Some basic, easy ways to get traffic are below. Note that most of these involve getting backlinks to your page, which is how the search engines find you!

- Comment on other people’s sites and blogs – post questions and answers at sites like Yahoo! Answers too.  Readers will get to know you.
- Offer to write for other bloggers.  Write articles about your topic, and broaden your sphere of readers that way.
- Be sure you appear in topical directories and regional directories too.

- Add your site’s URL in your signature file, so that when you send emails or post on topic-related forums readers will notice your site.

And that’s just a start. There are many great services available to help you get links. This plus continually building a useful, quality site destination will help you start building traffic.

So – here’s the video of the reviews of three sites I selected from a few dozen submitted by readers.  I noticed a few themes that ran through nearly all sites I saw: writers are too busy writing to learn about basic SEO-friendly site design, and are taking baby steps when it comes to social networking and Web 2.0.  Yet these are seriously important lessons to learn if you want to bring readers right to your virtual doorstep.

Without considering basic Web design issues, your site comes off like an old-fashioned brochure or resume website. Plus, you want your site positioned and designed to keep visitors engaged once you start using all that traffic generation to bring them there!  (That is, you want them to stay and READ, right? You are a writer right?!

So, with this review I’m providing a starting point for writers to consider when they build or tweak a site.  Warning:  this may be too basic for some writers who are already well-versed in online promotion, but judging by those who sent me sites to take a look at, many more know they need to do something, they just aren’t sure exactly what. Hopefully this will give everyone some ideas.

After your take a look at the video walk-through of my three winners’ sites right here.  then we can have a good long discussion of how writers can use (1) and (2) to build income.   

What would you do to enhance these sites?

While Hope publishes places writers can find work, it was also interesting to hear her stress that writers MUST take advantage of the technology on the Web to market and promote their work! Writers traditionally are not considered the best “sales people” – how many writers just cringe when they even hear that term?

Yet you aren’t very likely to get to six figures unless you learn how to promote and, yes, SELL, both yourself as a writer, and your work, regardless of market or genre. I am going to be pulling out the stops in the next couple weeks and beyond, to bring you some killer tools to help you promote your self and your career. It’s about exposure, and making yourself visible so publishers, agents, and clients can find YOU instead of just the other way around. So let’s just get started with this open ended question: Taking a look over your current online promotion and outreach, do you use any/all of these tools?

• Blog(s)
• Newsletter
• Email Marketing
• Free giveaways/reports/samples
• Social Networking: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn?
• Web site that is content-rich, and cross-linked EVERYWHERE
• Forum memberships/frequent posting to forums, discussion sites
• Any of the zillions of tools, widgets, apps out there to help you build a presence efficiently

… and if you are, are you using them to their fullest potential to get yourself and your stuff out there?