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We all know that without traffic, your Internet business will do nothing. Backlinks, acting like large roadside signs pointing to your blog, will direct new visitors to your blog and give your blog the needed exposure. I will discuss three ways to get backlinks pointing to your blogs.

Submit your blog post to social directories - This will quickly get backlinks to your blog. when done properly, a submission to Stumble Upon and Digg will create many backlinks and huge amounts of traffic.

Article marketing - Article marketing is still a great way to create traffic and back links to your website and for the most part is free. Just make sure your author bio box is well written and includes links to your blog. This is what gets the links to your blog as most article submission sites don't allow direct links. If they do then link away in the article also.

Post comments - A very effective and easy way to create backlinks is to comment on blogs that are related to yours. If people like your comment, they will most likely go to your blog to read more of your material. One great way to create back links is Posting comments in other people's blogs. Every time you post you are able to include your name and your website address in some comments. Try to include your primary keyword in the name if you can.

These are three ways to get backlinks to your blog. None of them are hard and they don't take a long time to do. Once you start doing them regularly, it will become second nature to you, just like watching all the traffic coming to your blog. I hope this helps you in your endeavor to make money on line and improve your Internet business and blog.

It's truly shocking to see the writing/marketing strategies of thousands of affiliate oriented blogs on the blogsphere. Thousands of websites are based around 20 or so static pages, and those pages are the driving force of the website - the whole shebang. Those pages include the affiliate programs, the sales, the tools - everything.

These websites are typically based on unique traffic rather than loyal, daily return traffic. For example, if you are selling a plugin for SEO, you only need to sell it once. Of course, there's a chance that returning visitors who didn't buy it the first time might buy it - but statistically, it would be best to have new or "mostly new" traffic.

Yet there seems to also be a strange draw to "blogging", or writing miscellaneous posts on the topic of the website. This strategy doesn't typically work. Most blogs, even if they have "pretty good" content, never have thousands of subscribers. Yet the bloggers keep on pumping out blog posts in the attempt to increase traffic.

Rather than writing these posts and articles for their own site, they could be drumming up traffic and Google juice by not blogging. Sometimes the best place to blog is somewhere besides your own website.

Don't Lose Focus

Remember that your website must have a business plan - a focus - a point of consideration. This goal is the entire point of your website. If your blogging helps achieve this in the most efficient way possible, then go a head and keep blogging. But always entertain the idea that blogging isn't justified.

For example, if you are targeting search engine traffic especially, and are getting no search engine traffic at all, your number one priority should be SEO. If the package that you earn your income from is based on raw new visitors, the fact that this is important can't be overstated.

If you base your website on an affiliate program, or a store, or the like - every secondary in come is just that: secondary. Have a focus for your website, and unleash the revenue. Diversity is fantastic, but sometimes it pays off to literally put all of your eggs in one basket.

Buyers > Traffic

Unfortunately, it's easy to get wrapped up in the "stats" of our website, and to completely miss the fact that our purpose isn't to have a million hits, but is to have a million conversions. Making money online isn't just about how to increase traffic - it's about getting money. If I can make $75 per 100 unique visitors, that's a heck of a lot better than making $10 with 5,000 loyal subscribers. Sometimes selling a product makes more than AdSense or AdBrite or any other small fish income source.

Again, I'm not saying that subscribers aren't important - every page on my websites ends with a request for a subscription. You just have to keep it all in focus when establishing your business plan.

Just note that it's not just about creating a high-trafficked website. It's about creating a highly profitable website. If you have to choose between getting non-buying repeat traffic with daily blog-posts and unique visitors who have a high conversion rate, go with the latter. Of course, the perfect mixture would be 100% of both.

Get Those Links

You don't necessarily have to choose between buyers and repeat visitors, of course. My website is geared towards getting first-time buyers, and then attempting to keep them as subscribers. But I don't blog daily. I blog weekly, at best. I find that a weekly "fantastic" post "converts" my traffic into subscribers at a higher rate than daily "okay" posts.

But take a step back and consider how much energy you spend writing your blog posts. Imagine if you could write two "okay" or "good" blog-posts a day - now imagine if you could convert those into 10+ links of your choice on another website.

Pretty snazzy, isn't it?

You certainly can. Take your "okay" posts, and turn them into submissions for article directories. Add a link to your website with any anchor text that is relevant to your website. Now you post less on your blog - but only keep your best posts for your blog. This means you get the best of both worlds.

Not only is all of your content for your blog way above average, meaning a higher "subscriber conversion" rate, you also get plenty of free links from submitting to article directories and the like. The possibilities are limitless. Between article distribution services and guest posting, you can gain an a huge advantage with Google juice by ... not blogging. At least not on your blog.

This means that rather than having people go to your website every day to read your "okay" blog posts, you'll now have a link-building campaign that might take months, or longer - but you'll feel the positive impact later on with new search engine traffic. This means you have more of a chance of selling your product, meaning more money.

So blog less on your blog. Turn your "would-be-okay-posts" into links by submitting them to article directories. Get targeted unique traffic, and sell your product.

Blogs and forums are ideal "traffic magnets" for a website. Your website's visitors know that they are frequently updated, and that they are interactive, so they keep returning to "join the conversation."

Search engines know that they are frequently updated, so search engine spiders frequent return to re-index their content. Properly configured blogs will "ping" the search engines and directories each time that they are posted to, constantly calling the search engine spiders back.

Since blogs and forums even come pre-installed in C-panel on many hosting accounts, getting a website going can be as simple as registering a domain name, hosting it at a host that offers C-panel, and with just a few clicks of a button, selecting the blogging or forum platform that you want to use.

You can even customize the look and feel of that blog or forum later if you want to. That way, you can literally have a website up and running in UNDER an hour. All that you need to do is make the blog or forum your homepage, and your site is literally ready for the world!

The big question has always been, how do you then earn revenue from that blog or forum. Here are some options that I use and recommend:

1) Use your blog or forum to build a niche mailing list that you then market to via email. Simply post a subscription form right into the html code of the blog or forum that invites your visitors to join your mailing list. If they enjoy the content on your blog or forum, many visitors will subscribe. You'll build a mailing list fairly effortless over time.

If you're really lazy, that mailing list subscription can be to an "evergreen" newsletter. That is, you can write, or have written, a series of email messages that each new subscriber gets in sequence when they sign up. Put together 52 issues that are scheduled to go out once a week, or 24 issues that are set to go out every 2 weeks, and you have a newsletter that essentially "runs itself" for a year.

Each issue of your newsletter could contain: a simple article, an editorial, and a product recommendation. It doesn't have to be any more difficult than that.

I write each issue of my newsletter fresh, but do know people who use the "evergreen model." They simple set the autoresponder sequence to start over again when the last issue is reached, then they periodically add new issues to the series or revise outdated issues.

If you'd like to see how I've integrated a subscribe box right into my blog, you can check it out at: http://WillieCrawford.com/blog/

With a newsletter, the most often missed point is that you DO need to sell your subscribers on signing up. You do need to give them a compelling reason, assure them that you'll protect their data, and instruct them on exactly how to signup.

2) Use your blog or forum to sell affiliate products. This can be as simple as putting graphics and product recommendations right into your menu bar. I do that on my blog at the url above.

On my blog, I now sell affiliate products that pay me 50 to 100% commission, and that pay me instantly. If you check out my blog at the url above, you'll notice an animated 150 x 600 banner that advertises several products.

When a website visitor clicks on that banner and buys one of those products I earn 100% commission, and it's instantly deposited directly to my Paypal account. Not only do I earn a steady stream of commissions from my blogs and forums, but I don't have to wait on slow-paying affiliate programs.

The banner on my blog is called "Niche Widget" and is was added to my blog simply by copying and pasting a tiny bit of code into the webpage. It will work on ANY blog, forum, or webpage, even on your Faceback or YouTube (or other social networking websites) webpages.

In fact, adding the Niche Widget to sites like Facebook or YouTube is as simple as clicking on the Widget where it says "Grab This Widget." This prompts you to log into any of over a dozen social networking sites and AUTOMATICALLY add the widget to your profile. However, that is primarily designed to send your widget viral, and have lots of others passing along YOUR affiliate link. To get paid you need to click on the link that says "Make Money With It!"

What could be easier?

With Niche widget you can choose from a variety of niches ranging from pets, to relationships, to marketing, to food, or health, and the widget will display ads paying you from 50 - 100% on products related to that niche. The database has over 2000 different digital product in it.

To get the Niche Widget absolutely free, you just visit http://Niche-Widgets.com and sign up. There are premium accounts, but you can go with the free account if desired. The difference is that premium accounts pay higher commissions and pay you a percentage of sales on free accounts when others sign up through you.

With the premium account, when someone who signs up through you earns 50% commission, you earn 25% commission, and the owner on Niche Widgets earns the other 25%.

I really like the system. It was earning me MORE than Google AdSense the very first day that I installed it.

3) Google AdSense or other pay per click programs. You register for one of these accounts, insert the code into your page, and then you basically "sell your targeted traffic."

The AdSense code displays related ads on your blog or forum, and then when someone clicks on an ad, that advertise pays Google for the traffic, and Google pays you an undisclosed percentage of that advertiser's payment (for each click generated).

This was at one time my favorite revenue model because it required very little work. You simply insert the code into your webpages, blogs, forums, etc., and then someone else finds the advertises who pay you. However, after only a little testing, and noticing a higher revenue stream, I AM replacing AdSense on most of my site with Niche Widget. You can get that again at: http://Niche-Widgets.com

4) Your own products. If you have your own products, you can market those directly from your blog or forum just as you do affiliate products. For example, I have both a blog and a forum on my soul food recipes site. On both the blog and the forum, I run an ad for a cookbook that I wrote and sell copies of EVERYDAY.

Since I know that many of my repeat visitors already own my cookbook, I also use to run Google AdSense ads, but now use the Niche Widget.

The Niche Widget displays rotating ads for other cooking related digital products... mainly cookbooks.

5) Product Reviews. It also makes perfect sense to write reviews of products and services related to your niche and then post those on your blogs or forums. I do that by writing reviews and posting related articles on my blogs and forums.

This works because the reviews, or articles, containing niche specific keywords let the search engines know to rank my blogs or forums highly for those keywords. This content (these reviews) posted regularly, are what call the search engine spiders back time after time to keep re-indexing my sites.

I've just outlined five ways that you can monetize a blog or forum. On many of my sites, the blog or forum is EASILY the most visited page on the entire site. Visitors will often visit the blog or forum on your site repeatedly, and NEVER venture off the blog or forum to check out the other sections of your site.

Therefore, if you do want to earn a living from your website, it is critical that you use proven effective ways to monetize your blogs and forums. I've just given you FIVE that earn thousands of dollars per month for me :-)