Here’s a proven old school way to get traffic to your web site or blog. I personally used this method when I started DevArticles – and it helped me get the site up to 20,000 unique visitors a day before selling it.
This method is simple, boring but extremely effective. All of the computer hardware review websites still use this technique as their number one way to drum up traffic, so that should be enough to get you to consider using it.
Here’s how it works:
- Use Technorati to find 20-100 blogs that are similar to yours in that they post about the same or complimentary topics that you do.
- Visit each blog and find the first name and email address of the person who runs the site.
- You can either use your normal email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, Hotmail, etc) or a professional email marketing tool (such as SendStudio) to send out a list of emails. I wouldn’t recommend using your normal email client because you want to send 20-100 emails at a time, and there’s only so many emails you can stuff into your BCC and CC fields.
- What you want to do is send each of the bloggers a brief email every time you add a relevant, interesting post to your blog. Something like this:
Hi [First Name],
Just thought I’d shoot you a quick email about a post I just made on my blog. It’s called “Getting Website Traffic the Old School Way” and you can read it here.
Thanks,
Mitch - I really recommend using each of the bloggers first names in your email if you’re going to do a mass mailing. You don’t want your emails to sound like spam. I also recommend sending your emails as text to avoid formatting problems in web-based email clients which a lot of bloggers use.
There are a few gray spots with this technique – mainly that you’re sending emails to people who haven’t asked to receive them – so if you can, before you start sending out your emails get to know each of the bloggers by sending them an introductory email or by leaving useful comments on their blog. You can also include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of your emails but that makes them seem robotic.
There’s a fine line between sharing a useful blog post and pissing someone off, so keep that in mind if you do decide to use this technique. I’m currently building up my list of emails and getting to know each of the bloggers I will be sending the emails to before I put this technique into action on my blog.
This post was “guest blogged” my me, Mitchell Harper. I also run my own blog where I focus on tips to increase your website traffic to your blog. I have been online for over 10 years and run a successful software company called Interspire.
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