How to drive traffic to your blog? Traffic Generation is so crucial to any web business that depends on unique visitors to survive. Blogs like Mashable, Techcrunch, Problogger.com, Copyblogger.com and Zen Habits generate tons of traffic daily. Traffic is the key to online businesses which depend on visitors to make money. if you have targeted traffic in abundance then you will laugh all the way to the bank when you begin to monetize your blog.

My quest to drive traffic to my two blogs (Boostta and Alltopstartups) motivated me to compile this list. It has taken me a lot of site registrations to sometimes submit my blogs. Traffic generation demands a lot of work and commitment. Your blog’s link needs to be on several sites to be able to see the kind of traffic you expect.

I must confess that I am still using the sites I have provided below, some have worked pretty well and others don’t make a lot of difference. It’s a combination of different strategies and you stick to the ones that bring in the most traffic. Promotion will be a very large component of your success with your blog, and its an ongoing process and trust me it takes time and commitment.

Treat your blog like a business that needs planning. Set out your goals. Are you blogging just to educate your niche or to inform them? Do you intend to monetize your blog? If yes, that is why you must approach your blog like a business. What would you do with a business to help it grow?  You promote it. This is essentially what you need to do with your blog if you want people to read it.

Ebooks Directories

Most e-books directories offer the best of e-books from different categories. A lot of people visit these sites to download books to enhance and boost their blogging career.

Compile some of your best and popular posts into e-books and submit them to some of the great sites listed in this collection. If you intend to monetize your blog, you can offer the short books you create for free on your site as a downloadable version, but offer it in exchange for the users’ email address. This way you can send them future products or free products and advertise to them as well.

Here are some great sites for your E-book submissions:

  1. ebookjunke.com
  2. ebook88.com
  3. thefreesite.com
  4. getfreeebooks.com
  5. changethis.com
  6. ebooksubmit.com
  7. getfreeebooks.com
  8. ideamarketers.com/bookpr.cfm
  9. mind-like-water.com

Blog Directories

Blog directories are useful places people search for blog posts. Don’t be left out when your target market in the results displayed in these sites. Make a conscious effort to send your blog to at least one blog directory every day when you check your blog traffic for the day. It’s the submissions that bring in the traffic you want to see increase.

Here are some great sites for blog submission:

  1. Blogged.com
  2. BlogCatalog.com
  3. blogcarnival.com
  4. technorati.com
  5. topblogarea.com
  6. topblogging.com
  7. blogtoplist.com
  8. fuelmyblog.com
  9. bloggingfusion.com
  10. bloghop.com
  11. blogarama.com
  12. topbloglists.com
  13. bloghop.com
  14. blogs.botw.org
  15. bloggeries.com
  16. icerocket.com
  17. yousaytoo.com
  18. blogsearchengine.com

Social Media Marketing

Almost every blog now has a way to share posts on multiple social media sites. This works for some niche sites but unfortunately it does not work for others. Mashable   gets tons of traffic from social media sites. Posts are submitted multiple times to Twitter, Digg, Facebook and the new Google buzz makes it even better. Some of these sites you know already, I will not waste your time by repeating these links or sites.

But what I can say is that it depends on your niche. Choose and monitor your social media marketing carefully.  Stumbleupon and hacker news works very well for my boostta.com site because users of the niche I have chosen. I expose plugins and applications that can boost and enhance your blogging experience. There are also a lot of How-to articles on my site.

Online News / Tools Aggregation sites

This category has a lot in common with social media marketing. Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Slashdot and Delicious all qualify for this category as well. You are familiar with most of them. Provide buttons to these sites on your blog and your users will bring you tons of traffic.

News aggregation is very popular in recent times; fortunately some of the sites allow users to submit their news or stories to their sites for their readers. Y combinator’s hacker news aggregation is not known for good design but it can send a lot of traffic to your site if your article or post will be useful for startup founders, or technology news readers. With compelling headlines and descriptions, you can quickly gain traffic to your blog.

Here are some great sites for news aggregation submission:

  1. N4G.com is great for game news
  2. BizHeat.com for business news
  3. Y Combinator for tech news

Podcast Directories

Some readers prefer podcasts to reading your text online. Give them what they want when they them ta the places they find them most.  You can convert your blog posts into podcasts with Vozmo.

Here are some great sites for podcast submission:

  1. podcastdirectory.com
  2. podcastalley.com
  3. podiobooks.com
  4. odeo.com
  5. podcastempire.com

Video Marketing

Video streaming and downloading is very popular among some section of blog readers. You may have your videos scattered on multiple video sites. If you have not done that already and are wondering how to convert that top and popular post into a video, you can try  ArticleVideoRobot, Camtasia Studio and here is a great site for video submission: tubemogul.com

Article Directories

Article directories work best for your popular posts. All you need to do is to submit your top posts to as many article directories as possible. Don’t waste your time on directories without a better page rank because they will do you no good. Make sure you sign off at the footer with your link. I will submit the content of this e-book to the directories I have provided below.

Here are some great sites for article submission:

  1. ezinearticles.com
  2. goarticles.com
  3. ehow.com
  4. articlesbase.com
  5. 50 Article Directories by PageRank

Guest Posting

If a post is drawing a lot of traffic, then certainly a lot of your users are finding it useful. To generate even greater amount of traffic from that post submit it to authors of  blogs in your niche for publication on their blogs, Some bloggers encourage guest posting and accept great post  on their sites.  This is one of the best ways to gain acknowledgment in your niche.

Document Sharing Marketing

Sharing your post on a PowerPoint  could take a lot of time, but once that is done you can send or submit it to multiple document sharing sites. It has a significant impact on the number of people who could land on your blog from these sites. I use slideshare.com to distribute my slides and those posts keep sending traffic to my alltopstartup blog. Remember link back to your blog with your url when creating the PowerPoint slide. Putting hyperlinks on your slides makes it easy.

Here are some great sites for document  submission:

  1. scribd.com
  2. docstoc.com
  3. slideshare.net
  4. issuu.com
  5. edocr.com
  6. empressr.com
  7. yudu.com
  8. docshare.com
  9. calameo.com

RSS Feed Submissions

Many blog users immediately scan your blog for an RSS feed if they like your content once they land on your blog. RSS traffic constitutes some of your loyal readers. If your content is great don’t hesitate to publicize your feeds and provide a way for subscribers to sign on your feeds easily.

Here are some great sites for RSS  submission:

  1. rss-feed.org
  2. rsshugger.com
  3. feedfury.com
  4. feedest.com
  5. rss-spider.com
  6. feedlisting.com
  7. feedgy.com
  8. rssmountain.com/rss_directory.php
  9. readburner.com

Automatic  Blog / RSS Submissions

Blogs can be submitted automatically with a single registration. Some sites provide this service for free, whilst other charge to submit your blog URL  and description to multiple sites. The greater the number of your links scattered on the web on other sites, the higher your page ranks on search engines and sites like Compete and Alexa.  There are other sites that are interested in pinging your blog or its RSS on other sites when you post new content. It helps to ping your blog from time to time.

Here are some great sites for multiple blog and RSS  submission:

  1. Submitterbot.com

Ping your Blog on these sites:

  1. pingmyblog.com
  2. List of pinging addresses

Blog  Communities

Bloggers share ideas links, tips, and learn from each other on blog communities. Joining a community gives you the opportunity to interact with other bloggers and possibly share and exchange links. The most important thing is to make contact with other users and develop relationships when you join forums and communities.

Here are some great communities and Forums you can join:

  1. MyBlogLog
  2. Blogengage.com
  3. Entrecard.com

If you are committed to promote your blog to the max, there is no denying of the fact that it will pay of finally when you begin to monetize it. Take time to build the blog and gain the traffic and the money will follow. Notwithstanding if you plan to monetize your blog introduce your ads as soon you think you are ready to sell ads.

Your users should be used to the ads whilst you still have time. If  ads begin to battle for space when you finally introduce it, your faithful readers will read into your intentions quicker than you think.  I hope you have submitted your links to at least 50 of the links above. If you have, you have done what is required of you as a blogger, but don’t stop its an ongoing process.