How To Get More Traffic To Your Blog – Without Any Extra Work

September 15th, 2007 · 12 Comments · 5,343 views

I’m pretty sure all blog owners want more traffic to their blog – More traffic can mean more sales, more clicks on your ads, new clients, higher advertising rates, etc. I’m always looking for new ways to get more people reading my blog. I’ve written before about Getting More People To Read Your Blog – but today I joined a service (it’s totally free) that is going to bring me (hopefully) a lot of traffic – and I don’t really have to do anything…

Basically, you just add a widget (a piece of javascript code) to your blog and it will automatically bring more traffic to your blog – that’s the kind of traffic I like because it’s totally “hands off” :) You can see to the right a screenshot of what the widget looks like – you can also see it in action in the sidebar (between MyBlogLog and the archives). It’s pretty much a traffic exchange – when you join you add your blog (and RSS feed) and then they’ll give you the javascript code you have to paste on your blog. What happens next is that for each pageview (every time someone reads your blog) you’ll get a syndication credit – and for that credit your latest blog post will appear as a link in a widget on another blog in your category. There is a cool video on the site that explains this in more detail. By the way, if you’re selling anything online you should really take a look at this video – it’s really well made and this is what will most likely replace (or at least compliment) the long page sales letters (if you’re familiar with them). But I digress…

If you don’t have a blog you should really think about getting one because there are so many benefits of having a blog. I really like WordPress – you can go to wordpress.org if you want to host it yourself – or wordpress.com to let them host it for you.

So, if you have a blog (or you’re planning on starting one) I recommend that you click here to join to get more traffic to your blog. By the way, there are actually more ways to earn syndication credits besides displaying the widget on your blog – you should just watch the video, it’s explained pretty clearly there.

When you add your blog you have to pick a category – right now I’ve chosen “Business” for this blog, but I’m wondering if I should change it to “Marketing”. What do you think – how would you categorize this blog: business, marketing or something else?

If you run into any problems trying to install the widget let me know and I’ll see if I can help you out.

» Sign up for free and get more traffic to your blog.

Keywords: blogrush, john reese, blog traffic, widget, traffic exchange, javascript, wordpress, video

12 responses so far ↓

One Penny Project // Sep 16, 2007 at 1:02 am

I got the email from John the other day, but decided not to join. For one I don’t want John to know how much traffic I get and where it comes from.

I think the idea is cool, but in order to get traffic in this “exchange” system you will nedd to write titles that make viewers want to click.

Michael
Hannes Johnson // Sep 16, 2007 at 1:11 am

@Michael – OK, you don’t want John to know about your traffic but you’re fine with revealing that to Google?
Besides, I highly doubt that John is analyzing the traffic of all the blogs in the BlogRush network.

I think you should already be writing titles (for your blog posts) that will get people to click — Because that will increase your traffic from organic search engine results, RSS feed subscriptions, Technorati, etc.
Mark Garland // Sep 16, 2007 at 10:46 pm

This is a great idea as a traffic building option for blogs.

I am definately going to look into this more as I know of many others who could benefit from a service like this.

I do agree with Hannes in that you should always be writing titles that entice visitors to click and get more information.
felista // Sep 17, 2007 at 1:33 pm

I shall try this out as i am always on the look out for new ideas.
Susan Suarez // Sep 18, 2007 at 10:01 pm

I’ve just recently added it to my site and I’m amazed as to how many posts I’ve come across talking about this new service!
Hannes Johnson // Sep 18, 2007 at 11:36 pm

@Susan: Yeah, John Reese knows how to create buzz :) – It’s amazing how viral this has become.

…and I’ve already received a ton of traffic through BlogRush. So it’s definitely working.
discovery // Sep 19, 2007 at 4:05 pm

Is it ok if you show the widget on your post?Because if I’m not mistaken you can only show the widget on the sidebar.
Hannes Johnson // Sep 19, 2007 at 11:39 pm

@discovery: Yeah, I saw the note from John Reese – but don’t worry, what you’re seeing in the post is only a screenshot (a graphic) :)
EveryDayFiction.com // Sep 19, 2007 at 11:54 pm

we have installed it too.
But when i click on the links in the widget i find that the sites i sent to don’t have it installed.

i assume that there is paid inclusion but i click 20 links and didn’t find the widget once.
Whats going on here?
Hannes Johnson // Sep 20, 2007 at 7:57 pm

@EveryDayFiction.com: Yeah, I’ve seen this too… John talked about that initially they added a few generic blogs to “fill the quota” – But it might also be that people have a few blogs that they add to BlogRush, but only add the widget to 1 or 2. Those blogs will then earn credits but the credits are divided between all the blogs that were added.

It can also be because right now BlogRush members are getting bonus credits – it’s a “thank you” to the early adopters :)
Chris // Sep 24, 2007 at 12:15 pm

I’ve heard a lot about BlogRush in the last weeks so I think I’ll finally give it a try :)

question: how many visitors did you get from it?
Hannes Johnson // Sep 27, 2007 at 1:34 am

@Chris: I’ve only been using BlogRush for a little over a week + I don’t have the exact stats right now – but I’ve noticed on StatCounter a dozen or so clicks in a very short period of time (hour/couple of hours…).

But what I’ve also noticed is that my RSS subscribers have increased considerably :)

Hannes Johnson dot Com