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Whenever I read a story about a new blog that was set up, and the owner started to make big money fast, it makes me mad. It's not hard to do, but it's not that instant!

Some people think that the easy part if getting blog traffic is the actually blogging. And they are correct! As you know, without traffic you are just writing words. No traffic equals no money. If you think about it though, there are a few easy things you can do to make sure that your site is visited, and gets you the blog traffic you need to make a living.

First, a good rule is to blog often. Twice a week is the minimum consideration for a blogger who desires to be successful. This will increase the chances that the major search engines will begin indexing the blog.

When blogging, it is helpful to visit the sites of other blog owners, read their blogs, and post suggestions and comments. These comments and suggestions should be useful, rather than just meaningless agreements with previously submitted contributions. Blog owners don't appreciate spam. Your post is much more likely to be accepted if it is meaningful.

Don't JUST comment on posts. It's good practice to link to a good post on someone's blog by posting a link to their blog on your blog (whew, say that three times fast!). When you do this, they get a Trackback notice that you have linked in. If you do this a few times, adding value each time, eventually the other blogger will link back to your site. Soon, you will start to increase blog traffic.

When linking back to blogs, it is much more helpful to link to sites that complement, rather than compete, with yours. For example, if you are writing about dating, you might select a blog that is complementary; a blog that discusses romantic trips or gift suggestions is a good example of a complementary site. Posting to complementary sites avoids undesirable competition, and both blog sites should be able to increase blog traffic.

Another important consideration is to ensure that visitors are able to subscribe to the blog through either a newsletter or Feedburner subscription option. If visitors are required to search the Internet to relocate the blog, or are only able to bookmark it, chances are much less likely that they will return to read it, and your attempt to increase blog traffic will fail. If it is delivered via email, they are much more likely to continue reading the blog.

One small but important thing is th have the RSS button is prominently displayed on the site. This will allow many readers to access the blog from their Yahoo! Membership area. This helps to increase blog traffic, and another benefit is that you can increase your subscriber base for future sales.

It is important to keep the primary goal in mind when designing the blog site. Although the desire is to make money, simply loading the site with banners and affiliate links is going to cause many people to tire of reading quickly, and may actually decrease traffic. Banners are useful, but only if they don't overpower the reader or detract from the blog's quality.

Banners and affiliate links can be a good thing, as long as they are used effectively and don't overpower the blog.

Your goal is not only to increase blog traffic, but also to become known as an expert in your field, so that visitors will want to return to your site to learn from you.

Evelyn Grazini has been in Internet Marketing for more than 5 years, and in Affiliate Marketing for over two years. Her specialty is finding Niche Markets for Affiliate Marketing, and helping others become successful through her blogs and Articles. Find more information at www.bestaffiliateniche.com and Get Your Free Copy of The Niche Code!