I’m not going to write a long explanation about this since I think you’re going to look straight to the list anway. This list, a compilation of many different techniques and levels, is meant to be a guideline for marketing for any site, especially blogs. Some of these are things you can easily do. In fact, it’s even possible to execute all of it. So without wasting anymore of your time, here are 30 tips for exploding your blog/website’s traffic.

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Popularity: 35% [?]

I’m pretty exited in what’s going to happen in the next few weeks. What’s going to happen you ask? A blog flipping contest is going to happen, that’s what!

Quick Overview

Other than my own individual site-flipping project, I am currently involved in another project. Over at Site Flip U (a blog made by an old friend, Bryan Clark), there is a huge blog flipping competition that is going to start very soon. The competition consists of different teams with 5 people in each team. Once the competition starts, all of the teams have 45 days to create and sell a blog. Whoever sells their blog for the biggest sale-price wins.

What Exactly Do We Win?

Well, here’s the thing to all of this that makes it interesting. To enter the contest, a team has to pay up $25 for an entrance fee. All of the entrance fees will then go in a pot, and whoever wins the contest will win that pot of cash. As of writing this post, there are 4 teams that are set up. Do the math, and that’s $100 up for grabs, minus the $25 that my team has paid for.

But that’s not all. Don’t forget about the profit made by selling your team’s blog. So that means that even if there’s only 1 winning team, everyone still gets some cash from selling their own blog. Oh, and did I mention that all of the losing teams will have to send over 10% of their blog sale earnings to the winning team? Yup. More cold hard cash for the winners.

My Team

When the news about this competition first broke out, people everywhere were trying to get in on Bryan Clark’s team (including myself). But unfortunately for us, Bryan had already started drafting his team even before he published the post about the competition! So my hopes were gone in getting a guaranteed win since Bryan basically makes a living flipping blogs. Then I tried Joe. When I got his reply, he had already made his team.

But then there was Ryan. Yes, good ole’ friend Ryan Shamus who now also flips blogs for a living. When I contacted him to see if he already got his team made, I was told that there were still a few spots open. So I got in, and so did 3 other people. Meet our team, “The A-Team”:

• Me (Co-Captain)
• Ryan (Team Captain)
• Justin Kander
• R.J. Adams
• Paul de la Warr

Some of you guys might not know the rest of my team members, but the only thing you need to know is that they all have mad site-flipping skills! We’re ready to kick some a$$! If you’re interested in joining this competition, hurry up and get a team started! You have just a few hours left before the doors close for new teams. Read this post to learn how to get started or to see the official rules on how the competition works, and here’s the list of teams that are participating. Other than that, I’ll wish the other teams good luck! You guys will need it.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Depending on the blogs that you read, you might already know that blog flipping is becoming more and more popular as a means of earning “easy” money online. A few months ago, I showed you how to make $50+ a day by flipping domains. I’ve sold domains quite a few domains for $30-$80 each, which is a great ROI from the original purchase of $7-$8. Now, I’m going to try out site flipping.

I’m not really going to go over how to do it step by step since there are already a few great blog posts out there on how to do it. Here’s one from TheNetFool, The University Kid, and SiteFlip U. I’d recommend you check out Site Flip U because the whole blog is about site-flipping. Oh, and guess who the blogger is behind the site? Bryan Clark… yup, the same guy who brought you One Man’s Goal (and sold it for $8,500 within a few months). Anway, here’s the main idea of site-flipping:

1. Buy a domain to make a site, or buy a pre-existing website
2. Get a bit traffic to the site
3. Sell and make money!

It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Again, it all depends on the site you make and how you make it.

Anyway, I’m already working on my first blog-flip project that I’ll be planning to sell in the next few days (maybe weeks). I’ll post updates once in a while, and I’ll post up the results of how much I’ve made. For this project, I’m looking to get around $200+ for the site. I won’t be telling you what the domain and site is yet, so make sure you subscribe to keep up on my progress.

For those of you who have already done site-flipping, how did your first sale go? Did you make more than you expected or less? Tell your story in the comments below because I’d love to hear it. I’m pretty exited with my first project.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Have you ever wanted to just be able to talk to one of the “A-List” bloggers about your blog/site and ask them to tell you how you can improve it? You have probably already tried emailing them and saying things like “how can I get more traffic to my site?” or “how come I am only getting 10-20 hits a day to my site?”. Then all you got was a short response that didn’t answer your question. Or maybe they didn’t even reply back at all. I know this because I was in this position when I first started blogging and making money online…

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Popularity: 8% [?]

Tired of seeing the plain old Google homepage that has nothing but a white background? My homepage is not Google (fortunately), but if yours is, check out HomePagle. Don’t get fooled by its name but HomePagle is a really cool service that serves a very useful purpose: customizing your Google homepage with any background image of your choice.

When visiting HomePagle, you’ll see right away that you can either upload your own image or choose one of the ready-made images from many different categories. From cars and movies, to male/female celebrities and sports, you’ll find something that will suit you and your new homepage. If you can’t find anything from their gallery go ahead and upload your own. Anything looks better than a plain white background right?

Popularity: 7% [?]

Over at 45n5, Mark has posted up a helpful video going over how to make your site “sticky”. When he says sticky, he is talking about the bounce rate of your visitors: how long they stay and how frequently they come back. Making a sticky site depends on many things from its structure to the content and sources you provide. As long as you implement these tips, you’ll have people coming back to your site everyday without a problem.

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Original Video On YouTube

Popularity: 3% [?]

About a couple months ago, I posted up a poll asking you and other readers what your site’s leading source of traffic is. The poll has been running for a while now, but I forgot to put it up on the sidebar for a few weeks. 101 votes should be enough to get significant numbers and results. So here it is below.

Out of this 101, 36% of you said that your main source of traffic came from search engines and I would guess that it was mostly from Google. Meanwhile, referral traffic came in second with 29% of all votes. Just to reiterate, this category of refferal traffic is composed of traffic you get from other sites that include other blogs, StumbleUpon, social media, forums, etc. Oh, and as you can see, nobody that participated in this poll uses PPC marketing to promote their blog (or other type of sites). Then there are those who polled “Other”. Not exactly sure what that would be, but I guess that’s my mistake for putting it up as an option.

What Some Of You Said

Here’s what a few of you said from the original post.

Wayne Liew -

Since I enjoyed bloghopping, my traffic will be largely from other blogs resulting from the links of my comments and also my MyBlogLog avatar.

Blacksky -

I really try to have the more sources possible… from search engine to social bookmarking but google search engine seems the one that give me the highest conversion . and yahoo search engine is almost at 100% of conversion… pretty sad that nobody use it. Mybloglog is good to spread the word.

Doctorfox -

I get a few from Google and Stumble upon, but the most comes from the Software industry where people want to download my software for free. Also I think there should be a difference between regular traffic and targeted traffic.

So What Can This Poll Teach Us?

Well, here’s the thing. I did expect the search engine category to top other sources of traffic in this survey, but it’s not the one I wanted to see. Instead, I would have loved to see the referral category to top all the rest. Why? Well, if you were one of those people who polled for referral traffic, I would like to let you know that you are a very good internet marketer. Being a good internet marketer shows that your site can live without Google and other search engines. To those that did poll for search engines as their leading source of traffic, I’m afraid to say that you will have a hard time having a successful online business whether it’s your blog or any other type of site. Just imagine that Google never existed. You’re site’s income would never exist too.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Looking at my inbox today, I received one of Yaro Starak’s newsletters. In it, he shared to us a really useful video that he said we MUST watch. So I did. Honestly, it was one of the best video (actually it’s a series of videos) that I have ever seen. What is it about? Well, it’s about your site’s design and the way you are losing revenue and conversions from it. The creator of the video, Andy from StomperBlog.com and the co-founder of StomperNet.net, develops the video with cutting-edge technology that you HAVE to watch the full 32 minutes of it. He uses high-quality video production tools and a research software that analyzes the way people look at websites (or anything in particular). Basically, this video has a lot of information that you need to know about. As of writing this, there are currently 3 videos so far in the series. And they are all free.So here’s the video - Click Fu: How To Double Your Conversion. If you want to see the other videos, go ahead and check out the Stomper Blog. Don’t forget to make those design changes!

Popularity: 2% [?]