So you are now the proud owner of a brand new blog. You have posted a few blog entries, and you are wondering what to do next. Don't make the mistakes that most new bloggers make. They setup a blog, post a few pages of new content, and expect the blog to take off by itself. Unfortunately, it just doesn't happen like that.

In the beginning, you have to be active in promoting your blog. There are many methods you can adopt to drive traffic to a new blog. For instance, you can try to generate traffic from the search engines. Alternatively, you can drive traffic by buying clicks using Pay Per Click advertising. Let's explore some of these traffic generation methods.

Method 1: Search engine traffic.

Search engine traffic has been proven to be highly targeted. But note that you don't get any traffic until your blog starts to rank. And if your domain is brand new, be prepared to wait 2 to 3 months for that to happen. Look at organic search traffic as a source of long term traffic. Once your blog is seen as an authority site, your posts will start to rank well and you will receive more and more traffic. Start your SEO campaign by getting others to link to you. You can do that by article marketing.

Method 2: Article marketing.

Writing and posting content on other people's website isn't a new concept. Here is how article marketing works. You write an article of about 300 to 500 words, and post them to article directories. You can usually not allowed to include links in your article body, but you can post 2 or 3 links in the author resource box. Once your articles have been approved by the editors of the directories, they will be posted online. The more articles you write, the more back links you get.

For this method, you will receive traffic in 2 ways. First, visitors who come across your articles may click through and visit your site. In addition, when the search engines start to rank your blog, you will start receiving traffic from the search engines as well. You are actually implementing off-site optimization as your perform your article marketing activities.

Method 3: Pay per click advertising.

The fastest way to drive traffic to a blog or website is though pay per click advertising. Note that you don't actually pay anything for your ad to be displayed on other websites. You pay only when a visitor clicks on your ad and ends up on your blog. The price that you pay per click depends on many different factors. The higher you bid for a keywords, the more traffic you will get.

However, bear in mind that PPC can be expensive, and there is a rather steep learning curve. So unless you know what you are doing, it's better to try other traffic generation methods - like article marketing.

You can also combine the different methods. For instance, you can use PPC to drive traffic when your blog is new and you are still waiting for it to rank. Once you start receiving organic traffic, simply pause your PPC campaigns. That way, you don't have to keep spending and spending to get traffic.