The key to earning an income from blogging is to increase blog traffic. The more people that visit your blog, the more you'll get them to click on your Google Adsense campaign (or buy affiliate products that you recommend). You'll also have the numbers required by sponsors and advertisers to advertise on your blog, which means more money for you.

Post Quality Content Only

Content is key when it comes to blogging.  If you don't provide valuable content, people will not bookmark your blog or subscribe to your feed.  Also, the visitors to your site will stay for a short time, which will cost you in Google rankings.

Comment on Other Blogs

Networking with other bloggers will help you build traffic to your site. Commenting on their blogs is a great way to do this. First, they will notice you if you leave valuable comments that add value to their own posts.  This may prompt them to view your blog and perhaps link back to it in a future post. Regular readers on that blog may want to visit yours, if they're intrigued by your comments (your signature on the comments can link directly to your blog). This will result in increased traffic to your blog on a daily basis.

Market Your Blog

Blogging is like any other business; you need to market it. You should not market a blog post the same way you do a static website. For instance, you should not submit your posts to free article directories because this will appear as duplicate content in the search engines.  Google and other search engines want you to provide original content, and the discourage copies of the same thing all over the web. Instead, consider pitching a successful blogger in your related field to post your article on their blog. This is called guest blogging. Also, subscribe to blogs that have a higher page rank than yours (and be on the lookout for their requests for guest bloggers). You can also write press releases for your blog periodically. Perhaps you've interviewed a leader in your industry, or you're just announcing the existence of your blog. You should publicize your blog the way you would a service or product based business.

Tweet Your Posts

Social media is important if you want more people to visit your blog. Twitter is a very fast and easy way to get new people to visit your blog daily. You can use twitter as a broadcast tool, meaning, announcing to Twitter users whenever you have new content. Let's say you just completed a post titled: "How to Tweet Posts". You log in to your Twitter account, and type in your post title. Then, you would include a link to the post on your blog and click submit. You can also format your Twitter post so that people searching for articles in a particular category can quickly find your posts. Your followers on Twitter, and other Twitter users, will see your broadcast and visit your site to learn more.

There's no quick and easy way to increase traffic to your blog. Slow and steady growth is key, and expect to work at it for up to six months to see results.

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Daphne Mallory, Esq. is the co-owner of Mallory Writing Services and has written more than 100 articles helping home based business owners and entrepreneurs start and market their business. You can learn more about her here.