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Have a blog? Want to make money off your blog? Just want SOMEBODY to read what you spend hours painstakingly writing? Whether you solely live off of the earnings that your blog makes (like my good friend Nick does) or you just blog for fun, it is easier than you think to get a TON of people to your site and make good money doing what you love (for me it is free samples and traveling). Here are some tips that I used to substantially increase traffic on my blogs.

Marketing:
Marketing is key! The obvious truth is that it doesn’t matter if you have the absolute best content in the world if there is nobody there that reads it. There are several ways to market that are easier than you think. I have found that little things like talking about my blog in public places have increased my hits substantially. My free sample site has become a running joke with my friends. While this may seem like a bad thing, the constant name repetition has caused several people to get interested in my site. At first I was irritated that they constantly made fun of what I had to offer until I checked out my subscription list and noticed that several of my friends e-mail addresses were right at the top of the list. Some of these friends, I haven’t even mentioned the site to!

Search Engines:
Search Engines are key to generating a ton of traffic. If you have not yet submitted your blog to Search Engines you are missing a great opportunity to expand your readers. Adding your blog is easy and free. You can add your website to Google by clicking here. Once you submit your site to search engines, it will automatically crawl your website and include it in search terms within a few weeks.

Backlinks
Backlinks are key to getting a good ranking in search engine searches. What are Backlinks? Every time someone who registers with a search engine creates a link to your website it produces a backlink. The more backlinks you have the more reliable of a source your website looks to the search engine and the higher ranking you receive. How do you check your backlinks? The easiest way to do this is to search for your domain name (IE domainname.com) in a search engine. The amount of results that you get (minus results of your actual blog pages) is an accurate representation of your number of backlinks. SampleAday.com (the website I run with nick) has around 1,700. Backlinks take time to accumulate. The easiest way to do so is to post comments on blogs. Nobody likes someone who only posts comments on blogs to promote your site. Make the comments creative and say something about the site you visit, otherwise you will just piss people off with your SPAM. Another option is to hold giveaways like this one. Giveaways are great ways to “buy” backlinks for cheaper than if you were to pay someone to do it (although paying someone to increase your backlinks is another more expensive option).

Working with a friend:
Like many of you, I am a pretty busy guy. As a full time first year law student, I already have a lot on my plate besides for writing on my blog. Keeping your blog current is vital for maintaining dedicated and loyal readers. My solution was simple… get a partner. By getting a partner, I reduce my work by 1/2. Having someone else there also gives a fresh perspective and new ideas. They might even guest blog on your other blogs when you are in some crazy German city if you are nice to them.

Working with someone else has helped the development of my site a great deal. Obviously it is important to pick your partner wisely. You don’t want to share with someone who is not willing to contribute the same amount of work that you are, or someone that will quit with the project half way through leaving you to pick up his slack. It is also a good idea not to get someone who is too much like you. If you are good with the technical stuff but not as good with the marketing it makes more sense to get a outspoken marketing guru to help you out rather than your fellow tech-nerd. Just make sure it is someone you trust!

Doing what you love:
You have probably heard this before, but it is 100% true: The most successful people are always the people that love what they do. Personally, I love to wake up in the morning and see how much people viewed my blog the day before. I get a high off of knowing that my posts have reached thousands of people. I also love knowing that I am able to help people with their travel concerns and maybe make someone laugh with my attempt at a funny free sample description. The money is also nice too ;).

If I didn’t enjoy it, I don’t know how I would be able to create new posts day after day. So if you want to succeed with your blog (or anything else for that matter), simply find something YOU love to write about (or love to do), work hard and follow the great advice on this site (believe me Nick knows what he is talking about) and success will soon follow.

Best of luck and happy blogging!

-Scott Aaronson
Guest Writer for clickfornick.com

**Hint: Want an easy way to increase your backlinks ? Leave us a comment!