If you're hoping for a "Blog it and they will come" field ofdreams, you can forget that. Recent statistics from blogsearch engine Technorati show that a new blog hits theInternet every 7.8 seconds! Sheesh, talk about having torise above the noise level to be heard, how in the world areyou going to get eyeballs glued to your blog when there isso much competition out there?

Unlike e-zine subscriptions or autoresponder mailings, it'snot the quantity of visitors that counts, it's the qualityof the visitors as well as how often they return to continuereading your blog.

Quality, in this case, refers to how often they click onrevenue-generating links in your blog and how often they buysomething that you're blogging about. Of course, if you'reoperating an altruistic blog that has no revenue-generatingfeatures, then you are only concerned about how often thereaders return to bask in the illumination of yourknowledge, expertise, biting sarcasm or humor.

Either way, those are the two measurements of a successfulblog. Now don't get me wrong, the number of readers isimportant, of course, but it's better to have 1,000 faithfulreaders who return regularly than it is to have 5,000readers who come once and you never see them again afterthat.

There is no free traffic!

I love when bloggers say "I won't pay for traffic. I can getit for free". Nothing is "free" my friend. You will eitherpay for traffic with money or you will pay for traffic withyour time. Neither way is "free".

So what you have to do is decide which of these situationsdescribe you best:

A) You have more money than time.

If you are so blessed, then you need to develop anadvertising plan to help you spend your money wisely. Anadvertising plan requires you to research the differentadvertising programs that are available, study thedemographics of the traffic that you'll be receiving, make abudget, set up test purchases and analyze the final results.

Well, you don't HAVE to develop an advertising plan. You canalways just throw money at different potential solutions andhope for the best. If you do that enough times then you willautomatically end up in the "B" category of "more time thanmoney" because all of your money will be gone and you stillwon't have any traffic.

B) You have more time than money.

You've got a great blog going, the few people who show upalready absolutely love it, but you're in a financialcrunch. Is there any hope for you?

Yep, there's plenty of hope. What you'll need though is alot on ingenuity and the time to turn your smarts intotraffic. Believe it or not, you should still develop anadvertising plan because even though you're not spendingcash, you are spending time. Time IS money and if you wastetime then you're wasting opportunities to get traffic toyour site.

No matter which way you end up paying for your traffic, timeor money, you should first make an investment in buying some"knowledge" from people who have already been there, donethat and got the T-shirt. That way you can spend less andget more bang for your buck or your time.