There’s a lot to running a quality site. You may feel that content is king, but without traffic, King Content is going to be mighty lonely. Not to mention how empty the Royal Treasury will be.

You need serfs… err, traffic! And that means you need to market your site.

money

This can be difficult for some people, easy for others. Of course, creating content is easy for some, tough for others. It just depends on your skill set and interests. For me, creating content is more fun than marketing. But I still try to spend time on marketing.

Article marketing is a favorite area of mine. Done well it can be highly effective. But people debate whether submitting to a lot of directories or just a few select ones plus selected publishers works better. It can very much depend on the amount of time you are willing to spend. I personally use Article Marketer because they submit to the directories that I consider most important, including Ezine Articles.

I’ve been working on learning social bookmarking sites. These can drive huge amounts of traffic, but you can also annoy people tremendously if you abuse the sites. In many cases, traffic is all you get, so it’s a method you need to watch your return on.

Blog commenting can also bring in good traffic and build your reputation. Of course, that means it can destroy you too, if all you do is leave “good job” comments all over the place. No one is going to follow your links if that’s all you have to say. Have something relevant that contributes to the discussin to say and you will have much more luck, whether or not the site uses the nofollow tag.

Link baiting can be difficult. You need some traffic already to have a successful link bait. It doesn’t have to be much if the people reading your site or using your tools tend to post links. Your bait should be relevant to your niche. Online tools are very popular.

Set aside time regularly to work on your marketing. You may even need to spend more time marketing than on content creation or other activities. Do what it takes to get things going.

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