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The internet is big enough for everyone, and it always will be. That is why you’ll see tons of new sites every day, some better than yours, some not. This means you have competition. But after reading this you will realize you don’t have any competition, you have only friends and people who help you.

The thing is, reading a blog is free, it doesn’t cost anything, except time. TIME. That is why a reader will read your blog and your “<em>competitor’s</em>” blog. The reader will divide his time between the blogs based on the <strong>relevancy of the content</strong>. Relevancy is your real enemy. This is what steals your traffic.

As for other “competitor” sites, they are your friends. Why am i saying this? Well because they provide free content - you can write your article based on theirs, you can write an article as a comment to an article on another site, you can get ideas and finally, you can get readers. <strong>Make love, not war</strong>. Write about you “competitors” and what great articles they have and relate to them. Don’t be shy. Don’t wait for them to relate to you, do it first, you have nothing to lose. And you will get it all back. Trust me.

Popularity: 14% [?]

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The recipe for this is quite simple. As we all know content is still king. You can write the greatest content in the world but: a) if your content is dedicated only to a small group of people and b) if your content doesn’t get noticed it won’t matter if your content is the greatest. You won’t get tons of visitors.

Now what i did… I wrote a Top10 Money Making Blogs of 2007 - a topic that appeals to a vast crowd and it doesn’t take a lot to read. And for the promotion i used not one, but 4 social bookmarking sites: Digg (they don’t like me at all), Reddit, StumbleUpon and Shoutwire (my favorite).

This did not happen instantly. In the first hours nothing special, 5-10 visitors from each site. After about 2 hours after i submitted the post i noticed that more and more visitors were coming from SumbleUpon. And this it what happens - it’s like a domino effect. 5 visitors turn into 10 who turn into 25 who turn into 100 and so on. It is viral. The end result was fantastic, almost 4000 visits in 1 hour.

Popularity: 6% [?]

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This is part 2 of a previous article. And it’s an example of how negative comments can be turned into traffic. What happened here was one of my readers called me a douchebag for promoting my own content. And maybe i am a douchebag. The thing is i also submitted my previous douchebag post on the same social site, just to get the frustrated people mad. What happened next was beyond my control. One of the social readers submitted the same post but with a “clever” description and it turned out that post got even more votes than the identical one i submitted. I didn’t care that they called me a douchebag (heck, i was the first to call me a douchebag), i even voted that post - because i got readers to my site. And that’s what really matters.

Popularity: 6% [?]

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What fish? We are talking here about social media sites and the traffic they can bring. Being on the front page of Digg is great but getting there is so hard, almost impossible. Each social media community has something specific, things they like and they will vote for. For example on Digg you’ll have to show up with the following to get noticed. The thing with Digg (and other big social sites) it that is a special community. For them it’s not about what you write it’s about who you are. Take a look at this crappy good for nothing post. There is absolutely no relevant information in it but it got 5500+ diggs just because it was submitted by a top Digg member. This is so like Bill Gates. People won’t care if your Windows Vista is full of bugs and brings nothing new, they’re still gonna buy it because it’s Microsoft who is selling it. So if you know people in high places in these big social sites take advantage of them and let them submit.

However if you don’t know such people, the next thing you can do is check out these lists: 10 Giant Lists and 233 Social Sites. Here you can find almost all social bookmarking sites. And now this is what you do. Smaller social sites are niche orientated(music, environment, marketing and more). Find the one that suits best the topic you are covering and try submitting to it. You’ll say “Yea but a smaller social sites don’t get the huge amounts of traffic that the big ones get“. Yes that is correct, but on a smaller social site (that fits your topic) people will notice your post and will vote for it. And the big break that can happen is that users from these small profile sites are also users in big social sites. So if your post gets on the front page of a smaller social site the chances are you’ll get featured on the first page of bigger sites (like Digg or Stumbleupon).

So if you’re small, don’t go for the big fish coz you won’t get none.

Popularity: 20% [?]

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You are saying “Whaaaat????” Most people put the emphasis on TRAFFIC. Don’t get me wrong, traffic is a good thing to have but READERS are the ones that really appreciate what you write.

It’s a known fact that only 2 out of 10 people that read the title of a post will read the whole post. The rest 8 people will arrive to your site(maybe) and because of the fact that they don’t like something about your site or they don’t like the beginning of your post or your article is too long or they just don’t wanna read - they will leave. So this is a one time visit that will not help you at all. This visitor is not going to remember your site and will never come back again on his own. And this is what most traffic is all about. Bad quality. But this does not come as a surprise taking into consideration the number of people that surf the web daily and the number of web sites that are out there.

Now you must realize that if you get those 2 out of 10 people to actually read your posts you are good good good.

To turn traffic into readers you will need to do the following:

1. A good (if not great) headline. Headlines are the most important part of the post. This is what people will see first and this will determine if the reader will arrive to your site or not.

2. A good post start. If your visitor decides that he likes your site and the topic of your post the first 2 or 3 lines are crucial. If you don’t get right to the point the visitor will leave(that visitor came to read about something but you are rambling about something else).

3. A good post will keep your visitor reading and this means you are on the right path. If a visitor likes your post he will think about reading some other post. Now if this happens you must be ready.

4. Keep your subscription options where everyone can see them. You already have turned a visitor into a reader. You’ll want that reader to come again to so keep your subscription and bookmarking options where everyone can see them.

Traffic or readers? Which one is the best? This discussion can go a long way. I’m going to end here. But any opinions are more than welcome. Don’t be shy and leave a comment.

Popularity: 8% [?]

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