by Doreen Martel

Created on: August 12, 2010

If I build it they will come. This unfortunately is the theory that many new bloggers approach their new blog with. However, without readers, blogs soon become boring, fail to make money and may become inactive or abandoned.  This often means that they just sit out in cyberspace with no traffic and not making any money.  There are some effective ways of increasing page views and income with your blog, if you are willing to dedicate the time.  Here are a few tips to help rescue your blog from obscurity.

Introducing Ping-o-Matic!

Ping-o-Matic is not a new tool but a very effective one. Ping-o-Matic advertises your blog for you with the click of your mouse. Each time you add a new blog post, use Ping-o-Matic to let popular blog directories, news services and blog feeds know that a new post is available. This is simple to do and takes only a minute of your time. This service can help increase page views which means added income.

Social Bookmarking Services

Many bloggers find that bookmarking their posts is time consuming and simply do not bother. However, the free service at Social Bookmarking can help make bookmarking less painful.  Simply open up accounts at your favorite sites, add your link, a description and keywords and toggle through the various sites. You can create as many as 50 links in 15 minutes using this service. Do not forget to install a social bookmarking widget in your blog for individual posts.  When properly used, social bookmarking sites can help increase page views and income on your blog.

Social Networking Services

The most common social networking services are Twitter, MySpace and FaceBook. If you do not have accounts at any of these sites you may want to re-think your strategy.   Each of them can target specific audiences, create excitement about your blog posts and drive an entirely new group of readers to your blog. You can set up simple RSS feeds to your social networking accounts to have them automatically sent to your favorite social networking site as soon as you enter a new blog post.

Spread the Word

There are other great ways that you can spread the word about your blog. They include getting involved in blog carnivals where you select a topic and your blog post is advertised on other blogs; blog directories where you can share your blog URL, and blog catalogs.

There are other ways of gaining new readers, including commenting on other blogs.  Check out highly rated blogs in your field that are related to your topic, read their articles and get involved in commenting.  Your comments should be well thought out, and not simply "great post, read my blog" but should address the post you are commenting on with some substance.

Yahoo! Answers and Ask.com also provide a venue to share your knowledge on subjects.  Search for questions in categories that relate to your blog posts and provide helpful answers and reference your blog posts as a source of information.

Summary

Increasing page views and income with your blog is not going to happen overnight. The steps needed to gain readers and increase your page rank will require time and effort.  You will be doing yourself a dis-service if you fail to take steps to market your blog, in fact, failing to do so may result in your blog having a readership of one.  While well written and thoughtful posts are elements of a great blog, failure to let people know that your blog exists could result in it being one of the growing list of abandoned blogs.

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