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Doesn't it make you a little mad when you read a story about a person who started blogging and became instantly rich? Could it be that easy; and if it's that easy, why isn't everyone doing it. Well, I'm here to tell you, it might be THAT easy, but it's not that fast!

Blogging is actually not the hardest thing to do. But without traffic, you are just writing to yourself. However, here are a few easy things that will make sure you get visitors to your blog:

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.

The savvy blogger will not only post these helpful comments and suggestions; there is another key to increasing blog traffic. The individual will also post a link to his or her blog when making these posts. Each time that you do this it adds value. The blog owner will receive a Trackback notice of your good faith link, and eventually, the author of the blog will respond by linking back to your blog site as well.

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.

One important consideration for increasing blog traffic is to ensure that visitors have a method of subscribing to the blog via a newsletter or Feedburner subscription option. If visitors are merely able to bookmark the blog, or must locate it again on the Internet, they are far less likely to return than if they have subscribed, and the blog is sent directly to their email addresses. Make sure it is always easy for people to return to your site.

And, always have your RSS button displaying on your site. Many people will put your RSS link into their Yahoo! Membership area and read from there. You want to make sure it's easy for them to find this important link. As you increase blog traffic, you also want to 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.

It is okay to use banners and affiliate links, as long as they don't have the effect of overpowering the blog.

You want to become known as an expert in your field; this will increase blog traffic as well as encourage visitors to return to your site and learn from you.