Readers ask me all the time about ways to increase traffic.  They see the success of a few of my sites and they believe that there is some secret to getting traffic that I’m not sharing.  They want to know what I do to rank high on keywords within Google, whether I pay for advertising and how much time I spent marketing my blog.

To those readers, I often tell them that the secret to traffic building is time.  There are many things you can do to increase traffic, but all of those things take time to build.  Sure you can write a killer article that gets to the front page of digg and end up receiving few thousand uniques a day for a while, but that traffic is short lived and not sustainable.

In order to increase traffic for the long term, we should look at how people come to our site: direct traffic, referral traffic and search traffic.

Direct Traffic
This category consist of readers that regularly come to your blog, the ones that regularly comment on your post, people who you know and generally everyone that remembers your brand.  It could be someone typing in your domain name in the address bar, the ones that have bookmarked your site or even those that have your page as their homepage.

In order to increase this type of traffic, it requires quality content that people value and creative branding to help readers remember you.  At first, a casual reader might read a good article from your blog and not come back, but if he/she comes across your blog and reads articles on your blog again and again, that person will become a subscriber and keep coming back for more.

Referral Traffic
These type of traffic is the best and often the most satisfying to receive.  Having other bloggers link to your posts is like others telling you that your article is one that they believe their readers will find interesting.  Links on other sites will also helps you reach new readers because it spreads the word of your brand out to different people.

Unless you are very famous or you have major advertising budget, you won’t get much referral traffic at the beginning as it takes time for other bloggers to remember coming to your site.  It takes time to build your network and it takes even more time for people to link to your articles.

The key is not lose patience in the beginning and keep writing good articles. Eventually, others will notice your great articles and links will flow to your blog.

Search Traffic
This is the area that everyone seems to spend the most time optimizing when time is actually the best optimizer.  Since a search engine’s existence is to bring qualified pages to a search term, blog content eventually will rank high because we write blog content day in and day out on one particular subject.

Search engine’s ranking are complicated but it is somewhat based on:

1. Other sources of traffic
2. Number of links to that particular blog and article
3. How long those links existed
4. How long the blog has been in existence within the search engine

Most of the factors affecting keyword rankings like the ones mentioned above are directly or indirectly time dependent.  There is no way to gain an incredible amount of inbound links naturally in a short amount of time (search engine’s actually flag your site if it happens), and unless you can manually manipulate the search engine’s ranking formula, there is no way to increase the time those links or your blog has been in existence.

Final Thoughts
You will always see some sites having a ton of visitors from day one, but if you are just starting out and don’t have the means of those people (connections, budget etc), you need to keep writing quality content. Instead of being impatient, have confidence that people will take notice the great content that you are writing.  As they often say “If you build it, they will come”.

As a blogger, we often feel compelled to put up a new post .  After all, many popular blogs are updated daily (some even update a few times a day).  Those bloggers seem to be able to churn out great article after article and if we want to be like them, we better mimic that behavior.  Sorry to break the news to you but don’t do that.  Stop writing unless you’ve got something to share.

Often, we stare at the screen thinking about what we want to write.  Sometimes, the words just come out and we type and type and type, sounding natural, personal and energetic.  There are those other times though that all we end up doing is stare, feeling awkward, useless and hopeless.  Normally, we continue to stare but seldom does the situation turn around because we feel even worst as time passes and the cursor is blinking at the same spot.

Don’t worry if this happens next time.  Known widely as the writer’s block, this phenomenon is very natural and happens to just about everyone.  It just means you feel uninspired at the moment and it definitely doesn’t mean you are bad at writing.  What you really need is to take a rest and not stare at the monitor.  So whenever it happens to you again, go take a walk, see a movie or get a cup of coffee at Starbucks.  Get away from your environment and your creative juices will be flowing once again.

The worst thing you can do is post on your blog just for the heck of writing.  Your blog represent your image, and unfortunately (and fortunately), content are archived for others to search.  Once you write a piece of bad content, it tends to turn readers away from your blog.

If you take away any advice from any blogger, it is this: Do not write unless you have something useful to write about. Only post quality content, and you will realize the benefits in the long run.

Some of my friends in the blogsphere are starting to believe that subscribers to their blogs are meaningless.  These readers rarely come to their site and when they do, they never click on ads that are present on their blogs.  They feel that although these readers read their content, they rarely give back.  I couldn’t disagree more.

Readers, whether they are subscribers or causal readers that type in busyblogging.com in the browser is the foundation of my blog.  These people not only give me energy to write, they also motivate and encourage me to continue doing this.

Sure, the income is nice but the main reason why I’m passionate about writing my blogs is because of my readers.

These readers comment on my posts and share their ideas for me to learn from.  They email me and allow me to help them and they share their success stories to let me know that what I’m writing about actually helps people.  What’s not to like about these readers?

Without readers, a blog is lifeless.  I’m sure we all remember the good old days when our blogs never get any visitors, the days when every post we write have 0 comments, and the same days that we spend so much time but feel like we are talking to ourselves.  We don’t miss those days, I certainly don’t.

To hear people say that a subscriber is meaningless hurts me.  It shows that the blogger is not really passionate about blogging.  All I can say to that is “good luck”.

I would go to great lengths to gain readership.   Personally, there is nothing more satisfying than seeing my subscriber count going up, to see more comments on my post and to interact and know more readers and fellow bloggers.

To me, that’s the core of what a blog is - to interact and share ideas with others.   This is the best part about doing and I love every minute of it.

Thank you for being a reader.  Thank you for continuing to support this blog as without you, this blog is nothing.

Many people add advertisements to their blogs and try to monetize the site as soon as it is up. The time when there are practically no visitors and hence no money to be made. The temptation is obvious. We don’t want to leave money on the table.

When we should start adding ads is one of the most asked questions online today. Everyone wants to know the perfect time to take this step. We want to leave ads out of the blog because we know it may turn off certain visitors but we know that eventually, it is something that has to be done.

Most of us read income reports from other bloggers and then quickly sign up for adsense. We spend hours tweaking and making sure it look perfect on our blog and then we proceed to make $0.02 in the next 30 days.

An Experiment to Illustrate

Last month, I added an adsense unit on two of my newest site. The result, a combined total of $1.69 in earnings. The rest, $177.70 to be exact, came from another 2 sites. At the current pace, I can afford 100 months of adsense-free advertisements on the two new blogs if I’m willing to forgo one month of earnings on two higher traffic sites.

So in my particular case (one that is typical for all new sites), leaving ads off the new sites was an easy choice.

Patience will be Rewarded

There is really no rush to put advertising on a blog. During the first few months of your blog’s life, the focus should be about driving traffic because money will not come unless there is decent traffic and a developed brand.

Notice on BusyBlogging Dot Com that there are no ads yet. This is not because I cannot find advertisers but because I intentionally wanted it to be clear of ads for the first few months to attract as many visitors as possible.

I know that once I start to develop a following by writing good blog content, advertisers will come knocking on my door asking to put ads on my site. Waiting for this to happen will make the decision to put ads onto the blog much more natural, instead of forcing it on the blog just because I cannot wait.

Putting ads on prematurely doesn’t make you money, so hold off and build your blog first.

When it comes to your blog, branding should be of the highest priority.  Potential clients always have options, as there are many alternatives in the marketplace today.  If you make money by selling advertisements, your brand will help attract advertisers.  If you sell services, then your brand will help you qualify and generate leads.

Even if making money is not in the plans for your blog, building a brand will help bring in more traffic and readership! Therefore, it is important to start focusing on building your brand. If you never thought about this, the time to start is now.

Get Started

Here are a few pointers to help lead you in the right direction.

State the Facts
As a blog, the articles we write form the foundation in which our brand is based on. It is crucial that we state the facts and not guess.  Readers will quickly spot the bloggers who know the facts versus the ones that just type without reference.

Show Consistency
Eventually, there will be readers who follow your blog.  Show integrity and consistency by continually giving messages that don’t conflict with each other.  If the writing and mindset changes from article to article, it is impossible for people to build trust.

Be Unique
Be it the blog design, advices written or delivery method, there should be a level of uniqueness in your blog.  As I said earlier, there are alternatives out there.  Don’t just aim to be a “me too” blog.

Better to be Interesting to Some than Mediocre to Everyone
In order for people to come back, there should be a reason to come back. Don’t try to tailor to everyone because it is impossible. Instead, make sure that there are people who will love your blog so you can capture those readers. Give people a reason to come back, even if it’s at the expense of some others.

Be Coherent
At the end of the day, it is a blog you are writing on. Although you don’t need to be an English major, your readers will need to be able to understand your writing. Once you are done writing the article. At least read it over once to make sure it is understandable by someone other than you.

It is also not a bad idea to ask someone else to read your article and then tell you what the article is about. This will give you insight into how someone else perceives your article for you to make changes if necessary.

Be Yourself
Not that it is impossible, but it is too hard to pretend to be someone else. Your articles should reflect your true feelings and beliefs in topics you write about.

One Last Thing to Note

Be patient with brand building as it is a long (in fact never ending) journey. Keep the above points in mind and your brand will be developed, traffic will come and money will be made.

July’s been a pretty good month for blog income.  I’m excited to report that I spoke with boss about transitioning myself out of my current position so I can pursue my online presence full time.  This means that I will have much more time to devote to this side of the business which will only mean great things about my blog income.

So far, the biggest part of my blog income is with private ads and it will probably stay that way for a while.  I’ve been trying to diversify my income stream the last month and have found some places that shows promise.  As I familiar myself with these new methods, I’m sure good things will happen!

During the last 4 days of the month, I also started playing around with affiliate marketing and it is a very exciting as I generated $50.05 in a couple days alone!  In the coming months, I will definitely be starting to focus more on this area and see where it will take me.

Enough rambling on.  Here’s the breakdown for July:

• Private Ads - $1908.36
• Text Link Ads - $830.23
• Link Worth - $546.25
• Adsense - $179.39
• Affiliate Marketing - $50.05
• Ebay Network Partners - $12.24
• Amazon - $1.84
• Total - $3528.36

Not earth shattering numbers but I enjoy what I do.  I didn’t start long ago so as I put more time and focus into this, I am sure the income will grow!  I will keep you updated!

How 125×125 Ads Became Popular

Google’s dislike for text link ads was made clear when they publicly announced that websites selling text ads will be penalized in terms of search engine rankings.  Since then, the text link ad industry took a huge hit as many people pulled all text ads off their sites.

With the lost of ad revenue, site owners started looking at other advertising methods much more aggressively.  At this point, the 125×125 ad started to attract advertisers from all over.  Some of the reasons this type of ad was popular included (but not limited to):

1. It fit at least 2 ads side by side on the sidebar comfortably, thereby increasing ad revenue
2. Small enough so even novice graphic designers can design something that look good
3. Loads fast enough so many can be populated without affecting site’s load speed

As more and more sites started utilizing this type of ad, bloggers who run popular blogs likeJohn Chow and Problogger started to notice.  It was coincidental that both of these blogs were redesigned around the same time to include this type of ad, which created a huge buzz around the blogsphere on not only the importance of blog designs but also the popularity of 125×125 ads.

If those two blogs put 125×125 sized ads on the runway, Entrecard gave this type of ad the fuel it needed to jump off the popularity charts. This online ad exchange system’s model was based on traffic exchange through 125×125 ads.  As Entrecard explored in popularity, 125×125 sized ads came along for the ride.

This is where Performacing Ads step in.  Cutting through the bells and whistles, it is basically a middlemen that helps you sell 125×125 ads.  Websites who want to sell ads sign up as a publisher and put the sites up for display; advertisers looking to advertise sign up to buy ads.

How Performancing Ads Make Money

As with all middlemen, they make money by taking a cut off your ad revenue. Performancing Ads is no different, taking at most 40% (meaning you keep 60%).  There seems to be a tiered system where they will take less commissions if your ads are performing well but it is not documented well enough for me to explain further.

Thoughts on the Ad System

What I Like
One thing I like about Performancing Ads is that I can customize how many spots I want to sell and how many groups (called regions) of ads I have on each page.  This gives me quite a bit of flexibility because I can sell 4 spots on the side bar and another 6 spots on the footer for example as long as I set it up that way.

Another benefit is that I can put my own ads up within the system, so if I have direct advertising relationships, I can use the system to put them onto my site without anyone taking a cut, which makes management convenient.

Installation
For those of us using Wordpress, it is very easy to install.  After you activate the plugin which is downloadable off the website, all you need is to add a line of code at where you want the ads to appear.  For example, my ad code was

perfads('regionid');

What Needs Improvement

Exchange Ads
When I wanted to book my own ads, I was asked to create a 125×125 ad.  Once I was done, I booked it without problem.  Then, I created two more ads in the ad exchange section for a total of three.

No problems right?  However, when I click on exchange ads now, I only see two and not the one which I originally created!

Where the third one is stored is a mystery.  Perhaps someone can let me know how this could be fixed.

Lack of Control in Managing Ads
In the brief time that I’ve spent using this system, I didn’t see an option to cancel ads. You can argue that this is done on purpose but I should at least be able to control my own ads right? I tried to see what would happen if I added the same ad in the system twice, and the results are self explanatory.

I’ve since contacted them to resolve this issue. I didn’t expect them to get back to me right away as I emailed them late at night but hopefully they can get this rectified in a timely manner.

Final Thoughts

The success of Performacing Ads will lie on its ability to attract advertisers, as new publishers will join the network if everyone in the system is having good results.

Despite the minor issues that I’ve found, this system is easy to implement and as 125×125 ads become more popular, Performacing Ads will be a good source of advertising stream.

How often we should post on our blogs for maximum effectiveness is always a question that I get asked. There are many people that think posting multiple times a day is the way to go while there are equally as many people that think posting once a day is the optimal.  Here are the common arguments on each side.

Posting Multiple Times a Day

• Google likes your blog more and will send you more traffic when it’s updated often.
• Visitors will always have fresh content when they come to your blog, even if they come multiple times a day.
• Posting more frequently means there are more posts in the archives for readers to search.
• Most high profile blogs do this, I don’t know why but it must be better!

Posting Once a Day

• Consistency is always a good thing.  It sets your readers up with an expectation that you are posting regularly but not excessively.
• Posting once a day gives you a chance to feel fresh and write good content.
• As each post is up at the top of the page for longer periods of time, it tends to get more participation.
• More participation lends itself to more links from your fellow bloggers

So what should we do?  The answer lies in blog popularity, monetization scheme and the time you have for your blog.

Posting Frequency Depends on Your Time
Let’s talk about the last one first - Time.  Other than a select few of us who are lucky enough to do this full time, most people still have at least a 9 to 5 day job to keep up along with our daily lives!  Let’s face reality here.  We just don’t have time to write multiple blog posts a day and keep up with this long term.

Consistency is really important for your readers, so rather than posting 4 times a day for a week and no posts for 2 weeks, schedule the posts out!

Posting Frequency Should Be Tied to Blog Popularity
One of the most important aspects of a blog is its interactivity.  When readers come to a blog, they want to not only read great content but also great comments!  Your readers absolutely add value to your posts when they comment.  Not only will they sometimes add different perspectives to the topic you wrote about, they also send a message to your other readers that your blog is a great place to come back to.

Unfortunately though, comments are much easier to come by on high profile blogs because of the sheer traffic that they get.  If you need proof that it’s not just about the content, all you need to do is submit a guest post to a high profile blog.  Once it’s posted, you will see the difference.

Those that are starting out should post high quality articles but spread them out.  I suggest posting only 2-3 posts per week so each post stay at the top of your blog for a longer period of time.  Once you get more participation on your blog posts, you can tighten the posting schedule accordingly.

Posting Frequencies Depends on Your Plan for Making Money
If your blog makes money solely from Adsense, traffic from search engines is absolutely key to success.  In this case, you will want to post more frequently so Google will send more traffic your way.  However, if you are running ads that are charged on a per month basis, then quality of the articles should come before anything else.  Write because you feel passionate about a topic, not because you have to.

Advertisers buy ad space because of the perceive value of your blog and how it will translate to help their own business.  I will take one visitor from ProBlogger over ten visitors from another site that gets lots of traffic because I know people coming from ProBlogger are most likely bloggers who are interested in the topics I write about here and not some random visitor that was sent to his blog that then clicked through to my blog.

Advertisers have to constantly pick where they spend their advertising dollars.  A blog will be perceived to have a high value when they have:

• Steady posting schedule
• Great participation in terms of comments
• High number of links to your blog posts

Think about all those, and you will have a clear decision of how often you should post.

When my life is full of interesting events, the content of my blogs naturally become better.  Because blogging is about sharing, our content reflects our life experiences.  The richer our life experiences, the more colorful our content.

Sharing Your Life Experience
I also find that when I can relate to the topic on a personal level, I can write more passionately and often have much more ideas to share.  I can continue to write about personal finance day in and day out because I take my finances seriously.  Even without the blog, I would be thinking about my personal finances constantly so it is extremely easy to come up with topics ideas to share with my readers.

Sometimes, I really want to comment on an article that other bloggers write about but I just don’t know what to write and I often give up.  By sharing life experiences, there is a greater possibility that readers can relate to the article and thus increase interactivity of the blog.  A couple of days ago when I wrote about my experience calling my web hosting tech support, readers could commented because they had similar experiences with their hosting company.

Richer Content
Of course, just any experience is not enough.  If all I talk about is that I write blogs, it wouldn’t be too interesting would it?  In order for your articles to be engaging and interesting, your life should be interesting.  No one wants to read about what you ate if you eat the same salad everyday, but if you go to different restaurants everyday, then sharing your experience would be much more worthwhile.

What if I Don’t Have an Interesting Life?
Since many bloggers sit in front of the computer all day, it is very easy to feel like there isn’t anything interesting to share.  If this is how you feel, the first thing is to change your mindset!  Everyone actually has very unique backgrounds and perspectives.  This alone creates a great opportunity for sharing on even everyday topics.

Just stop thinking your experiences are boring and start sharing.  You will find that your blog will become livelier and more rewarding.

Like many of you, I hate spammers because I spend so much time each day cleaning up my comments section to make sure only legitimate comments show up. When I first started blogging, I thought about whether there is a way to eliminate these spammers. After a while though, I realized that thinking about it is useless because there is just no way of knowing where they come from or how to eliminate them.

Lately, I’m starting to think that perhaps spam on my blog aren’t so bad. Isn’t the amount of spam a measure of how popular your blog is? When you first start a blog, don’t you remember the days when you have absolutely no spam? Doesn’t spam start after your blog start getting noticed by others?

Another theory I have is related to Google. We all know that a good chunk of our traffic comes from the Google Search Engine and one of the main factors of increasing our SERPs is how many links the article and domain gets. If the spam comments contains a ping back, isn’t it helping me rank higher for certain keywords?

Another factor that helps articles rank higher within Google is the frequency that the page updates. On this front, spams definitely help. Sure, not all spam comments are on topic but there are some that are pretty good. If Google can’t tell that it is a spam, aren’t those comments good for my article’s SERPs?

Of course, no one really knows what Google’s formula for ranking is but all this in a way makes sense. There is probably a small chance that this theory is correct but at least thinking this way helps me feel better when I wake up in the morning with blogs full of spam.  In the small chance that I’m right though, I gotta say “Thank you spammers!”

Google SERPs is a relative system by nature, so in the perfect world of no spams on any blog, I’d be perfectly happy as no one has any advantages over others. In today’s world where we have tons of spam though, I take relief whenever I know that I have more spam than the other blog.