I’ve had my blogsite, Beginnings, Middles and Ends [BME], for nearly a year now and finally decided that a little marketing of some sort is needed to lure people to visit. I started with articles at EzineArticles.com using my resource box to publicise my blog address. A few people came to visit, left again and, as far as I can tell, haven’t been back. Not good.

My next step was to up the ante on the article writing so I joined the LK Spring Article Challenge to write and publish 30 articles within a two-month deadline. The good thing about getting in on these kinds of challenges is that, beside the obvious result of a bunch more articles to your credit, you also have networking access to the other writers involved. This access includes encouraging visits to each other’s article directory, blog or website, leaving comments, linking and posting each other’s articles.

I recommend these types of challenges to any other new kid on the block if just because you can get helpful advice from the more experienced writers and bloggers.

My next step to create traffic was to offer something for free to anyone who visited my blog. I collected a few related articles that I’d already written, wrote a few more, and produced my first e-book. I added the offer to my resource box for all the new articles and managed to give away ten copies. Only two were for friends so I was fairly excited when another eight requests came in.

I also created the basis for a newsletter that I’m still only thinking about offering. Thinking about only because time is a factor and I’m not sure if I can do everything else and produce an interesting, regular newsletter as well. So, I’ve started updating my blog more regularly instead and have set myself the task of a new article every second day. It’s been two weeks and so far so good.

From article writing I moved on to looking at and commenting on other blogs [and making sure I left a trail back to BME]. I signed up at MyBlogLog, downloaded some widgets, discovered Feedburner and made BME available via subscription and RSS. MyBlogLog has the option to create communities and contacts with links that lead right back to yours and their blogs. All I had to do was go visiting. I found some great blogsites via this directory and also recommend this path for anyone interested.

From there I found BlogCatalog, which is similar to MyBlogLog, and noticed that a lot of people have cute little icons at the bottom of their posts. I clicked on a few and ended up joining StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Digg. All of these offer social networking to bloggers, though different to MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog in that they seem to be more directed at recommending interesting articles and blogs. Naturally, everyone nominates their own sites, lots of people read it and before you know it you and they are visiting each other on an intermittent basis.

To tell you the truth, I’m still muddling my way through a few of these directories. I’m sure it’s because my computer is old and slow not me. I’m not sure how long it takes some of these blogsites to build up their impressive number of hits and comments, but I’ve never been one for patience. Instant gratification is more my thing, and I’m after more subscribers to my blog. So, I’m back here writing an article about my journey. Unfortunately, overnight fame and stardom is a myth I’m all too familiar with. A whole lot of work and effort is behind every success and I’m willing. If I can help one or two people along the way I’m happy, and if I can pull in more subscribers to my blog I’ll be well satisfied indeed.

Increasing Blog Traffic: A Beginner’s Journey
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Trish_Anderson