In my never-ending quest to attract readers, I’ve come across several free tools that assist bloggers in marketing their blogs and attracting even more readers. I thought I’d share.

1. StatCounter.com: StatCounter is a little bit o’ heaven I stumbled upon about a year ago when I was setting up some private websites and wanted to know if anyone was even going to the sites. With StatCounter it’s free to sign up and get emailed reports of the daily traffic to the URL you set up. You can run multiple campaigns and get various different types of data from this website. If you want more in depth information you can always pay for an account, but it’s not necessary. My favorite part are the e-mailed reports… I’ve set up weekly reports that let me know how many visitors my site has had. And I’ve never had a problem with any strange incorrect data.

2. Twitter: When I first heard about Twitter I was in Miami attending the Affiliate Summit East. I was like a sponge with the things I learned in the sessions I attended and wanted to apply all of my knowledge right away. So I came back and started to read Twitter. I have to admit that at first it seemed pointless, but as I’ve immersed myself into “mini blogging” I’ve started to get it. Link to the blog to remind people to read. Reach out to people with similar interests if you see something they’d be interested in. If your blog addresses that interest, even better. It’s a fun little community I’m happy to be part of.

3. BlogRush: This is a new one I just started using last week, and I’m happy to say it’s worked just a little bit. The service itself is relatively new to the blogosphere, but the nifty little widget I like. A few pretty reputable blogs I know of, including Marketing Pilgrim where I first learned about BlogRush, have joined the link exchange so far. There’s really nothing you have to do once it’s been installed in your blog and it’s totally free. Since it is in it’s infancy, some reporting features are still having the bugs worked out, but I have faith that this will be a good little widget to have.

4. ArticlesBase: I admit… I haven’t poked around much on ArticlesBase yet, but so far I’m fascinated. You can create your own submission and read other articles based on keywords. I love tagging and keywords myself, so this is a great tool to submit your article (for free) and to find other articles that you’ll enjoy reading.

I’m always looking for other freebie marketing ideas, so let me know if you know of any other great tools out there.

Read more at http://www.TrishaLyn.com

So, you have decided to get serious about drawing traffic to your blog and hopefully making some money in the process. If so, you probably already know that marketing is the first major step toward building a successful income with your blog. At the same time, understanding how to successfully market your blog is a completely different animal. In fact, it can be downright frightening and even costly if you don’t know how to go about it the right way.

There are three major ways you can go about marketing your blog. These include:

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Social Networking

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques

Within each of these categories, there are numerous techniques and methods you can use to successfully draw more traffic to your blog. At the same time, it is important for you to complete some market research before you begin using any of these methods. Otherwise, you can waste a great deal of your time and money on marketing techniques that do not yield any real results.

Conducting market research involves getting to know your target audience in order to provide your audience with what it needs. In other words, you need to “get inside the heads” of those people you are hoping to reach with your blog. You can accomplish this by conducting surveys and polls on your blog as well as by visiting other blogs and forums that are frequented by your target group.

During the market research stage of marketing, you should not focus on participating in blog and forum discussions. Rather, spend some time as a “lurker” who simply reads the posts of the community members. This way, you can get a better idea of the personalities of your target group as well as the problems they are facing.

Getting to understand the needs of your target audience is the key to building a successful marketing campaign. After all, if your blog will only be successful it is able to fulfill a need. This need may be social in nature or it may provide information to the reader that helps the reader in his or her relationships, career, hobbies or other area. For example, if you are writing a blog about being a single father, it is important for you to understand the concerns and problems that single fathers face. That way, you can gear your blog posts toward addressing those needs.

Once you have successfully created a profile of your target audience, you will be able to better determine how to market your blog in a way that will bring targeted traffic to your site. In that way, you will be better capable of monetizing your blog or simply creating a meaningful community for your target audience if that is your goal.

Make it easier for readers to discover your posts by making sure your posts are tagged and searchable, then start working on your next great post while new readers come to you.

Much deliberation has been done about your site’s design and layout. Rich, quality content has also been written. The fact that your blog is presently on the net, and that you have exhausted all the means needed to keep it in good shape, your queries about ‘marketing my blog’ will then surface.

Marketing on the real world entails reaching out, physically, to your intended market. Much goes the same way with internet marketing. Like in the real physical set-up, you cannot expect people to come up to you to ask what you have to offer. In the internet, people will not visit a site they do not know exists, and this is where your concerns about ‘marketing my blog’ emerges. To let people know about your site’s existence, there is a need for you to actively join communities and announce the virtues of your blog. The reasonable method would be to choose those communities that are in line with your blog niche. Through this way you will meet a lot of people with concerns and questions you and your blog can provide answers to. There is no better way to gain exposure and visitors than answering forum questions with your site link attached on your signature. You will soon discover that the best solution to your problems about ‘marketing my blog’ lies heavily on self-promotion. Go ahead and put your best foot forward. A direct invitation towards your site is hard to ignore especially if you are able to provide interesting and useful responses.

Visiting other blogs and leaving informative comments is another productive method to create networking. This is a good method to market your blog by encouraging other people to link on your site and be exposed to their respective groups. You will realize that it takes a lot of work to address your concerns about ‘marketing my blog’, but once properly done, the exposure can grow exponentially on its own.

Once you have your marketing foundation laid, you will then have extra time to spend on other time consuming but effective means for site promotion, that of submitting your feeds to several sites. You can create your account and submit your feed to blogbunch, bloghop, getblogs or blogtoplist. The list for feed submission site is endless and useful if you have the time to spare. Extra traffic is also assured if you cater to social bookmarking. Propeller, Technorati and Digg are among the top social bookmarking sites along with Yahoo, Google and MSN. A social bookmark site allows members to keep a list of favorite links which can be shared to their groups of internet connections, friends and family members. Submitting your URL to these social bookmarking sites allows your product to be included in their lists and be a part of the circulating sites for sharing.

Having a blog will not ensure profitable returns without a sensible marketing plan. Choosing ones that will work and spending the right amount of time and effort in sustaining a good blog is the smart technique to use whenever one is faced with concerns about ‘marketing my blog’.