One of the first methods of driving traffic I have learned is commenting on other peoples blogs.  I had always thought of blog commenting as a way to build backlinks to your website, which is a benefit, however if done right it can really help drive more visitors to your blog.

Here is the theory Alex Jeffreys teaches behind it.

Oil Rig Hopping

The internet is like the ocean.

If you were go tuna fishing where would you go? Would you go straight for the shallow waters or the deep part of the sea? Where would you get the most fish?

Some of the best tuna fishing in the world is located around man made oil rigs. An oil rig turns into a man made reef.

Algae grows beneath these man made oil structures. Because of the algae, clams start to build up all around it.  Little fish are then attracted because they eat clams. Then larger fish come to eat on the little fish. Then even larger fish come to eat on the bigger fish and then eventually you have sharks coming to eat on the even bigger fish.

By leaving comments on other blogs you are attracting all of those fish back to your blog.

If you are in the internet marketing niche, a great resource to finding great blogs is http://www.winningtheweb.com. You can get a list of the top internet marketing blogs from this website. These are sites that have LOADS of fish just waiting to swim over to your blog. You can also just do a simple google search for blogs in your niche.

Please remember that the key is not necessarily to post on as many blogs as you can, but to leave thought out, quality comments. The better your comments are the more likely it will attract visitors.

I struggled with this at first, just because I have hard time figuring out what to say. The more blog comments I have left though, the easier it gets.

Be sure to read the bloggers post. Don’t just leave a canned comment that you would leave on a hundred different blogs. Many people do this. I know this because most of them go straight to my spam filter. Some of these comments amaze me too, especially the ones that have absolutely nothing to do with what my blog is about.

If you find it difficult, take a couple quick notes while you are reading the blogger’s post. Find something that you can relate to. Maybe they mentioned something you have had experience with. Maybe you agree or disagree with something they have said. It’s ok if you disagree, just be sure you leave your opinion in a respectful manner.

The more blog comments you leave the faster you will get at it. Then yes, you do want to leave as many comments as you can to get more and more traffic. Just make sure they are always quality.

I know this works! I have left comments on some of the blogs I found in Winning the Web. My Google Analytics shows that I have had some visitors from these blogs, so they would have had to have found me through my blog comment.

I just wanted to do a quick post about what I plan on doing in the next couple of weeks and where I am at as of right now.

Although list building is my key focus, I am learning about different traffic generating methods in Alex’s course.

Some of the traffic methods we have learned about so far include blog commenting, social media and video marketing.

I will be posting about each method as I work through them.

Just to show where I am at right now, here is a snapshot of my Google Analytics page for this blog for the month of February.

This is my traffic for February 1 – 10, 2010.

My lifetime blog stats are as follows:

950 Visits
1929 Pageviews
2.03 page/visit
64.43 % bounce rate
3.10 average time on site
70.63% new visits

Yes, I know, not too impressive. LOL

I originally started my blog back in July, 2009 and have done a little here and there, but now I am actually taking action on everything I am learning through Alex Jeffrey’s training.  Right now I’m getting about 5-15 visitors a day, but I plan to see that increase over the coming weeks. I’ll let you know everything that I am doing to build the traffic I generate.

I just want to make a quick post showing where my stats are at the beginning. That way I can show my progress as the weeks pass.

I haven’t received too much traffic yet, but really I’ve only been focusing on getting some content on my blog first.

I’ll continue to post about what I have learned and more tips on how to set up your Wordpress blog, but now I am going to start focusing more on building traffic. I’ll post about what I’m doing and show stat updates so that you can see how it is working.

Here is a screen shot of my Google analytics page. As you can see, it’s not impressive at the moment. So far the most visits in one day has been 30. This is just the start though. Everyone has to start somewhere. In a few weeks time I plan to show you a lot higher numbers.

I’m looking forward to those updates! Stay tuned.