On my celeb blog I had over 111,000 unique visitors last month (December) and someone asked how I did this. The easy answer is to go on about keywords and content but I don't want to cover old ground. Instead here are a few other things I have used to get visitors.My main referrers are the search engines but the following have contributed in a smaller way. I can't promise that they will work for you. All I can give are the stats so you can see what they produced for my celeb blog. There are no guarantees in blogging!
Mahalo.com - December 557 referrals
I suppose this is cheating in a way because it's another search engine but with a difference. In their own words:
"Mahalo is a human-powered search engine that creates organized, comprehensive, and spam free search results for the most popular search terms. Our search results only include great links."Looks like I must have some great links! With Mahalo it's also possible to make a little cash as well by creating search result pages - see their Greenhouse for info - yes Greenhouse!
Technorati - December 330 referrals.
Actually I usually get more referrals than this from Technorati. I'm sure nearly everyone will be involved with Technorati but if you aren't - join.
I had a slight fall out with them as they blacklisted Mikes Money Making Mission for quite a while, and no idea why. At last I've got it reinstated but have lost a lot of my 'authority' unfortunately - it has almost halved. Despite this I think it's necessary for bloggers to be on Technorati.
Zimbio - December 174 referrals
This doesn't work so good for MMMM but it does okay for my celeb posts. It's all quite simple: submit your blog and your posts will be entered onto appropriate wikizines if there are any - or you can start your own.
All I have ever really done with Zimbio is join and let everything take care of itself.
Wikipedia - December 138 referrals
I guess most of us use Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, for reference. What I've managed to do is get my blog listed on a couple of popular pages as a 'Reference' and an 'External Link'. These are at the foot of most Wikipedia pages and seem to produce referrals.
I'll leave the suggestions there. It's really all about trying different ways to attract traffic. Some will work and some won't - but if we don't have a go we won't get anywhere.
The above produced 1199 referrals. Now if you have a dozen such ideas, along with the power of the search engines and other bloggers' links, traffic starts to build nicely.
And, of course, referrals = making money
Good luck,
Mike.
