For those of you following my blog, you’ll know that before I took a break from this blog due to being laid off, I was in the middle of a series called, “Building A More Sucessful Blog In 30 Days.“ We have completed 12 days, and now on day 13, I’d like to share with you some results of an experiment I did while not posting.
For today’s series we focus on building traffic with giveaways & contests.
Results Revealed
During my absence I wrote two blog posts. One involving a $100 Giveaway, and the other a contest to Win a Macbook Pro. Both of which are still going on.
Normally when I take a break from blogging, my numbers hit rock bottom. Obviously there are no new posts, so no one visits my blog, with the exception of the search engine traffic I get. But that pales in comparison with my traffic when I’m keeping my blog updated.
But this break saw something quite different. Instead of my numbers dropping like they normally do, they remained steady. I didn’t see an increase, but I didn’t see much of a decrease either.
Because I had both a contest and a giveaway on my blog, there were people coming from all over to get something.
What If I Would Have Continued Blogging?
If I were to do it all over again, and post both the giveaway and contest, as well as continue updating my blog, I would have seen a large increase in traffic.
Which only proves that giveaways and contest do work for increasing blog traffic.
Be Creative
While this post is to encourage you to have a giveaway on your blog to increase your traffic, I want you to also learn from my experiment.
If you ever find yourself in a position where you want to take a small break from your blog; try posting a giveaway or contest first. It could help keep your numbers and stats where you’d like them to be, while you’re away.
Have you had a giveaway or contest on your blog? If so, did you see a large increase in traffic? I’d like to hear from you.
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My name is Steven Sanders and I'm a Professional Blogger, Izea Insider, Web Designer, Social Media Enthusiast, Dad, Husband, and Friend.
Steve,
Are you running any kind of analytics? I use Google Analytics on my primary sites and StatCounter on my niche sites.
Here’s the power of search engine traffic. It’s been almost a month since I posted on my product review flagship blog, optempo.com. I’ve been busy launching a number of ecommerce web sites. However, my traffic on that blog has remained steady with no decline in traffic or income. 90% of the traffic to it is search engine traffic.
As for contests, it is a good source of social buzz traffic and a good way to get links for SEO purposes as well.
I use both Google Analytics and Mint from haveamint.com. The mint analytics program is by far the best and shows in real time exactly what is happening with my blog, including what outbound links are clicked.