How To Advertise For Your Blog Effectively?

Almost every blogger in the cosmos has advertised for his website at least once in his lifetime and I am sure you are one of them. Today, there are a lot of avenues where one can advertise. Some of them happen to be Google Adwords, EntreCard, Project Wonderful or by directly inking deals with other bloggers. My question here is, what do you allow these ads to link to?

Did you even undergo any internal conflict regarding the link? If you link to your website itself, did you ever publish an awesome post & then wished to advertise that very article, since it was your best creation? If you normally link to various contests in your blog, did you ever feel that your visitors never browsed through your whole blog because you'd linked to just one post? Well, I don't know about you, but I certainly have.

I have always been juggling between this concept of "blog url" & "post url". Hence, I thought I would share my dilemma & its solutions to you, here in my blog.

Advantage of linking to the main website / blog :

• The main web page is almost always optimally designed. You can always decide how to make your visitors navigate through the pages once they land up on your website.
• The basic design of the homepage is usually constant, unlike separate blog posts. This helps in brand recognition among repeat visitors.
• The website can be divided into various sections and all be served at the same time to the readers. This allows the reader to choose where he'd wish to navigate to.
• If a blog is running contests, all of them can be viewed at the same time on the main page.

Advantage of linking to separate blog posts :

• Since the posts, you link to, are some of your best pieces, they create huge impact on the incoming visitors, increasing your band value.
• If a stumbler is too impressed with your post, he shall, most certainly, dig into the archives in search of more gold. If you are capable of churning out quality posts frequently, that certain visitor is bound to become a loyal reader.
• Sometimes, a reader might land up onto a certain post because he wanted to get a certain job done. Now, if your article succeeds in helping him and since he's in a hurry, he'd just sunscribe to your blog so that he could follow you in future. Thus, you earn yourself a very precious subscriber.
• There are times when, even if your post fails to solve a visitor's problem, your comments just might. This again results in subscription. However, the comments are almost never visible on a blog's homepage.
• Again, landing up on the posts' page increases the chance of visitors' commenting to a large extent. Then, you can interact with your readers and hence form a community for yourself.

So, what do you think? What way do you advertise for your blog? Do you normally link to the main page or separate articles? How are your experiences with advertising , in general?

Just in case you still haven't subscribed to my RSS feeds yet, do so immediately because tomorrow I plan to publish the final verdict on this perennial dilemma of advertising, combining my views and those of yours.

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