You've Got to Love This Kinda Traffic!

Traffic is by and large the most important facet of a blog. Period. No other factor determines the success of your blog like the Traffic that is driven to it. Okay, so you've set up your blog just the way you want it and you are now satisfied. So now what?

It is a fact that no new site can start getting any traffic initially. The tried-and-tested method of waiting for the search-engines to find you and index you will not work. Neither is the costly Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tools and services method an options for us. So do we wait?

Well, no. There are tons of stuff you could do while you wait. You could add toys and widgets to your blog. You could keep adding your blog to new directories. But that isn't really enough is it? That is why some nice people got together and started sites such as blogmad, blogexplosion and blogsoldiers. These are sites that are designed for traffic exchange. A traffic exchange site is where most of the bloggers go for their traffic needs.

In such sites, you surf other blogs from around the globe and earn credits. These credits are then redeemed by the sites in exchange for traffic from other bloggers doing the same thing as you did. Usually the ratio of visits to other blogs by visits to your blog is 2:1. That is, only half the number of credits. But, in blogmad, unlike the other two, the ratio is 1:1.

The quality of this traffic is highly debatable. But in the early days of a blog, this traffic would surely be a welcome addition to the already meager count of visitors. Maybe a few of them might notice you and turn regular readers.

Oh and by the way, you need something to track all the traffic. How else are you gonna know how many people view your blog. There are lots of online tool sites that will help you sort out this problem. Two such sites are given below...

Sitemeter
Statcounter
Needstat

Personally, I use sitemeter but statcounter is just as good (if not better) than sitemeter. Moreover, these are temporary ones. They can only log 100 visits. So if your visitors exceed 100 between checks, use nedstat which keeps a much larger log.