10 Awesome Ways to Make NO Money With Blog Traffic

What is the point of striving to increase your blog traffic?

Silly question? Not so fast…

Money? Of course.

But what if I said that you could drive traffic to your blog not necessarily for the money, but for brand awareness, self promotion, and higher search engine rankings.

Would you be interested in that kind of traffic?

Absolutely.

After all, IF you have good traffic conversion in place, ANY traffic can potentially be monetized, right?

The following 10 blog traffic magnets will do just that: increase your blog traffic and your branding.

The rest will be up to you.

Magnet #1: High-volume, “non-monetary” searches

What you need: any keyword research tool.

I usually use Market Samurai or SEMRush.

What you do: find searches that are related to your niche, have a good amount of traffic, and no advertisers bidding on them.

The fact that nobody bids on these keywords simply means that there is no upfront money to be made on the search; however, there is still plenty of traffic you can direct to your blog.

Make sure you have some useful content for the searchers of the keyword!

You have 2 options:

1. the quick way - paid advertising like Google Adwords (you’ll most likely be the only advertiser and can buy traffic very cheaply);

or

2. the long-term way - SEO or optimizing for those search terms and staying on the first page of Google for a long-time (that’s what I call leveraged effort, although it takes longer to achieve).

Example: this is an old search, but proves my point.

Magnet #2: Create Controversy

What you need: find an audience that is passionate about a subject.

What you do: Create a blog post that in some way challenges that passion or belief.

Know what you are talking about and know how you are going to defend your position.

Make comments about your position on forums, via blog comments, online groups, etc.

You will get good amount of traffic from multiple sources, but expect the heaviest traffic to come from the disagreeing group.

Make sure you are professional about handling objections; use your chance to earn a respectable following.

Magnet #3: Cover an Industry Event

What you need: find an event that generates a lot of interest in your niche and cover it.

What you do: Become the “event insider” for your audience: interview people, make friends, go to the bars afterwards - give your readers a feeling that they went there and reaped all the benefits themselves.

Make sure you publish your post in a timely manner, or else your readers will find some place else to read about it.

Magnet #4: Make Your Own Top Ten List

What you need: 10 ideas with a common denominator that your audience will benefit from.

What you do: This one is very easy, but also tricky.

Why? Because such lists are everywhere.

So make yours stand out by making it well thought through, well-targeted, and highly beneficial.

Magnet #5: Simplify Complex Issues

What you need: hard to grasp concept or a long publication in your niche.

What you do: Make a shorter “for dummies” version of it, with examples and relevant tips.

You’d be surprised how many times you find a simpler post on the topic outrank a more complex and detailed one.

Perhaps that’s exactly why simpler-written posts result in increased traffic generation: searchers are looking for more help or clarification on the subject.

Magnet #6: Install a translator plugin

What you need: any translator plugin - free works just fine.

What you do: Using the plugin will increase your page views from your readers who might not speak perfect English.

The translation will not be great, as you can imagine, but it will still help to attract international readership.

Magnet #7: Submit Posts to Blog Carnivals

What you need: a good blog post and a blog carnival in your niche.

What you do: Look up blog carnivals at http://blogcarnival.com.

Find the ones related to your topic and submit your post.

It will almost always get posted and result in links back to your blog as well as increased blog traffic.

Magnet #8: Leverage Social Bookmarking Sites

What you need: solid, targeted content with a great title and description.

What you do: Submit your blog content to the major bookmarking and link sharing services, like Digg, Del.icio.us, Technorati, etc with regularity.

Even smaller bookmarking services like Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc. can generate thousands of visitors.

Magnet #9: Create a List of Top Ten Blogs in Your Niche

What you need: a bit of research on your part.

What you do: Be the first one to compile the “Top Ten Blogs” in your niche.

The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs and other bloggers in the niche will link to it, thus sending targeted traffic to your blog.

By the way, don’t be afraid to lose your traffic to the other blogs; if you are publishing solid content and offer great values to your readers like you should be doing, you will definitely gain new readership and many links with your list.

Magnet #10: Your Turn!

What is your favorite blog traffic generation strategy?

If you’ve got strategies of your own to share or insights about how these can be tweaked and optimized, please do share in the comments.

I would love to use them in my future post!

Image source: Photography By Mario Peraza

This post was brought to you by Ana Hoffman

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