I have been wanting to share how I have promoted Balkhis in the beginning and still am doing it. I will share all the ways that worked for me and which ways I kept on going with and which roads I have slowed down. I will try to go as much depth into it as I can. Don’t worry about the tip number. Usually 13 is a bad one but in this case as you continue reading it will become the best number of your life.
Before I start, I will mention that I launched Balkhis on Feb 1, 2008 and its 6 months old now. I think this website has grown tremendously. I have 538 subscribed readers via feedburner and numerous that are not subscribed. Balkhis has made me $1923.58 in the month of July from my older posts which contains Affiliate links and adsense. Affiliates were a big part of that income. Direct sales were low but affiliates dominated.
Let me share I did I get to this point. Blog is such a broad subject you can promote it just about anywhere.
Promoting your Blogs through Social Media
First Road that I took toward promoting my blog was Social Media. Ofcourse I had content on the site, but that is the default. I went on many different social media services, some I stayed on and some I didn’t. These social media services includes Digg, Stumbleupon, Twitter, Plurk, Entrecard, Mybloglog, and more which I won’t mention otherwise this post will get too long.
Stumbleupon – One that gets you the most traffic. Well atleast it did for me in the beginning. So apparently I was getting visitors in thousands. Not even a big amount were continuing to be loyal readers. Subscriber count wasn’t increasing. But atleast I was getting the words across. Many of the stumble visitors find your site by just clicking the stumble button in the toolbar and it increases the bounce rate also if you don’t have a targetted user. So it cuts down your adsense revenue. Therefore I don’t stumble alot of my own posts. I let others take the initiative. I have made mistakes with stumble in the past with my other sites by stumbling alot of my own pages and got under the radar. They didn’t ban me but banned the site and I had to talk to them to get it out.
My Advice to people who use stumble: It is a very good tool to get alot of exposure. Specially for contests and others, but it won’t convert to alot of regular readers. Ofcourse learn from my mistake and don’t overdo your own site. Let others stumble it for you if they find it interesting. Stumble is a keeper for special events such as contests and other.
Digg – Digg is definately a keeper. Why? Well because you can digg your own new story if you think other people will be interested in it. Like I will with this story. I don’t digg all of my posts but occationally I do digg my posts. The main advantage that I saw from Digg is the SEO. If you haven’t noticed Digg tends to rank well in Search Engines. I use alot of long-tailed keywords, so if someone searches the main keyword Digg will pop up and through that users will read my site. This actually gain loyal readers and increase your subscriber count. Ofcourse if your post hit the mainpage than you will get alot of traffic. I haven’t wrote one that hit the first page. Maybe this will be one? With your help 
(Add me as your Friend)
My Advice to people who use Digg – Fellas, definately go ahead and use this social media site. It is very good to promote your blog for obvious reasons I mentioned above. Once again don’t abuse it just use it.
Entrecard – Entrecard was a big hype when I joined it. Heck I even recieved some nice traffic from it and I wrote a review with tips. But it didn’t quiet work out for me in a long run. In the beginning when I wanted more and more users. I took the route to Entrecard. It gained me some readers that are still here on Balkhis who comment regularly. It was just a time eater. You would have to spend that 30 minute constantly to drop cards otherwise you won’t get drop. So this was more like a traffic exchange system. When I stopped dropping cards while I was in Seattle for a week, other people stopped dropping on my site. Therefore I stopped period! Now I am thinking about even removing the entrecard icon. It will be soon gone when I redesign Balkhis. Its a while away…
My Advice to Readers – Definately use it in the beginning. But don’t make it a habit because its not worth your time. In the beginning you want exposure but now that I have 538 readers its not worth my time. I’d rather write quality content.
MyBlogLog – A service from yahoo that displays your recent readers on your blog. I have their widget on Balkhis. But do I use anything else but the widget now? Not really. I kinda got to know some people from there, but not that much beneficial. Once again, I did everything to gain the exposure, but this was just another boat that I abandoned.
My Advice to users – First Read my review of Mybloglog. It is definately a good tool in the beginning because more people see your blog but now I only use it to use the widget. If you want to get more exposure than thats a way to go.
Twitter – One of the major social media that I put sometime in. Well I put alot of time in to following people. If you haven’t seen my twitter profile, I am following 19k people. Well I was trying a technique there. Well to this day Twitter brings me a good chunk of traffic. I am using Twitter Feed to display an excerpt of my recent blog posts so my followers can see it. Which does bring in alot of traffic. I have over 1500 followers on Twitter. Recently in the update my twitter profile also got a PR 4.
My Advice to users – Definately use twitter as it is still one of the largest microblogging site right now. Ofcourse Plurk will catch up soon but until than twitter it is. It has been bringing me alot of traffic so it is a good one. Also it got me some good chunk of readers.
Plurk – Last in the social media list, but definately not the least is Plurk. I am on Plurk alot recently. Why? because I am making alot of new friends and alot of new contacts. This is the best place to find out about new stuff. Share your new posts and others. It is not as big as twitter thats why the potential is even higher. I have been getting alot of designing contracts via Plurk as well as new loyal readers at Balkhis. My ebook did so well and I credit Plurk because alot of my friend wrote to their friends on Plurk about my ebook on How to make a Magazine Style theme in Wordpress. It has recieved over 2k downloads so far. Another good thing that came out of Plurk was that I have been getting alot of natural backlinks from other people who I met on Plurk who now mention me on their blogs. I think it is a must for everyone. I have wrote a Plurk 101 Guide. No advices here. Just join.
That concludes our list of Promoting via Social Media. Definately add me on all the social medias that you see me as.
Promoting your Blog on Forums
When I launched Balkhis, I added the link into all my forum profiles. Signature, Avatar, Homepage and others. Sites like Digitalpoint, Bloggeries are excellent. There are many more forums but not alot will just let you write about your site. You have to put some content of your site. Or even better start a viral thread with your link somewhere in the post. More people reply the better it is for you. Forums help alot in SEO as well. Most forums have very high rankings and they play a good role in the SEO of your site. Alot of users spam forums with their links and thats not the way to go. You will get banned from the forum, and I have seen cases where people get penaltised in Google for posting your links on forum alot. If you just want traffic, a good way is to use shortcut urls. Such as tinyurl.
Promoting your Blog on Blog Directories
You can always submit your sites to general directories but you know niche directories are better. Blog Directories are a good way to begin……………………………
These are just a few tips. Read the full post to see the best one in my experience. [Digg this post if you like it]
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
