blogging for bucks (part 3)

When you first put up a web site of any kind - blog or nonblog - it’s like putting up a billboard in the desert. A new site is invisible until somebody links to it and looks at it. (Does an unvisited blog really exist?)
I should note that new blogs in hosted services such as MSN Spaces, Yahoo!360, Blogger.com, and TypePad suffer through shorter periods of invisibility than blogs hosted on independent servers (WordPress and movable type blogs). Hosted blogs get a push toward visibility by the host services, which spotlight new sites and new entries and also by circles of friends that often surround new blogs in Yahoo! 360. In these cases, a new blog can get an instant to hold in the blogosphere. Even so, the principles of visibility described in this section apply to, and can be practiced by, any blogger on any platform.

The key to visibility is links. People find online destinations through links. Traffic is driven by links. Every ambitious blogger wants links leading to the blog’s home page or its individual entries. In the quest for linkage, two important arenas exist:

1. Links on other blogs
2. Links in search engines

Links on other blogs are powerful, and there are two kinds. First, gaining a link in another blogger’s blogroll (the list of favorite sites in that blog’s sidebar) means continuous promotions for your blog, in some cases repeated on every page of the other blog. Blogroll links usually lead to a blog’s home page (the index page). Second, getting linked in another blogger’s entry as a citation for that entry promotes something you said. These links are extremely targeted and can bring bursts of traffic. Such a link can be an endorsement or an argument against something you posted in your blog; either way, you gain some degree of notoriety and visibility. Citation links usually go to one of your entry pages.
You can gain visibility in the blogosphere and start getting linked on other blogs in two ways:

1. Ask for links.
2. Write a good blog that naturally draws attention.