There are a number of ways that you can attract traffic to your blog. One of the fastest ways is link exchanging or for blogging it is sometimes called friending. This means that basically you link your blog as being friends with other related blogs. Joining communities with like interests is also a great way to attract readers to your blog. Most of the time if they like what you have to say on a particular topic they are willing to head over and see what you have to say on other topics.

This is just one way there are plenty of others such as posting videos on your blog. Funny clips or political clips especially if they are being hosted by larger video sites can provide you with an excellent source of traffic. Friends and family can also be a primary source of traffic. While this is primarily true of personal blogs you can easily create business blogs that are also word of mouth based.

Social networking is a great way to bring traffic to your blog. You start of with a small friends list, this list is expanded by the friends your friends have on their list and so forth. You could easily gain traffic from these lists and thanks to Web 2.0 technology you can post to several social networking sites all at the same time.

If you have a website that already generates traffic make use of the traffic that is already on your site. Simply post the links and menu option to your blog and put excerpts on your website. This is especially useful in business applications where you can simply put a link to the blog post detailing updates to your business and future plans.

These are the biggest ways that you are going to be able to drive traffic to your website. There are other ways such as used email marketing and press releases and other forms of article directory submissions. Basically you use your blog as the link in for the articles. This is again, usually done for business purposes since driving this type of traffic is strictly for the purpose of increasing income.

For the most part if you are blogging for fun you are not really going to be worrying about how many people view your blog. You are going to want to however keep people interested in reading which means you are going to need to come up with topics that are going to have people returning to your blog. This is the second portion of generating traffic and that is the process of keeping the traffic you have already generated returning to your site.

In order to do this your content must be interesting, up to date and written in a manner that is going to make people want to come back and read what you have to say. This is the most important aspect to not only generating but maintaining website traffic on your site.

You are selling a great product or set of products. Maybe you offer a great service online that if people knew about it, you know they would like it.

Ok so step one for you is complete, and that is finding your niche as to what your business is all about. Step 2 is getting the word out there, and to do so in a cost effective manner.

Welcome to the Internet. The place where anything is possible and the medium that levels the playing field, or so you would think, to the point where the super stars such as Walmart look no bigger online then you.

Obviously being a startup business and on a tight budget you want to be able to reach as many people in your target market as possible, and at the least amount of cost.

So how about getting your advetising in front of 112 million people and more? How about exposing what it is you sell and offer to nearly a billion people world wide and do so for just pennies?

Sounds crazy and unrealistic right? Well it is not. With the formation of Web 2.0, which is really just a fancy tech term describing the way the Internet has evolved into a medium where people connect, the estimated, according to Technorati, 112 million bloggers may be the best way to go these days.

There are literally thousands of blog hosting companies out there. These companies have customers who do nothing more than post their reviews and opinions on a subject, in what they call their Blogs.

Our company has written dozens of articles on blogging to educate, not only our customers, but the Internet community in general. If you would like to learn more about blogging, check out our articles on our website. For now, in this multi-part series, we are going to concentrate on how to use bloggers as your means of advertising.

Bloggers are always looking for ways to fill up that “white” space they have on their blogs. A great way to do that is to place some type of advertising there. It fills a need they are looking for. It also allows them to make some extra money, and you as the advertiser, get to put your product or service in front of literally millions, for pennies.

There are two ways you can go about this. You can contact every blog related to what you are offering and ask them to advertise. With 112 million blogs to choose from, you should start immediately right? Well option two is signing on with a company whose main focus is handling advertising on Blogs. These companies, such as ours, focus in on having bloggers post small snippets of code on their blogs that will display a series of different advertisements that their blog readers can look further into by clicking on the link.

Your advertisement will appear on blog websites and when a reader clicks on your ad, will be taken to further information on what you are offering. What you need to look for in an ad program such as this is hidden costs.

You want to stay away from programs that charge you a fee each time someone clicks your ad. When you participate in, what is called, a pay per click program, that then leads into bidding for the ad space. Basically, whoever is willing to pay more, will appear more often. That concept basically defeates the entire purpose of the level playing field, now doesn`t it?

We will continue this discussion in part two of our article segments on how to maximize your advertising spending with minimal output and at the same time reach your target market.

By: Bruce A. Tucker

It’s smart to start your blog on good footing. It’s difficult to change software and begin all over again. Blogging with “free” blog hosting? It’s true what they say, “You get what you pay for.”

Pay for website hosting for your blog if you can afford it and verify that your server can support Wordpress.

When weighing your options as far as which company should host your blog, make sure that WordPress (and Fantastico unless you are quite computer literate) are included with the hosting that you select. Fantastico will automatically install Wordpress for you. If it does not have Fantastico, you will have to do the difficult task of downloading and installing Wordpress yourself.

Wordpress does not require you to be a programmer. You can start it immediately after it is installed, and begin blogging in no time.

For what reason should you use WordPress, and not another type of blogging software? WordPress is the top brand. It has existed for quite some time. There is an wide variety of themes available through WordPress. (The appearance and feel of your blog can be altered with themes.) There is no need to know how to design or code, unless you want to make a change to “canned” functionality.

Plug-Ins – You can add intriguing functions to your blog by using the plug-ins. You have the option of selecting a third-party plug-in or, if you know PHP, then you can make your own. The WordPress website has plug-ins available. They have a wide variety and they offer multiple functions, including a plug-in that will generate an XML sitemap of your site for Google.

You are provided with complete control over your blog through WordPress. Your options are limitless. Great user management is available through WordPress. For instance, articles can be written by authors, and upon approval, those articles can be published by editors. Administrators can even alter the design of the blog.

Don’t waste hours of your time only to have to tear it all down and convert it over to Wordpress.