There are many ways to market a blog. Depending on your business model and budget, one can go for either the free or paid options. Personally for me, I feel that for new bloggers, it is best to go for the free options first. Once you understand and master the various ways to market and promote your blog, you can then go for paid options to market and expand your blog’s visibility.

First of all, you must understand there is no best or assure way to market and promote a blog. The degree of success for each method depends on a number of factors such as the niche your blog is in, the quality of your blog and so on. That is why it is important for you to get a good web analytic program to track your traffic sources.

Google provide a good web analytic service called Google Analytics which is free to use and you should really take advantage of it. With Google Analytics, you can track where your traffic is coming from and know which marketing method is bringing in the traffic for you. Discard the ones that bring in the least traffic and focus on the ones that are bringing in the most traffic.

With a good tracking program in place, you can then move on to the various free methods to market your blog. I have listed below some free methods which you can go about marketing your blog:

Article Directories
Submit your best articles to the top few article directories to gain more exposure and traffic and at the same time build some links back to your blog. It is also a good chance for you to establish yourself in a particular niche.

Blog Carnivals
Taking part in blog carnivals is one good way to market and expand you blog’s visibility. Basically a blog carnival is some sort of event in which a number of bloggers will write about a specific topic and then cross promote each other links. This is a very simple and effective way to getting more links and exposure.

Blog Directories
Submitting your blog to blog directories is a good way for people to notice and find your blog. It is also a good way to get your blog indexed quickly.

Comments
Commenting on other people’s blogs is a good way to drive targeted traffic. Just take care to provide quality comments rather than just spam other people’s blogs.

Forums
It actually pays to be active in forums that are related to your blog. By posting quality posts and building up your reputation in these forums, you are establishing yourself as an authority. You also get lots of targeted traffic and you can build a decent list quickly.

Freebies
Create a short report or product and distribute it for free. For example, if you can code and design a wordpress theme, you can offer it for free and let others download and use it in return for a backlink in the footer. Many webmasters and internet marketers are using it to great effect.

Link Requests
Link exchanges are a good way to get quality incoming links for free. However, the success rate is quite low unless your blog is already established and carry some page rank.

Networking
Networking with fellow bloggers in the same niche is another effective way to market and promote your blog, especially when your blog is fairly new. Once you are on friendly terms with them, you can start asking for links exchanges and even blog posts to market and promote your blog.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Traffic from search engines is the best traffic source, basically because it is free. However, to get there, you need to understand on page and off page SEO factors. It takes s a certain level of experiences and expertise before you can understand and master the fundamentals to get free organic traffic from the search engines.

Social Bookmarking
Bookmarking your blog’s content is one good way to drive traffic and build links at the same time. To fully take advantage of social bookmarking, you need to create quality content and make large number friends at social bookmarking sites.

Social Networking
This is a very powerful way to gain truckloads of traffic to your blog if you do it right. Build up a solid network of friends in social networking sites such as FaceBook, Friendster and MySpace and leverage on these networks to market and promote your blog. If you do it right, expect a steady stream of repeat traffic.

As you can see, if you applied some of these free methods to market and promote your blog, you can probably see some good results soon. As mentioned before, you have to test and track to see which method is bringing in the best results for you and keep them while discarding the ones that are not working or bringing in the least results. However at the end of the day, you still need to provide quality content in order to make your blog sticky and make people keep coming back again. If you have some other great free methods to market a blog, feel free to share it with us.

Finding profitable keywords is one of the hardest parts of making money online for niche marketers. Although there are many keywords mining software available, a lot of these software are just simply not doing their job. It is no wonder when Keyword Elite is first launched, many webmasters and internet marketers are initially skeptical. While there is no doubt this will be another quality software from Brad Callen, many people are simply not taking the bite.

I can understand that as I too have purchased a lot of useless keyword software. However, I was convinced of the potential in Keyword Elite. After testing out Keyword Elite, I find that it is a good piece of software worth the initial investment. While it may not work for some, I have success in using Keyword Elite to boost my Google Adsense income.

Keyword Elite has some of the best features that I have seen in keyword research software. Below are a list of cool stuff that you can do with Keyword Elite:

• Uncover profitable hidden niches and keywords
• Exploit low cost keywords via Adwords
• Analyze Pay Per Click competition in Google, Yahoo, Miva and Enhance
• Spy on your competitors’ profitable Adwords keywords
• Create huge keyword lists in seconds
• Easily create and upload Adwords campaigns and groups
• And many more

Some testimonials on Keyword Elite that I found online:

Hey Brad, just wanted to let you know that with the help of Keyword Elite I’ve been able to triple my Adsense earnings from $30/month to $100/month. I couldn’t have done it without the help of Keyword Elite. Thanks!
Bret G.

Hey Brad, I’m really enjoying using keyword elite for starting my new projects. It makes things so easy. The first project I run with it pulled in an extra $212 in Adsense income. You’re on in a million. Thanks for such a wonderful product.
Matt West

Keyword Elite has to be the absolute best product out there for finding keywords to develop your virtual real estate empire. I have barely begun to scratch the service with this remarkable tool but already am seeing increases in my Adsense income. I am just a newbie but am now beginning to get some Adsense income every day.
Doug Reach

While Keyword Elite is a very impressive keyword research software, it is no use if you are not going to put these keywords that you have mined to good use. Having a good list of profit generating keywords is not enough if you are not going to use and profit from them. The key is in knowing how to utilize and monetize the keywords that you have mine. However, if you are looking for a good and solid keyword research software, look no further from Keyword Elite.

More information on Keyword Elite here

Article marketing is a very effective way to build links and at the same time drive targeted traffic to your website. This is why a lot of marketers advocate using articles as part of your marketing campaigns. In article marketing, writing articles is only part of the equation. After you have finished writing your articles, you still need to submit your articles to the various article directories and this is the most time consuming and monotonous parts of article marketing.

If you are heavily involved in using articles to build links and drive traffic, you should use a article submission software to assist you in your article submission processes. Brad Callen’s Article Submitter is one software that you can leverage on to help you semi-automate your article submission processes and help you to save much time and effort. Brad Callen’s Article Submitter will help you to:

• Submit to over 200 article directories with just one click of the mouse
• Submit to over 300 article directories in all
• Submit an unlimited number of articles
• Auto fill submission fields
• Save much time and effort
• And more

Some testimonials for Brad Callen’s Article Submitter:

Hey Brad, Article Submitter is nice and simple to use, which is always a plus. Article directories are one of the best free ways to guarantee traffic for high PR sites. Everyone should use this fantastic piece of software. Traffic is the blood which pumps though your website. Article submitter is a powerful (free) route to making money online. Many thanks for “making web life easier”!
John Adams

Hey Brad, This is an incredible too. I’ve submitted more articles in the last 2 hours than I have all month. Thanks for over delivering.
Brian

Brad, I have recently started using articles to direct traffic to our website and it has made a huge difference. I am excited to use this software that will make our job so much easier! Thanks for making it available.
Keri Just

Brad Callen’s Article Submitter is an article submission software that will help you to save time and effort leaving you to focus on other important aspects of your business. And with their free upgrades for life guarantee, you can be sure that this will be a great value for money software.

More information on Brad Callen’s Article Submitter here

Search engine optimization or SEO for short is a very important aspect of web development. As you know free organic traffic from the search engines is a very vital source of traffic for websites. By getting your website fully optimize for the search engines, you can be sure that you will be getting in steady stream of organic traffic from the search engines.

The key to getting your site to rank highly in the search engines for certain keywords can be very difficult and time consuming if you do not understand the importance of getting quality incoming links. This is where SEO Elite comes in. SEO Elite is a very powerful software that allows you to:

• Spy on your competitors’ website and know what keywords their sites are rank for and where their incoming links are coming from
• Find potential links partners for high quality links
• Submit your website to link directories
• Verify and monitor your links
• Find out how your site is rank for a particular keyword
• Find out how many pages of your website are indexed
• Submit your articles to article directories
• And more

Some testimonials on SEO Elite:

My site went from nowhere straight to the top for highly competitive keywords such as: marketing expert, internet marketing expert, free marketing articles, marketing blog directory, marketing service providers, and internet marketing secrets
Michael Fleischner

Hey Brad, my traffic has gone from a little over 10,000 visitors per month, on average, to OVER 40,000 visitors, on average, per month after purchasing and using SEO Elite!
Jermaine Tabor

Hey Brad – Just wanted to let you know that SEO Elite is incredible! 4.0 is even better. It has helped us get to #1 for the term ‘fantasy football contest’and #16 for ‘fantasy football’ (not bad for a term with over 12.4 million results). Again, keep up the good work and I will keep you posted on our progress!
Shawn Bishop

SEO Elite has helped me to rank #1 for the phrase “business practices”. It has made a great many things so much… simpler… faster… better. The really huge plus that SEO Elite provides is the savings of time, which is major to me.”
Tom Goniwiecha

SEO Elite is a software for webmasters who are serious in optimizing and getting their websites to rank well in the search engines for specific keywords. For the price it is selling, it is real value for money. This software can save you much time and effort to getting your sites optimize for the search engines. A must have for any webmaster who is serious about their online business.

More information on SEO Elite here

The latest version of WordPress is available for downlaod since early last month. If you have not upgrade your  WordPress to version 2.7, it is time to do so. The new version of WordPress is a major update with a new interface and lots of new features to boot.

I have waited about a month till the latest version is available through Fantastico before I make the automatic upgrade. I was initially apprehensive as I have previously have some bad experiences with major updates for WordPress.In some of the previous updates, I found some of the eseential plugins that I have been using are not compatible after the upgrading causing me lots of inconvinenece.

Luckily,  all my plugins are working fine after the latest upgrade. So if you have been sitting on the fence for some time waiting for the version 2.7 to stablize, I can safely tell you it is time for you to upgrade your WordPress.