People read blogs because they want to discover new interesting things, to stay informed or to motivate themselves. They always love reading motivational posts and success stories, because everyones loves to follow successful people.

There are a lot of unsuccessful bloggers, that either don’t work enough, don’t write quality posts or don’t know how to market themselves. Among all these, they make one more big mistake. They complain about their lack of success and this is what makes his readers stop following him, because nobody likes people who fail.

Of course there are many things people hate reading, but I will focus on what I’ve said in this post and make a list of three things you should really stay away from.

1. Failure

Blog readers don’t like to stay near people who fail, because they simply are not a good example for them. If you fail at everything you do, then don’t talk about it on your blog. Don’t share your blog stats if they suck and try to focus on other type of content, that can be more interesting to your readers.

And don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of ways you can trigger your readers interest by sharing your failures with them and you can even make killer posts by doing that, but you need to do wisely. If your business life is a big-time failure, then don’t talk about it. On the other side, if you’re a successful blogger or have other successful businesses, then you can share your experience with others and I’m sure you have failed for many times, so you can make some great posts out of it.

For example, I’m pretty successful, I earn six figures and I do have a lot of motivational stories to share, but I’ve also failed so much that I can’t even keep track of my failures. And I really want to write about many of my failures because they might help people know what they should and shouldn’t do, while I won’t scare them away.

2. Laziness

If you have a business or marketing blog, then you don’t have to talk very much about laziness, because it might hurt your brand. Right now I will do exact the opposite and tell you that I’m one of the laziest persons I’ve ever known, but I am not very proud about it and I try to fight it every day.

When people get to know me better and find out how lazy I am, they don’t like me as much, because usually lazy people are not successful. Personally, I am an exception and I managed to make profit from my laziness and setup a killer business model that’s 90% automated and I only have to deal with a few things. I’ve set it up so well, that I can be offline for an entire month without seeing even a 1% decrease and I’m very proud of it, though I’m sure my businesses would grow much better if I worked more.

So let’s get back on topic. Don’t tell people you’re too lazy to do this and that and also don’t tell them you’re not successful because you’re too lazy to work enough. Some will figure it out, though others will believe you, which is good. So you better don’t talk about what you want to achieve and can’t, instead of letting everybody know that you didn’t work enough and failed.

Laziness is probably keeping us all behind and I’m sure we would all be better without it, but it’s part of our lives and we will never be able to deal with it entirely.

3. Envy

Every human envies other people, because they manage to achieve something he can’t they have cars he doesn’t or the girl of his dreams. And I mean EVERY one. If you really believe you don’t envy anyone, then let me know in the comments, though I will not believe you.

Envy is something that makes us really bad and it can change our character in two ways. It can either make us become ignorant and stop working as much, because we realize we will never get to that persons level or it can motivate us to work more and better, so we can even beat him. Personally I’m a really ambitious person and I will rarely admit that I can’t achieve something, so I believe ency puts me in the second category.

For me, the home, car, or vacation of my dreams is not something I know I will never have, but something I know I will get if I work enough for it. And while I envy some for having it already or for having it without doing anything, just because they have rich parents, I will do my best to get my hands on it as soon as possible, because life’s short and we need to live it to the fullest.

People really don’t like to read about envy, because it only proves that the blogger is not very powerful and ambitious and that’s not a good example for them. So instead of saying “Fuck him, the got an Aston Martin DBS on his 18th birthday,” you could say “He got an Aston Martin DBS on his 18th birthday and I hope I’ll afford one next year too,” or better shut up, if this is way too far for you.

Ending

So I didn’t say not to talk about those things, but do it wisely, because your blog only represents yourself and you don’t want people to make a bad impression about you. You always have to choose your words carefully and blog with passion. Also, make sure to have a positive attitude every time you write your posts, because readers will feel it and love it !

Like always, I’m eager to read your comments !

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I’ve tested virtually every possible method of getting traffic, except a few really bad ones, like automated forum or blog comment spamming, because I don’t want to get involved in those kind of activities.

I won’t tell you what worked best for me in the past, because times are changing very fast and so is the internet marketing, but I will tell you what works best for me now.

You should also know I’ve written this post because you’ve requested me to write about traffic driving and this is the first post about it. More are going to come with more details included.

SEO

Currently I’m not getting very much traffic from Google, but it’s still the main source of traffic to my blog, so I definitely have to talk about it. You don’t have to be a SEO expert to get traffic from Google. It’s enough to make some basic on-site optimization and a bit of link building, at least for the start.

Focus on your site structure and try not to place tons of links on your pages. In my opinion, 10 external and 50 internal links are a maximum on every page, so don’t make a huge blogroll even if you have a lot of favorite bloggers. A better way of thanking them for they great posts would be writing a post for this, like I did.

You should also think about your titles and keywords in your articles, but don’t try too hard on this one, because you need to write the posts for your readers, not Google. So, if you can use a better keyword in the title, do it, but make sure it’s still interesting for your readers. Always link to your older posts when writing a post, because this will help you with SEO and also increase page views, because they may be interested in that old posts.

Facebook

You should definitely have a Facebook account and even a Facebook page for your blog and get your friends to like it, of course, only if they are interested in the things you write about. You could also ask your friends to invite their own friends, so you will get a better start.

After that, it’s pretty easy and the easiest way of promoting your blog and your Facebook page is writing about Facebook. You could write Facebook How To’s, Top 10 things on Facebook and so on. This will definitely get you tons of Likes and Shares.

Twitter

With Twitter is a bit harder than with Facebook, because you can’t add friends like with Facebook. You need to make them follow you, though you can do the same and get retweets, which also bring followers. I haven’t been struggling with Twitter very much, but I’ve written some Twitter-related posts and I also tweet about things that people like and this way I got to nearly 10,000 followers, which is quite a good traffic source.

The most important thing you should know about Twitter and especially Twitter users is they hate it when they see a user only posts links to the same site and especially his. So tweet about everything you find interesting related to your account. For example, I tweet about internet marketing, business and technology. Sometimes I tweet funny stuff, because everyone enjoys it.

Guest Posts

Doing guest posts on another blogs can prove to be a great source of targeted traffic and is also a link building method to help you with the SEO. You just have to write a killer post, so the other blog’s readers will be curious to see who wrote it, but make sure to only write on blogs related to yours, because only targeted traffic matters. If you write on a blog that doesn’t have anything to do with your niche, then nobody will be interested in your blog and they will neither visit yours, or visit it and leave immediately and this can prove to be a real time waster.

Blog Comments

Commenting on other blogs can also be a good source of traffic and it also helps with networking and link building. Some blogs have do follow links on comments and others have do follow links on top commentators, so you can make profit of that. Also networking can be really useful, because you may trigger either the blogger’s or the commentators attention and they could share your posts ( retweets, Facebook share ) or even link to them.

Just like with guest posts, you need to make useful comments and don’t spam, because they might mark you as spam and your comments will not appear on any blog anymore. So be careful, use your own name and not a keyword instead, and don’t spam at all. If you feel lazy to make many comments, then make less and better ones. Comments like “Good Post,” “Great,” don’t get any attention and they won’t help you at all.

P.S. Don’t forget I love your feedback and comments !

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Unfortunately, not all bloggers are like me and a lot of them don’t check the comments on their posts, which means the commentators only get exposure to that blog’s visitors.

Usually when a blogger choses to approve comments manually he reads all the comments so your comment will get easier to his eyes, so a discussion between you and him might trigger from that. And I believe that’s one of the reasons you’re commenting on a blog.

Blogs became so popular because they offer everyone the possibility to offer feedback to the blogger and get in a discussion with him, so they both don’t feel alone anymore. It’s great when you can both share your thoughts about a specific subject. But when the blogger doesn’t read the comments, then this doesn’t matter anymore and the blog begins to act more like a forum, where other people discuss about someone’s thoughts or beliefs.

Another advantage of commenting on blogs that approve comments manually is that you might trigger interest to the blogger and get a new visitor to your blog, which is very good, especially if you are in the same niche. I guess you all know it’s great to network with people from your niche and exchange your experiences.

A disadvantage might be when the blogger does check the comments rarely and it takes a lot of time until your comments gets approve. In this case, the discussion loses it’s point, usually, and it’s a big mistake done by the blogger.

I’m not suggesting you to stop commenting on the blogs that approve comments manually and also not to stop approving comments automatically on your blog. It’s just a thought and a heads-up for those who don’t like commenting on those kind of blogs who don’t approve comments automatically.

Please let me know what you think. Do you comment on blogs that approve comments manually ? And in case you’re a blogger, how do you manage your comments ?

The following is a guest post by Tibi Puiu, a professional blogger and social media consultant, who can be found writing down at Lost Art of Blogging.

As marketers and bloggers, we should all be very opened minded and inclined to new things. Exploration is the keyword here. If you want to be successful, in any activity you might want to follow, it’s very very important you always look around you, analyze and experiment with your work and surroundings.

In the past the easiest way to get in contact with the latest trends and so on, was to follow as many conventional media institutions as possible, from newspapers, to radio, to TV; but now with the development of the internet the world has become a smaller place and by far the easiest way to stay at top of the game with the latest, in any field, is to be active in social media.

Social media has been around for a long time now, bridging the gab between consumers and establishments (websites), but it’s only been recently that it managed to explode on the mainstream. If you’re a bit unfamiliarized with social media and all it represents, I’d recommend you first start reading my introduction to social media. If you need a few reasons why you should start extensively using social media, then I’ll just lay them down for you bellow. You’ll get converted in no time.

1. Traffic. This is probably the main reason why you should start using social media. It’s widely known that social media has the power to bring obscene amounts of traffic to your blog or website, infinitely easier then waiting years to establish your website and spending thousands on SEO services. A first hand example is the notorious digg effect, which describes the period of time in which an article from a blog or website gets popular on digg. The traffic that digg can send is tremendous, powerful enough to shatter most servers (around 100k uniques). Try building this kind of traffic the old fashion way.

2. Branding. If you’re looking to establish yourself as an authority in your niche or looking to promote your company’s services, then social media can provide the means to achieve just that. The most efficient way to brand you or your blog is to get your name out through as many channels as possible, seeing how there’s tons of popular, high trafficked social network out there it would just be a shame not to take advantage of them. Here’s a little more food for thought, this time on branding your blog.

3. Networking. With the help of social media you can build a heck loads of new contacts, which can quickly convert into loyal readers or customers. You can also meet a lot of interesting and inspiring people, that would normally be inaccessible. Sure these types of online “friendships” don’t compare to those from the real life, but a certain degree of connectivity and bound is certainly formed. Almost everybody has at least a myspace of facebook account, so you see the market is huge.

4. Learning. I’m really into social media and what keeps me constantly hooked is that I can always find remarkable things to read or watch in it, with great ease. It keeps me entertained, informed and up to date. The internet is notorious for being a place for knowledge and enlightenment (close the porn you perverts! ), but it sometimes can be pretty overwhelming and time consuming. A lot of social media channels, like most social media bookmarking services, help you filter the best content and resource available on the web, as voted and popularized by the masses.

5. Voice. It can really be frustrating when you’ve got some really interesting ideas and thoughts, but can’t get them out to other people’s eyes and ears. The beauty of social media is that it can be used by anyone, from top journalists, to politicians, to your every day street corner average Joe. With the help of social media, virtually anyone with an internet connection and some solid eyes, can voice their thoughts across the mainstream.

Here’s some of the most popular social media services out there.

• StumbleUpon – My Profile
  
• MySpace – My Profile
  
• Facebook – My Profile
  
• LinkedIn – My Profile
  
• MyBlogLog – My Profile
  
• Bebo -
  
• Delicious – My Profile
• Digg – My Profile
• Furl -
  
• Reddit – My Profile
• Propeller – My Profile
• Spurl -
  
• Blue Dot -
  
• Ma.gnolia -
  
• Flickr – My Profile
• Twitter – My Profile
• YouTube – My Profile
• Sphinn – My Profile
• Newsvine

For more interesting articles about social media, blogging and marketing visit Lost Art of Blogging.

Social media is so used those days, that you definitely have to use it to bring more traffic. Unfortunately, it won’t bring quality traffic, but you need all you can get and if you have good skills, then you can also monetize and convert it like organic traffic, just the rates will be lower.

Latest trend now is Twitter and like all social media websites, all you need is a powerful profile and you’ll get a good audience. It’s advantage is that it can bring visitors that are really interesting in your blog and this means a high rate of conversion. It’s not as powerful as the others, but worth.

To follow the trends you only need to do a bit of social media research and see what’s on the buzz at the moment, to make sure you don’t miss it and lose valuable visitors.

Also, you might want to follow me on Twitter to get my latest updates.

Readers are subscribing when seeing that blogger earns a lot of money in the hope they will find out how to do it. But rarely this will happen because nobody is that fool to tell their secret and worse than that, a lot are lying just to get a strong readership and profit.

Those blogs mean time loss and a good blogger has to manage his time very good to increase productivity, so only subscribe and read the blogs that can really help you, don’t just get fooled by everyone.

Of course nobody will tell big secrets, but by reading a lot of useful information you can make an idea of what you have to do and test, until you get somewhere good.

What do you think of those bloggers ?