Organic traf­fic is a fan­tas­tic source of vis­i­tors that’s often ignored by many marketers.

Search engines change all the time and many of them now charge for the priv­i­lege of includ­ing your web­site. So, peo­ple often ask me how to gen­er­ate traf­fic, beyond the search engines and with lit­tle to no cost.

Let me be can­did by say­ing that I am not a search engine expert, nor do I play one on TV. But there are two meth­ods that I’ve used con­sis­tently to attract thou­sands of qual­i­fied hits to my web­site at vir­tu­ally no cost and with very lit­tle effort.

Granted, everyone’s dif­fer­ent. And these tech­niques may not be appro­pri­ate for every­one. How­ever, let me share what works for me and what I do, along with a few tips.

My biggest organic traf­fic gen­er­a­tor is con­tent marketing.

Namely, there are two categories:

1. Post­ing con­tent on social net­works, includ­ing blogs, blog com­ments, forums, social net­work­ing sites, dis­cus­sion lists, and of course, my own blog;
2. Con­tribut­ing con­tent, such as writ­ing arti­cles or reports, and sub­mit­ting them to ezines, mag­a­zines, direc­to­ries, and guest con­tri­bu­tions on other people’s blogs.

Now, let’s take a closer look, shall we?

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A lot of peo­ple ask me what’s my blog­ging strat­egy. They want to know, for instance, how I post arti­cles, build a list, and drive traf­fic to my blog. More impor­tant, they want to know how I make money with it. Those are good questions.

The short answer, of course, is to keep offer­ing great con­tent. Fresh con­tent. Con­tent you find valu­able. Con­tent you believe may be of inter­est or value to your readers.

But here’s some­thing you might find surprising…

I don’t use my blog as a busi­ness model like some A-​​list blog­gers out there. Mak­ing money is purely a byprod­uct. Sure, I do have ads on it, inter­spersed through­out, link­ing either to my prod­ucts or to prod­ucts I’m an affil­i­ate of. But they are not focal points.

Granted, those ads do help to pay the bills, keep my blog alive, and incen­tivize me to con­tinue post­ing what I hope is valu­able con­tent for my readers.

But some peo­ple won­der how I drive traf­fic to this blog and build my list of sub­scribers. After all, I don’t adver­tise it at all with any paid adver­tis­ing — other than in my sig­na­ture file on some forum posts, or on my social net­work pro­files like Twit­ter and Face­book.

I’ve revealed part of my strat­egy in some courses, such as Suc­cess Chef Uni­ver­sity, which is our flag­ship train­ing prod­uct. I’ve also revealed it in a few inter­views I gave here and there. I’ve also revealed a hand­ful of them on this blog in the past.

How­ever, there are very spe­cific things I do to help me grow this blog.

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As with sta­tic web­sites, the suc­cess of a blog depends on attract­ing a steady stream of new and return traf­fic. The dif­fer­ence is, blog pro­mo­tion tools are slightly dif­fer­ent, a bit more diverse, and largely much more effective.

Why? Because blogs are designed with inter­ac­tiv­ity and social net­work­ing abil­ity built in. They are ideal both for devel­op­ing rela­tion­ships and for mar­ket­ing your brand.

How­ever, don’t neglect stan­dard pro­mo­tional activ­i­ties in favor of blog-​​only traf­fic gen­er­a­tion meth­ods. You can and should use both.

In fact, tra­di­tional mar­ket­ing can become even more potent with a blog due to its nature.

For exam­ple, and most impor­tant, you will still want to uti­lize your email list, and use your blog to grow it, too. Ask read­ers to sub­scribe, and let them know when you post a new arti­cle just as you would with a new fea­ture or prod­uct on a sta­tic website.

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A mem­ber on my copy­writ­ers forum (now my blog) started a thread on what makes my forum so pop­u­lar. Every­one chimed in with some great answers, and I appre­ci­ate the feedback.

(The cool thing about it is, that very thread also reached an impor­tant mile­stone. It was the 10,000th one! Talk about a coin­ci­dence, eh?)

But then some­one asked:

“Michel, can I ask how you ini­tially got the word out about your forum?”

My answer revealed a bit more than what the mem­ber antic­i­pated. Instead of talk­ing about how my forum became so pop­u­lar, I went on a tan­gent and explained the step-​​by-​​step process I used to book copy­writ­ing projects.

The answer was so well received that I decided to reprint it here.

Now, you may be won­der­ing what pro­mot­ing a forum (or a blog, for that mat­ter) has to do with pro­mot­ing my copy­writ­ing ser­vices. Keep read­ing because you’ll soon under­stand why…

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An inter­est­ing ques­tion was recently asked of me in a dis­cus­sion forum: “I agree with the idea of sub­mit­ting arti­cles [in order to get] a lot of tar­geted vis­i­tors to a site, how­ever, I was won­der­ing, ‘What keeps Michel Fortin writ­ing?’ I mean, Michel, what is your 3-​​, 5– or 7-​​point for­mula to get an arti­cle on paper? What are [some of the spe­cific] steps you follow?”

Here’s my answer.

1. I’m sub­scribed to a ton of ezines and blogs.

As an “expert” (if I dare call myself that) in my field, I must keep abreast of my indus­try — so should you. But the won­der­ful byprod­uct is that some­thing I’ve read will stir a few ideas in my mind about some­thing worth writing.

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I wrote this arti­cle ages ago. And I never pub­lished it on my web­site, but have had it pub­lished in ezines and such. And recently, cer­tain events in my life have made me real­ized how much I do exactly what I taught many years ago, and prob­a­bly even more so now.

And today, with the advent of blogs, I believe this arti­cle about keep­ing jour­nals has even greater mean­ing and power. So I did a lit­tle search and dug it up. Today, I’ve decided to reprint it here for you.

It may sound a lit­tle too wacky or too meta­phys­i­cal for some of you. And I respect that. But the essence of the mes­sage is impor­tant, and more impor­tant than how I chose to deliver that message.

So please read with an open mind, because keep­ing a per­sonal suc­cess jour­nal can be one of the most pow­er­ful mar­ket­ing tools in your arsenal.

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The Copy Doctor’s Profit Pill™ is my free newslet­ter, which I’ve been pub­lish­ing since 1998.

But notic­ing that there’s a trend towards RSS and blogs, that my time is becom­ing extremely tight, that my blog is grow­ing in pop­u­lar­ity, and that more and more peo­ple are merg­ing the two — or using RSS/​blogs to pub­lish their newslet­ters — I’m seri­ously think­ing of merg­ing the two.

Take Jim Edwards for exam­ple. He con­verted his I Gotta Tell You newslet­ter into a blog.

What do you think? And if so, how should I do it?

For exam­ple, should I keep TheThe​Copy​Doc​tor​.com domain and main page for signups? Or should I replace the front page of my blog with a signup form cur­rently on The Profit Pill’s website?

Or should I just leave it altogether?