Promoting your blog with $300

Almost all of us want to create, promote and make money online for free, but it is true that if you want to start a free blog and use free traffic methods you will have to compromise on more than one thing, you can loose a lot of time, you will have to work the hardest to get your site up from 0 to 100 and from 100 to thousand like how i'm getting myself killed promoting this blog.

There are many efficient free ways to generate traffic, but you'll need a lot of research, guides and of course a lot of luck. If you think you want targeted, consistent and revenue generating traffic there are many ways you can do so, but you'll need to pay from your own pockets.

Not all bloggers tend to invest $300 on their blogs, but I really don't think $300 is a such a big amount. Teens can save this much with just 3 months of their allowance, if your an adult and working elsewhere then I'm sure you would definitely earn more than a $1000. So, why not keep aside $300 for a better, richer and happier future.

This $300 is excluding your hosting space, domain name, design and content (if your outsourcing it). All of this requires a lot of hard work too. I truly don't recommend that you fully depend on paid methods to generate traffic, I want you to make your money work hard to generate traffic using these paid methods and I want you to work hard on forums, social bookmarking sites, networking, creating content and monetization.

Google Adwords

One of the most favorite traffic generation methods for all bloggers. Mostly due its high click through rate, highly targeted traffic and all of these at very low cost of $0.1. I think you can invest $30 on Adwords from our $300 investment package. You can automate it to spend $1 a day and keep cost per click rate to $0.1 per click. Adwords would say that your price is too low and may not appear in searches, but don't mind that just pay the money and your ready to go. For Adwords I don't think it is appropriate to send traffic directly to your homepage, you should send it a welcome page which gives your intro, categories and suggests to subscribe to your feed. You can see it here.

Stumbleupon Ads

I recently wrote a post on using Stumble Upon to promote your blog, that post clearly states the high traffic potential of StumbleUpon. If you directly Stumble a good post you are sure to get around 30 to 40 hits and some may like it send your post to some new audience. But if you are willing to get thousands of views and get listed on their high traffic pages you'll have to advertise there. StumbleUpon Ads are very expensive, it starts at 5 cents per view. We used $30 of our $300 on Adwords, now we have $270 left. I think $50 would be a wise investment on Stumble Upon and that would generate 1000 views, and if your post gets more likes  it may also travel to a wider range of targeted visitors. The key to Stumble Upon success is the post you advertise, you can't use your homepage, you'll have to find a short resourceful post. Posts with only images perform really well on Stumble Upon, on my first Stumble Upon ad campaign I advertised "30 Hilarious blogger jokes" which contains only funny images related to blogging and that performed really well.

Buy a review

The most effective form of advertisement in today's web is sponsored reviews, in this you buy a review from a blogger who writes about you or your blog for his readers. This is very efficient as how much can you really tell about yourself on a ad banner. Sponsored reviews are much more expensive, but it gives a clear view of you, your blog and your services. People who visit your site are highly targeted and you definitely have a chance of getting a subscriber, a bookmark or a buyer. Previously we had $220 left, sponsored reviews are available from $50 to $1000 according to the blogs traffic. I think you can invest $100 for sponsored reviews, but it is not wise to buy a review directly from the advertiser you can use services such as SponsoredReviews and ReviewMe.

Outsource seo/marketing
This is the most expensive, but the best in this list. You can find a lot of seo firms ready to do seo optimize your site. You can find a good seo firm for $100 and thats not much. It is advisable to invest up to $120 on marketing.

Conclusion
We have invested our entire investment package, now just promote your blog virally and see how this $300 turns itself into thousands of dollars. I know I've missed out a lot of advertising methods such as banners and text links, but you see in the above list I've given options were your investment lasts longer and you get returns faster. Google Adwords costs $0.1 per click so I can monetize my blog and get back all my investments within a month and the same goes for others.

If you think there are other ways or if I have something wrong posted please leave your comments below.