Generating traffic to blogs - A Newbie Primer

Early Friday morning. Settling in at my home office with the first cup of coffee (Tim Horton's http://www.timhortons.com/ made with an authentic Bunn machine http://www.bunnomatic.com/).

OK, enough with the links...

Read the online newspapers.

Checked the weather: cold and more snow.

Checked in with Adsense once again to see what traffic happened overnight on my blogs. I am obsessed with this. Do it multiple times each day.

Wow! Pleasantly surprised to see that the # of unique visitors running significantly ahead of where I hoped to be. Hmmm...

To be perfectly honest, I started blogging last October with a couple of things in mind. First, I wanted and needed an outlet for my writing. This I have done in spades and have covered business, running and driving. Stories about the off-beat experiences I have observed and participated in: http://mykalsreport.blogspot.com/. I organized my previous three blogs into this one site to consolidate my work. Seems to be working.

Second, I wanted to make money from blogging. I signed up with Google's Adsense https://www.google.com/adsense from the beginning and have been experimenting with ad placement, sizes, type etc. continuously. I have daily goals for traffic and have a goal for the end of 2010 to be earning significant dollars from these blogs.

And the good news (that is shared below) is that I am on track!

Enough self congratulation though. Here are the steps I have taken to get to this point:

1. Hard work. Slogging daily through the various social marketing networks, setting up profiles on endless web sites and blogs. Signing up to receive endless newsletters.
2. Go back to the ones that work for me and update them every time I post new material
3. Twitter (http://twitter.com/). Follow me at Chris_Morales. I post an update with a link to the blog I am promoting every time I post new material.
4. Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/. A number of things here. Update my profile of course with the new post and blog URL. Then post the same update in one or more of the relevant groups. If I have story on driving, I post in the driving groups I belong to. Same for the running or business posts.
5. Send emails to 30 or so contacts/friends. So far they have put up with my intrusion :)
6. Linkedin (http://www.linkedin.com/). More subtle here. I post a discussion only in the relevant groups I belong to.
7. Tribal Running (http://www.tribalrunning.net/). Recently joined this group. Not many members yet, but all seem dedicated to making the site work. Like it. Have received great response from the posts. An interesting note: I was prompted to join this group because of a connection I made in a Linkedin group, 'Running in Business'.

That summarizes the basic plan for me on promoting my work. The key is connections (dun!). And doing it honestly: I approach most new situations by asking permission for my post. So far the community has welcomed me. It has been a positive experience.

Stay tuned..