10 Little-known Ways to Get Traffic to Your Blog

This guest post is by Onibalusi Bamidele of YoungPrePro.com.

Getting traffic to a blog is the major challenge a blogger faces. Many have read about various traffic generation strategies, but they find it difficult to get traffic to their blogs because these tips are no longer as effective as they once were. For example, guest blogging used to be very effective, but now that a lot of people are doing it and talking about it, it’s no longer as effective as it used to be.

Here are ten little-known tips to get traffic that I’ve discovered from my own experience. Implementing all ten tactics at the same time isn’t that effective; the way to get the best from these tactics is to choose two or three tactics that you think you like, and focus all your efforts on them for a period of time. You will be amazed at the results you will get.

1. Secret blogging clubs

A major and underutilized way to get traffic to a blog is by joining secret blogging groups or clubs. Very few people are using this particular method, but it can be very effective if you focus your efforts on it.

Secret blogging clubs consists of a group of bloggers with one aim: to help each other spread the word about their blogs with a view to generating traffic for each others’ blogs. The concept is simple: you join a club with around 50 members, share each others’ post with your fans and followers (around once a week), and this will generate more traffic, since it exposes your blog to a wider audience.

You dont need to worry about spamming and the likes, because groups like these are heavily moderated. Also, it is not necessary to share every link that is posted to the group—you only need to share the links related to your niche, that you feel are valuable.

A great example of an effective secret blogging club is the DailyBlogTips Retweet Club by Daniel Scocco. A post of mine that went viral through a secret blogging club was my guest post on getting more blog comments—it presently has 97 comments and 87 retweets on a site that averages 15 retweets and 40 comments per post.

2. Social blogmarking sites

Another underutilized but effective way to get traffic to your blog is by making use of social blogmarking sites. Even though this concept looks similar to social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit, it operates differently.

A social blogmarking site can be useful irrespective of whom you are and your status on the network. All you need to do is write your best post and give it the best title. Submit it to your favorite social blogmarking site and, if it’s voted onto the site’s homepage, it will send a stream of traffic to your blog. The articles that make it to the front page are not determined by the authors who submit them, or dependent on the domain name of the author’s site. The quality and title of the article is all that matters.

I also respect social blogmarking because of the quality of traffic it sends. The visitors that come from the blogmarking site I’m involved with (Blokube) spend an average of ten minutes on my blog. Presently, this is one of my best traffic sources, as far as traffic quality is concerned.

3. Ning communities

Getting traffic to your blog through Ning communities is a great way to get traffic to your blog, yet few bloggers use this method. I learned this formula from Kim Roach and it keeps on sending me traffic, even months after I use it.

Like blogging, a lot of people have a version of themselves or their business on Ning.com. You can create a portal in the form of yourusername.ning.com, which can also be a great way to get traffic to your blog.

All you need to do is help community members with their questions, and reference your blog if necessary. There is also a place where you can submit your blog posts for the whole community to see—another great traffic source. If you plan on doing this, you don’t necessarily need to write new posts: you can submit some of your old posts with a link back to your blog.

Not all Ning communities bring results. Some communities will send you zero visitors, while some will send you hundreds, so it’s important to be wise when choosing a community you want to join. I have discovered that what works is to make sure you join a Ning community that’s related to your niche, and has over 5000 members.

4. Free, no-catch ebooks

This is another powerful but underutilized tactic to get more traffic to your blog. I didn’t use this strategy until recently, but when I did, I got awesome results.

To use this technique, write as many free reports as you can. A report is a simple, seven-to-ten-page ebook. Make sure you embed links to your blog in the ebook, and encourage readers to visit your blog. Then, distribute the ebook to free ebook directories, post it to your favorite forums, ask other bloggers to help you share it, and do as much as you can to spread the word about it.

What has worked best for me is sharing it on my favorite Internet marketing forums, like Digital Point Forums. After utilizing this particular strategy, I saw a spike in my traffic: I got an additional 60-80 visitors per day for some days, and over 100 new blog subscribers.

5. Content syndication

I’ve noticed that a lot of people are not using this particular strategy, but it can be highly effective to syndicate your blog content to big online portals in your niche. Most of these portals are visited by countless people every day, and syndicating with them will go a long way to give your blog a traffic boost.

Great examples of some of the best content syndication sites I’ve found are Alltop and The Daily Brainstorm.

6. Blogging collaboration

It pains me to see that this particular traffic strategy is not better utilized. In 2010 I collaborated with a lot of well-known and respected bloggers to give my readers some entrepreneurial advice.

I was able to work with 24 successful online entrepreneurs, who contributed to the post, and shared it with their Twitter followers and Facebook fans when it went live. This sent me double my usual number of daily visitors and, eventually, more subscribers and followers. It is also one of the most shared posts on my blog.

Collaboration is a great tool and every wise blogger will use it sometime. Try to get some of the top bloggers in your niche to contribute to your blog; once the contribution is live, encourage them to share it.

7. Online podcasts

This is another great and underutilized way to get traffic to your blog. Pat Flynn from Smart Passive Income is very popular for his podcasts, and has been able to build a successful blog based on this and other methods.

While the podcasting technology is not new, very few people utilize it. Yet you can get more eyeballs to your content by creating a great and informative podcast relating to your blog. Submit it to the iTunes podcast directory and as more and more people search for podcasts relating to your topic area, they will end up discovering yours and, if it’s good, might end up visiting your blog.

8. Online groups

This particular approach is almost as old as some of the biggest websites on the Internet, so I’m amazed to see that very few people use it. I didn’t realize the power of this tactic until the day I woke up to see a spike in my website traffic generated by a LinkedIn group.

A lot of people still congregate and look for solutions to questions in online groups; many of these groups are also highly respected by Google, so they are indexed and ranked quickly. Thus, you have a great potential of getting traffic to your blog by utilizing good groups. The post I published to the LinkedIn group I mentioned attracted over 200 visitors from that group in the week it was published.

Two of the most popular online groups are Yahoo groups and LinkedIn groups—check them out.

9. Authority sites

I didn’t realize how powerful authority sites were until I interviewed successful entrepreneur Raymond Lei. He wrote a Wikipedia page in which a link to my interview with him was listed as one of the resources. This link sends me continuous traffic from Wikipedia even today.

You can use this strategy with some of the biggest websites on the Internet; since most of these sites find it easy to rank for competitive keywords in the search engines, you may find it easy to get traffic from them. For example, you can read and review some of the top books in your niche on Amazon while including a link back to your blog. Or interview the top bloggers in your niche, then include your link as a resource in their Wikipedia page.

10. Webrings

This is also a very effective traffic generation strategy that many people overlook.

A Webring is a collection of websites that are linked to each other. A major advantage of using a Webring is that it also helps you get high quality links which means both short term direct traffic and long term search engine traffic for you. Probably the most popular Webring is Webring.com.

These are my favorite little-known traffic tactics. What are yours? How have you got traffic to your blog? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Visit YoungPrePro.com to learn how Onibalusi makes over $3000 online monthly and how he gets over 10,000 visitors to his blog every month. Download his guest blogging guide to learn how to get thousands of visitors from guest blogging. Also, make sure you follow him on twitter @youngprepro.

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My Journey to Blogging Celebrity

This guest post is by Shawn Tyler Weeks of 344 Pounds.

In January of 2009, I weighed 344.2 pounds.  In July of 2009, I weighed 244 pounds.  I eventually reached my lowest recorded weight in my adult life in early 2010 when I weighed in under 200 pounds.  Today, I weigh a little bit more than 200, but also carry a lot more muscle on my frame.

In just about six months I changed my life forever. But my body wasn’t the only thing that underwent a transformation.

When I started my journey to lose weight by counting calories, I also started my very first blog:  344 Pounds.  It was a way to keep me accountable for my weight to friends and family members,  even though I didn’t tell them about it.  In fact, nobody read the blog for months.  I didn’t advertise it, didn’t know how to, and honestly expected myself to fail with the weight loss attempt (for the 1,353th time) and the blog would just die.  But for once, I didn’t fail.  I lost weight.

And the blog didn’t die.

The blog

On the blog I put videos of me, shirtless, at 300+ pounds, every Wednesday, plus a picture of my scale and called it “Wednesday Weigh-in Results.”  It was and is a way to hold myself accountable—almost like scaring myself to lose weight.  And while it’s not scary any more, I still hold myself accountable for my progress when I post my weight, plus pictures, every single Wednesday on the blog as I continue to try to transform my body (more muscles, less fat!).  I haven’t missed a Wednesday weigh-in result, not even when my dad died about six months ago.

As my weight loss progressed and I kept doing my weekly weigh-in results, I also started added other posts during the week.  The time involved was absolutely ridiculous and wasn’t being read by anybody and I’m still not quite sure why I posted so much as nobody was trying to read it, but I kept posting regardless day in, day out.  I’d share tips on losing weight, workout routine, the foods I was eating that week (counting calories on the blog, basically), and so on, two or thee days a week.

Eventually, somebody showed up to read what I was writing and watch me shrink! While I had to blog in darkness for a couple of months, that all changed in March.  I was featured on a consumer blog called Consumerist, after I wrote to its editor expressing my views on counting calories after I’d read a piece on the site that infuriated me by promoting some weight-loss gimmick. That email led to a plug for my blog on Consumerist, plus numerous follow-ups after that as they began to follow my journey.

Being featured on Consumerist was the start of a lot of exposure in “new” and traditional media.

Growing exposure

After Consumerist, I was in Newsweek.

I was contacted by Kate Dailey, a reporter for Newsweek, who wanted to set up a phone interview to ask me a variety of questions about my plans on keeping the weight off down the road. I had (and still have!) a full-time job, and I wasn’t prepared to ask her to work late just to interview me, so I did the interview on my lunch break one Wednesday afternoon. I didn’t tell her I was in my car at the time of the interview, but I was literally sitting outside of a barbeque restaurant in Columbia, SC, in my old jeep, being interviewed by Newsweek.  After the interview, I ate lunch and went back to work.

Consumerist and Newsweek gave me a strong following.  I can’t recall exact figures, but I was soon up to several hundred “fans” (I call them friends) on Facebook, and traffic was at several hundred visitors a day.

An interesting thing about the media coverage I’ve gained, since the start of the blog until today, is that while a spike of traffic will occur, it will never subside near its previous levels. It’s a simple concept, really: 10,000 people can visit your site in a day, and 9,700 of those will visit it once or a few times, and never return. You’ll be left with a few dedicated new readers, as I was, depending on the quality and relevancy of the traffic your site was exposed to.

My media exposure really started to accelerate after Newsweek.  While I’m not sure how the local media heard about me, I was invited be part of a live interview by the local CBS news affiliate for the morning show.

I don’t think I was as nervous on my wedding day as I was the day I walked into the state-of-the-art, multi-million-dollar satellite CBS studio one very early Tuesday morning.  I was incredibly scared about being on television and it showed.  Remember, I was nearly 350 pounds just a year ago, so I wasn’t exactly overflowing with self-confidence. But I was invited back several times to share tips about losing weight, andaAs I got more and more television experience, I became relaxed. The last time I was on television, it was laid back, casual, and I wasn’t nervous in the slightest. I walked in, made myself comfortable in the studio, and waited for my turn to step onto the live set.

The morning show, while a wonderful experience and something I’ll hopefully do again soon, didn’t bring much in terms of traffic. While I was able to plug my blog on the air and appeal to many listeners, there just aren’t a whole lot of people watching the morning news at 6 a.m.

What did bring a surge in traffic, however, was a taped segment I did with a reporter from the same CBS station.  This segment also focused on weight loss, but specifically on my realistic approach to weight loss.  The reporter, Michael Benning, followed me to my gym and a local burger shop. He filmed me working out and then shortly afterward eating a big, juicy, greasy cheeseburger. This segment, unlike my live interviews, was broadcast at 11 p.m. (with 20,000 people watching, he estimated).

In addition, my segment was plugged on the CBS station throughout the night during the regular CBS primetime television lineup, enticing people to tune in and hear my story.

I don’t know the exact number of people that watched my television segment, but the increase in traffic was considerable, and I know of at least one person that saw it:  Governor of South Carolina, Mark Sanford. As I live in the capital city of my state, the governor (Mark Sanford) actually watched the interview from the Governor’s mansion and personally wrote and mailed me a letter congratulating me.

Also, that same CBS interview (and a corresponding transcript) was put on their website, which was then syndicated to other affiliates and cities.  My mother actually called me in Charleston (about 120 miles away) when she saw my story come up on her local CBS station. Apparently, my story spread up and down the east coast at various CBS stations.

That was a good week in terms of gathering more exposure for me, the blog, and my effort to spread the word about counting calories.  I was an instant celebrity around Columbia after this exposure and that opened the door to many opportunities.  For instance, I now have a great relationship with Anne, the owner of a local athletic club.  One of her friends told her about me and Anne invited me to come in and talk to members about my journey.  Today, I have a few free memberships at her luxury athletic club for myself and family members.  We’re also discussing the potential for me to become trainer in her club starting in 2011.

Later, well into 2010, I would do another interview with CBS and Michael Benning.

The media coverage up to this point, the beginning of 2010, was modest.  It grew my site, got me some advertising requests (which I turned down, as most went against my core beliefs of counting calories), and gained me some true, real friends, plus thousands of followers.  I was impressed, happy, and content with blogging away in my little corner with a few thousand followers.

The media explosion

Then, I was featured on the homepage of CNN, and on air on CNN as they plugged their website. The CNN anchor mentioned “an incredible weight loss story” was on their homepage and recommended that viewers log on to CNN.com to check it out.

I was standing in line at the bank with about half a dozen other people when I saw their homepage and my face come on the plasma television hanging from the ceiling.  Nobody noticed it was me until I blurted out, “Oh wow, that’s me.” Indeed, it was.  Albeit, a much smaller me.

I received 100+ emails within minutes of that promotion.  Traffic was coming in, according to Google Analytics, at a rate of a thousand visitors every 30 minutes or so.  It was intense.  I remember constantly refreshing my Facebook page, and looking at all the new fans showing up.  The count was increasing by a hundred new fans every hour or so, which was impressive considering they had to first go to 344 Pounds, then like me enough to want to become a fan on Facebook.

CNN, much like the other media mentions, brought me hundreds of encouraging emails (by far the most of any plug I’ve done), and I’m still determined to respond to every single one. I receive a lot of emails through my blog: mostly positive, and mostly people opening up their hearts with me. I read about people who have been 50, 150, 300 pounds overweight their entire lives and how they’re depressed and sick of being so obese, and how my story gave/gives them hope for the future.

These emails deserve to be responded to.  I have 218 still needing a reply.

The road ahead

If Newsweek, CBS, and Consumerist didn’t solidify the longevity of my blog, CNN did.  All told, a few days after the initial plug and the link on the homepage of CNN disappeared, my blog had received well over 50,000 visitors and countless links, new fans, subscribers, advertising requests, and so on.  I made some money from it by plugging a couple of companies I truly believed in (and which didn’t conflict with counting calories), but I declined most offers as they focused on losing weight with fads, gimmicks, and diets.

Short-term money isn’t a good thing if you sell out your core beliefs to get it.  After about 22 months of blogging, I’ve recently secured a very well known, big sponsor: MyFitnessPal. MyFitnessPal is free calorie-counting website where you can track your calories on the web, as well as your iPhone or Android phone.  It is, without a doubt, something I support 100% and could recommend (and have!) to my mother.

Since CNN in early 2010, I’ve done the occasional television interview and various interviews for large fitness-related websites.  I’ve also done some interviews on different blogs.  Another notable media gig I did this year as for the powerhouse Clear Channel on a top-40 station in Columbia, SC, during rush hour. It lasted about three months and involved me driving down to the radio station one night a week and pre-recording several “Tyler’s weight loss tips” sessions.

These sessions involved me and the DJ in a little skit, where the DJ set me up with a question.  He’d ask, “So Tyler, I’ve heard that counting calories is the best way to lose weight.  Is that true, and if so, why?” and I’d give a short, quick, helpful reply.  These clips last about 30 seconds and a different one was played every weekday during rush hour.

Heading into 2011, I have follow up interviews lined up with various publications, and I’ve already been in touch with the morning show anchor for the local CBS station that I had my original interviews with. We should be setting up something soon for another interview around the start of the New Year.

I’m flattered by all the attention I’ve received over the last couple of years.  And while you may think that my ego has become inflated or that I think too highly of myself, think again.  As my wife says, I still have to take out the trash and change my daughter’s diaper regardless how “famous” I am.  I had to take out the trash when I had 100 Facebook fans, and I’ll have to do it when I have 100,000.

Of course, there’s no guarantee I ever will.  It’ll be a fun journey though, regardless.

Shawn Tyler Weeks lost nearly 150 pounds by counting calories in a little over a year.  He blogged his entire journey on 344 Pounds and continues to do so as he hopes to transform his body again in 2011.

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Put Out the Welcome Mat: How to Run a Blog Contest with Panache

This guest post is by Nathalie Lussier.

Whether you’ve got a new blog or want to jump start your existing blog, you have two options: 1) keep blogging and hope it pans out, 2) try something different.

In this post you’ll learn how to run a blog contest with panache. Just like you want to organize a great party that everyone continues to talk about weeks after, your blog contest should create a great experience for everyone involved.

People love participating in contests: it makes them feel like they’re a part of something special, whether they win or not.

Before we dive in, let’s look at how running a giveaway on your blog can shift your blog into high gear.

Nurture what you’ve got and watch it grow

Ever notice how people who are good at taking care of what they have tend to get more of it? For example, people who are great at saving and investing money tend to make more of it? The same is true when it comes to taking care of your audience.

A new way to look at blog contests is to consider them as:

1. a way to thank your existing readers for their loyalty
2. a way to bring in fresh new readers.

Most of the advice on contests is about creating a buzz and getting more traffic to your blog. But I think it’s even more important to remember that, with a contest, you’re saying thank you to your existing audience.

Contests are also the perfect way to ask people what their challenges are, which will give you an idea of what topics to cover in future blog posts.

Contests create social proof.

If your blog is brand new and you want to build up social proof right off the bat, then consider setting up a simple contest. You will get more comments, social media props, and testimonials than you thought possible.

Giveaways increase engagement.

Ever publish a blog post only to hear crickets chirping? Yuck. No fun.

With a giveaway you’re sure to get lots of responses—if you do it right. The trick is to make your giveaways simple to enter, so you remove the barrier to entry and get more people to participate. The more people participate, the more likely they are to come back for more of your content and become loyal fans.

Start a buzz.

How do you know when something is creating a buzz? When everyone starts talking about it. People love sharing things that are useful, relevant, and fun. If you build your contest with these ideas in mind you’re going to give people something worth spreading.

Share your products or services in a fun, non-spammy way.

One creative way to use contests and giveaways is to offer your services or products as the prize. Structuring a contest around what you offer is a great way to make people aware of your products and services. If people like what you’ve got and they don’t win, they may decide to purchase.

Create a contest with panache

Now let’s look at how to structure your contest to ensure it’s a win-win for everyone involved.

1. To get sponsors or to go it alone?

Depending on the size of your blog, you might be approached by sponsors to offer their products as the contest giveaway. My rule is that you must feel like it’s a good fit for your audience, and stand behind the product, if you’re to give away an external party’s product.

For one giveaway, I mailed out two of my favorite books, so there was a values match there.

You could also approach sponsors that you think would be a good match for your audience. However, like Darren demonstrated in a previous article, it’s actually easier to give away your own products or services if you have them.

Delivering digital products is much easier than following up with someone to ask for their mailing address, and it’s also a great way to debut a new product or service.

2. Keep it simple, sweetie.

The easiest way to invite people to participate in a giveaway is to have them comment on a blog post. The easier you make it for them, the more likely they are to participate. You want people to participate and get excited about the contest.

I also recommend emailing your newsletter and directing them to the contest blog post so they can enter, even if they haven’t visited your blog in a while.

3. Add a social media component.

It’s easy to assume that people will be so excited about your giveaway that they’ll be shouting it from the rooftops. But unless you ask them to spread the word, they probably won’t. We’re all busy and after someone enters a contest they’ll probably be off to the next thing. One way to get the most bang for your contest buck is to build social media sharing into the contest.

Ask participants to tweet, Facebook like, or blog your contest for extra points. If it’s just a matter of clicking a tweet button, they’re a lot more likely to take action.

Be clear that sharing on social media sites (using a hashtag so you can track it, for example) will give them a greater chance to win.

4. Ask people to get creative.

If you’re offering a more highly priced, valuable prize, and you know people will be chomping at the bit to get it, then make them get creative.

The perfect example of this is Marie Forleo’s contest, where she gave away a seat to her live event in New York City, complete with accommodations. Marie was very clear that she wanted to get people to take action in a way that would get them moving toward their goals, whether they won or not. So she fashioned the contest in a way that rewarded people who filmed creative videos. This got many people to post their very first video online!

5. Decide on the winning criteria.

Often the easiest way to identify your winner is to select someone randomly, using a number generator. That may be the most egalitarian way of giving out a prize, but I think you’ll get a lot more engagement if you set selection criteria. For instance, you might let readers know that you’ll pick the response that’s most passionate.

You can also set up your contests using a two-step process, if you’re having a hard time choosing a winner and the prize is substantial. First, gather the contestants and have them comment or film videos, then set up the finalists in a poll. In this case, the numbers will clear show who the winner is. Having a poll will also get the participants to share with their networks to gather votes, thus bringing in more visitors.

Being clear that you’ll be the final decision-maker is just as important as the rest of the criteria I’ve mentioned here.

6. Keep to a timeline

One of the biggest mistakes I see new bloggers make is to have a contest every week. Unless your blog is set up to be a contest blog, you want to build contests in as a fun surprise and not a regular occurrence.

The problem with too many contests is that you’re essentially bribing your readers instead of giving them good value through your content. I recommend running contests once per quarter.

Most giveaways run best with a deadline that’s about a week away. This gives people enough time to enter and to share the contest with friends. The timeframe’s also a short, so it won’t get lost or forgotten on a to-do list.

Your contest giveaway action plan

Here’s a quick recap that you can use as a checklist to plan your first (or next!) contest:

1. Choose your purpose: good will, buzz, engagement, launch.
2. Decide whether you’ll go with a sponsor, give something you possess/buy, or offer a product or service you provide.
3. Choose the scope: make it super-simple or ask people to put some skin in the game.
4. Pick a time frame: no more than a week, and no more often than every quarter.
5. Kick off the contest with your social media network, blog, and email newsletter.
6. Keep the energy going after the contest ends by giving everyone who participated something really cool like a free ebook or special piece of content.

Have you ever used a contest on your blog? How did it go?

Nathalie Lussier is a contest loving blogger and a finalist at the Infusionsoft contest, who will love you forever if you vote for her Raw Foods Witch here. It takes less than 5 seconds, and you’ll see how to run a high-end contest at the same time! Tweet her at @NathLussier.

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Blog Karma: How Good Blogging Deeds Can Spike Your Traffic

This is a guest post by Joshua Noerr of  JoshuaNoerr.com.

Since I was very young, I was told, and shown, the importance of giving back and doing things for other people. I’ve always felt that the highest measure of a person’s character is the degree of service they are willing to provide for others. In fact, your service to others will be the cornerstone of your legacy long after you are gone.

I also believe that as an individual of able body and mind, I have a certain level of obligation to help others. Not everyone has the abilities that I do, or that most of you do. My way of saying, “Thanks” for being blessed with all of these things is by giving back.

When I started blogging earlier this year, I knew that I had to carry that spirit into what I do, I just didn’t really know how.

A decision to share the love

One day, I was getting ready to write a post when I had an idea. I said to myself, “How about you share all the great blogs you read with your readers?” That seemed like a pretty good idea.

So I scrapped my original post, and shared five blogs I had read that month, with a featured post and some commentary on just what I felt made those blogs so awesome. Almost immediately, my traffic jumped. The bloggers themselves stopped by to say “Thanks” and read what I wrote about them, and my regular readers loved that I was exposing them to new content.

I have since made this a regular monthly feature on my blog, and it’s always extremely popular. I get a traffic spike, an increase in subscribers, and—best of all—I start new relationships with other really cool bloggers. Seems like a pretty good way to go to me.

A decision to share the load

A blogger whose work I read regularly, and for whom I have the utmost respect, published a post asking her readers for help.

She had a goal of making it to Blog World, and was inviting donations to help her get there. I thought that was great! I loved the fact that she’d built such a strong community at her blog that she felt comfortable enough to ask them to help her reach her goal.

This blogger was actually the very first person to post a comment to my blog (other than my mom!), and as I was reading her call for donations, I remembered how I felt that day. She made me feel like a blogging rock star, even though it was just one little comment! Remembering that feeling, I decided I wanted to help her get to Vegas.

So I posted a call to action to my readers. I told them all about what was happening, linked to the post asking for donations, and hit the publish button with a huge smile on my face.

The response was very nearly immediate—and overwhelming! People loved the idea just as much as I did, and wanted to help. There were so many wonderful comments from outstanding people. After all was said and done, the blogger reached her goal and booked her trip to Blog World.

Now I can’t take the credit for her goal being reached—I’m pretty sure her talent had something to do with it! Nevertheless, I felt like I was part of something, and that my blog had a small hand in making someone’s life better.

That day was also, to date, my blog’s highest traffic day. People Tweeted the post, Stumbled it, shared it, and Dugg it. I got some new subscribers, and met some new people. That wasn’t my goal in doing what I did, but it was a pretty nice side-effect!

What can you do?

It’s your turn! Have you ever done something like this before? What kind of results did you see? Do you have something planned for the future? I’d love to hear how good deeds have benefited you and your blog.

Just remember, your blog is a wonderful platform for making someone’s day, or helping other people in a positive way. I think that’s a great thing, and who knows, a simple act of kindness could lead more people to your door. Sounds like a win-win situation to me!

Joshua Noerr is a former MMA fighter and powerlifter turned blogger. He owns or is partnered in several blogs on different topics, including personal development, and health and fitness.

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