in free traffic to your blog.

Once your registration is complete, edit your profile with your personal and website details. Add a photo to your account.

Now, to fully optimize your Technorati experience, start utilizing Technorati Tags. I personally use Simpletags (for WordPress) but you can search for something else if you feel inclined to do so. I cover in more detail how using tags increases your traffic here, but basically tags allow you to categorize your posts with Technorati. Thus making them more likely to appear in searches for your tag keywords.

Visit like minded blogs and post comments
Again another free method to increasing your blog traffic, albeit more time consuming, is to simply read blogs.

Open up your favorite search engine or blog directory and start entering your own blogs keywords. Visit the blogs that appear in the top results. Read through their posts and make comments. No, not “my blog is better than yours come read it here” posts but useful comments relevant to their posts. Include a link to your blog at the end of your comment below your name. This invites not only the blog owner, but the blog readers as well, to visit your blog. Since your blog topic already interests them (and you’ve added such quality content to your blog), you may pick up new readers.

Important: You don’t want your posts to appear like Spam or they will never make it onto the blog. So use common sense when commenting.

Tip: If you followed my first step and implemented Technorati tags, this will be even easier for you to accomplish. Just click on your own tags after posting and blogs using the same or similar tags will show up.

Register your blog with Bloglog
This step is similar to the above, except it doesn’t require posting (although posting will double your exposure so consider doing double-duty with this one).

Even if you don’t recognize the name, if you have visited other blogs, you are probably familiar with Bloglog. Take a look on the right side of my blog under the Google Ads. It says “recent visitors” and then a bunch of pictures are displayed. These are all Bloglog users who have recently visited my blog. The idea here is that when visitors to my blog see their pictures, they will be curious as to what these users are blogging about and click on their name. Doing so will take them to that users profile where you can instantly view their blogs, join their community, network, etc.

After registering - it’s free - just add your blog and a photo and start visiting blogs. Your photo will appear in the visitor history on the blogs you visit. Leave a comment on the blogs you visit and you will have left your mark twice on a single blog. I actually receive quite a few visitors from Bloglog.

Continue adding quality content
This is the most important tip I give my clients. Continually add to your blog as often as possible.

This is especially true when you are starting out. Every day is ideal, but you should be posting at LEAST a few times a week (suppose I should listen to my own advice!). Take care to ensure the content you add is unique to your blog and reflects your personal personality.

Build a relationship with your readers
Engage your readers and invite them to leave comments or answer questions. Likewise, respond to the comments and questions they leave for you. It builds a sense of friendship and helps your readers feel like they know you.

When your readers like you and trust your opinion, they will be more inclined to listen to your product reviews and recommendations, buy your books, services, etc.

If you are new to blogging, I hope these steps get you started in the right direction. Hopefully if you have been blogging for awhile, you are already doing these and more to increase your blog readership.

It takes time, and it takes effort. But in my personal experience, blogging is not only fun but an “easy” way to make money online.

Gerae Lindsey

Tags: increasing blog traffic, blogging for money, finding blog readers, using Technorati, Technorati tags, Simpletags, Bloglog