Chapter 17. Ten Ways to Grow Your Audience

In This Chapter

  • Marketing to target readers for your blog

  • Luring new visitors to your blog with incentives

  • Using viral tools to get the word out on your blog

While your blog's profitability shifts from a plan to a reality, you begin to recognize how many new visitors you need for your blog to sustain growth in your business. If you need additional qualified leads or purchases from your blog, you can predict how many new visitors you'll require to get those leads or purchases.

A number of strategies to drive new visitors to your blog are available to you. When you launch your blog, budget some money for applying resources across multiple strategies. Trying each strategy and measuring the impact of those results helps you fine-tune your blogging strategy to grow your traffic.

The following sections describe eleven strategies, not ten. Consider that last one a bonus!

Note

The goal isn't more eyeballs, it's more business! Beware of the get-rich-quick methodologies of growing your blog audience. A lot of get-rich bloggers out there have tons of advice on building readership, but they're not trying to grow a sustainable business — they're actually counting on your one-time purchase of their get-rich-quick information.

There is momentum in large numbers, however. When people scour the Internet looking for resources they can trust, the first thing they look for are resources that already have a large following. After all, if your blog has thousands ...

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