Grow Your Blog Fast: 12 Quick Wins For More Traffic & Income [Ep. 35]

Updated on March 24, 2024

Want to grow your blog fast?

Well, you’re in luck, as in this episode we’ll be talking about how to drive traffic to your blog as well as increase your blogging income quickly.

By the end of this episode, you’ll understand:

How to increase blog traffic fast through simple but powerful actions
Strategies you can incorporate to have a fast growing blog
How to grow your blog on Instagram for increased visibility and engagement
Simple tactics for seeing boosts in your blogger salary
And more!

On that note, let’s dive into the episode.

Disclosure: This episode + post on how to grow your blog quickly contains affiliate links to trusted partners I think you’ll love!

Table of Contents

How To Grow Your Blog Fast [Podcast Episode Audio]

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Free Travel Blogger Resource Library

To help you really jumpstart your blogging success, I’ve added 55+ blogging resources like printables, video tutorials, and workbooks into a FREE resource library for travel bloggers.

These resources are meant to help you grow your traffic, community, and income faster and with less overwhelm!

Grow Your Blog Fast With These Blogging Hacks — Click here to snag instant access!

Increase Your Traffic & Income These Helpful Tools

Teachable. This is my favorite platform for creating profitable online courses. Their support is fantastic, too.

ConvertKit. A feature-rich yet user-friendly email marketing platform made by bloggers for bloggers. My affiliate link gets you a 30-day free trial — no credit card required!

Deadline Funnel. This powerful tool allows you to create real limited-time offers; as in, once the tripwire deadline is over there will be no way for a person to get back into the funnel to get it again.

Beaver Builder. I personally use both their theme and plugin. The plugin allows you to create beautiful landing pages using a user-friendly drag-and-drop page builder.

Interact Quiz Maker. This tool allows you to easily make beautiful and engaging quizzes that can engage your audience while growing your email list.

Perlu. A media network that is great for working with brands as well as other creators.

Ultimate Bundles. Become an Ultimate Bundles affiliate for high commissions. You can also apply to have your own digital products included their bundles for even more potential income!

Grow Your Blog Fast: 12 Quick Wins For More Traffic & Income

How To Drive Traffic To Your Blog + Increase Your Income Fast [Episode Transcript]

Curious how to start a travel blog and make money?

There are many strategies you can implement — though the truth is it’s not always easy.

In fact, I’m curious:

Raise your hand if you’ve ever felt frustrated by how slow your blog growth can feel sometimes — especially when compared to how much work you put into it.

Now look, building a sustainable blogging business takes time and hard work. You need to be able to really map out your blogging goals and build out the strategies you’ll implement to meet them.

But, this all being said, there are certain quick win strategies that can help you see almost immediate growth in your blog’s traffic, community, and income. Adding these into your larger travel blog business plan can really help you see blogging success quicker and easier.

Plus, seeing these boosts can help you build confidence, which you can then bring into everything you do and create.

On that note, let’s kick off how to grow a blog quickly with…

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #1: Create & Take Part In Collaborative Posts

If you’ve never heard of collaborative posts, these are posts that publish input from a variety of different sources. So, for instance, you might ask 15 bloggers to submit their picks for the best hiking trails in the world.

These bloggers will usually submit a paragraph or two, which get combined to form one larger collaborative post.

There are numerous benefits to this type of blog content.

First of all, it allows you to publish information that goes beyond your own experience.

Additionally, by creating a collaborative post on your blog, you’ll often see an increase in blog traffic as the bloggers who contributed share the finished post on their channels, potentially even linking to it from their websites.

On the other hand, taking part in a collaborative post hosted on another blog allows you to make new industry connections, get in front of a new audience, gain backlinks and grow your traffic.

Quick note:

Guest blogging — or writing guest posts on other blogs — is also a great way to do this.

By the way, there are numerous Facebook groups where you can find and share collaborative post opportunities. For instance, as a travel blogger I’m a member of the “Link Building + Guest Posts + Collabs (Travel Bloggers)” group and the “Travel Collab Post Opportunities” group. Additionally, I have a group on the Perlu media network that is free to join and is focused on collaborative posts.

If you’re wondering how to grow your blog from scratch this is one of my favorite tactics!

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #2: Let Brands & Bloggers Know When They’re Mentioned

Whether a piece of content is sponsored or not, it’s a smart idea to email every single person and company mentioned to let them know.

This includes bloggers quoted, hotels you stayed in, restaurants you ate at, tours you booked, products mentioned when you create gift guides or make a resource page — everyone. Then, hopefully, they then share the post on their social media channels or possibly even link to it on their website.

For instance, over the years I’ve had a number of brands link to a blog post where they were mentioned on their press page.

Pro tip with this:

Link to your shares in your outreach emails to make sharing easy for them.

For instance, I will share a blog post across all of my channels before emailing the entities mentioned. In my email to them, I’ll include something like “Click here to re-tweet the post” and “Click here to re-share the post on Facebook”.

In each instance, the text is linked to my original share just to make it super easy for them to share and not put it off and forget.

If you’d like an outreach template for this there is one in my free Travel Blogger Resource Library.

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #3: Install Skimlinks

If you’re wondering how to become a blogger and earn money the easiest way possible, you’ll love this idea. It’s also great if you want to monetize your blog from day one.

One of my best affiliate marketing tips is to install Skimlinks, a set-it-and-forget-it affiliate marketing option for bloggers.

Instead of manually creating affiliate links and adding them to your content, you place Skimlinks’ code into your website.

From there, Skimlinks will automatically turn your non-affiliate links into affiliate links — helping you to increase your passive blogging income.

Just note that for this service Skimlinks does keep a portion of the earnings, though I personally still find this platform extremely beneficial and love the true additional passive income each month, especially since it’s money I wouldn’t have made at all without this free tool.

Besides Skimlinks, another option is using white label affiliate software to automate your affiliate efforts!

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #4: Install WP Rocket

Curious how to grow a WordPress blog?

One really important thing to focus on if you want to rank in Google and grow your free organic traffic is site speed — which means you always want to be working to keep your site loading as fast as possible.

Otherwise, your readers might get annoyed and click away, which can also signal to search engines that your content isn’t helpful and should be moved down in the search results.

One way to make quick speed improvements to your site and keep it running as fast as possible is by installing WP Rocket.

Honestly, when I installed this plugin I saw immediate improvements when I checked my site speed in GTMetrix and Google PageSpeed Insights — both of which are free tools you can use to analyze and optimize your site.

WP Rocket has a plethora of optimization options, as well as documentation on the best settings for most bloggers.

Bonus:

You can try it out risk free with a money-back guarantee included.

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #5: Take Part In Group Events

These include things like paid product bundles, freebie bundles, blog giveaways, and online summits. There are a few key ways doing these can help you grow your blog:

1) Visibility. Not only will you get in front of new audiences since many different people are promoting the event to their audiences, but you’ll become more likely to get invited to take part in other group events.

Personally, after I took part in my first group product bundle I started regularly getting invited to take part in others.

Additionally, it can help you get featured in media like publications and podcasts, as more people learn who you are and what you do.

2) Income. Typically the way these events work is you make money as an affiliate, and the commission is often quite high, like 50-70%.

So, just by sending a few emails and promoting on social, you have the ability to bring in a nice chunk of change. This is one of my favorite ways to promote my affiliate links!

3) Email subscribers. This is particularly true when taking part in a product bundle.

Because you have a ton of bloggers collectively promoting the same bundle, you’ll then get all of the people they get to sign up on your email list — unless they opt-out. This means that even if you don’t sell a single bundle as an affiliate you can still rapidly grow your email list.

Now, here is the thing:

While many times the organizers of these events reach out to the bloggers they want to feature, there are times when you’re able to apply.

For example, one company I love working with is Ultimate Bundles. They have bundles on all kinds of topics, too — blogging, self-care, productivity, photography, decluttering your home, and more. They even have a travel bundle if you’re interested in travel blog affiliate marketing.

You can apply to be an Ultimate Bundles affiliate. Then, once approved, you can apply to contribute a product to one of their bundles.

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #6: Sell On Outside Marketplaces

For those of you who sell your own digital products, you have the choice to sell it 100% on your website or gain added visibility by utilizing the power of a marketplace.

While you’ll typically have to pay the marketplace a commission for sending you the sale, it can be worth it since they’ll be helping you get in front of new people who don’t even know about your blog.

For instance, while I sell my NYC photo tours through my blog and through my own tour company website, I also list them on marketplaces like Viator and Expedia. By the way, starting a tour company is a great way to monetize your blog and your love of travel.

Other marketplace examples include Creative Market for design goods, Udemy for courses, CrateJoy for subscription boxes, Amazon for ebooks, Envato Market for digital assets and services, and Etsy for handmade goods and unique gifts.

Pro tip:

Interested in blog flipping? You can also use outside marketplaces like Motion Invest to sell your blog for profit.

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #7: Create Exclusive Content For Apps & Services

Don’t have your own blog products? You can also work with companies who need content for their products.

For instance, a quick Google search shows me that a company called AllCall pays travelers to create itineraries for them, and that you earn money every time one of their clients uses the itinerary.

Additionally, I’ve personally create email courses for Highbrow and audio courses for Listenable — both of which earn my money every time someone takes one of my courses.

This quick win offers a great way to create something once, let someone else handle the promotion — though you can also promote, too — and then get paid.

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #8: Send An Email

If you have a well-nurtured email list of targeted subscribers, consider sending them an email packed with value that also promotes an affiliate partner.

A well-nurture email list can convert quite well, so you’re likely to see some sales come through — again, as long as the list is well nurtured and you’re sending them an offer that would actually benefit them.

Pro tip here:

I recommend choosing an affiliate that:

You truly love and would recommend
Would truly benefit your target audience
Has a high payout

You might consider an affiliate partner that offers recurring commission — meaning you continue to earn money for as long as your referral is a customer — or an affiliate that offers commissions for free trials and leads, which can be an easy sell.

Once you’ve chosen the affiliate, promote them through a helpful strategy.

You can use the subject line formula: “How to [desired result] in [timeframe]” and then showcase the affiliate product as something that can help them reach the goal.

Another idea:

Presell one of your own products in an email! If this is a new idea, here is how to presell online courses.

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #9: Create A Tripwire

I have an entire podcast episode about how to properly set up a tripwire funnel, but basically this involves creating a high-value, low-cost, limited-time offer and promoting it on the thank you page of your opt-in freebie (like a free resource library, which is one of the best opt-in freebie ideas).

The offer should solve the same problem as the opt-in freebie so that it’s relevant to the person seeing it.

Consider creating an offer that costs less than $30 — but that is valued at way more and truly delivers what it promises too, since you of course want to make sure you’re being ethical and authentic.

You can use a tool like Deadline Funnel to have the offer only be available for say, 15 minutes. Because tripwires combine high value with scarcity they tend to convert really well.

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #10: Increase Search Traffic Using Proven Keywords

You may have heard of the power of utilizing long tail keywords to rank more easily in Google search; however, for this quick win, we’ll focus on search traffic by utilizing keywords you’re already ranking for.

To do this, pop into Google Search Console and see what keywords you’re already ranking on the first page of Google for, particularly toward the top.

Then, check to see if there are other variations of that keyword you could create content on. For instance, if you rank for “things to do in Paris” maybe you write something on “things to do in Paris with kids” or “things to do in Paris at night.”

Keep in mind that consistently covering the same topic also tells Google that you’re an authority in that topic and an expert in your field, making it easier to rank for.

Note that Google Search Console is also an invaluable tool for updating your website content and helping it bring in new traffic.

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #11: Take Part In Sharing Groups

You’ve possibly seen groups on Facebook where people re-share each other’s content.

Additionally, if you use Tailwind, you can use their Communities feature to take part in pin re-sharing with other users. By the way, my affiliate link snags you $30 off Tailwind.

One note here:

Make sure the group is in your niche or that you’re not required to share every single person’s content.

Otherwise if you’re a travel blogger who may end up being required to share off-topic content that could confuse your audience.

Grow Your Blog Fast Strategy #12: Interact With Your Audience

Yes, social proof is important, thoughh I sometimes feel like as bloggers and content creators we spend so much time worrying about how to get blog followers that we don’t have that we forget the audience we already have.

Instead of spending so much time prospecting for new followers, engage with the ones you do. The great thing is they’re already following you, meaning you already know they’re interested in your content.

So, you can feel free to simply engage with them and grow the relationship — which makes them also more likely to engage with you in the future.

One way to get started with this is hopping onto Instagram and interacting with their Stories, which then automatically puts the conversation into DMs where you can have a more genuine interaction.

Make it a habit to do this with, say, five followers per day — as well as with five other people that you’d like to follow you so you can also grow your audience.

In my opinion, if you’re wondering how to enjoy social media, the above blogger mindset is key.

Alright, now I hope you enjoyed this episode.

There are so many ways to monetize a travel blog, and I hope you feel inspired and empowered to start taking actions that can help boost your blog’s traffic, community, and income.

Don’t forget to grab access to the free travel blogging resource library that I’ve linked here. There are a ton of resources in there on growing your community and increasing your blogging profits.

And of course, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes sharing these bite-sized strategies for bloggers who want to turn their blogs into profitable full-time businesses.

Happy blogging!

Grow Your Blog With These Helpful Past Episodes:

13 Clever Ways To Grow Your Travel Blogging Income

Monetize Your Email List With 4 Smart Strategies

Create A Profitable Automated Email Sequence (With Template!)

Content Marketing 101: How To Create & Monetize A Blog Series

9 Clever Ways To Increase Your Blog Traffic

Making Money With Webinars: 10 Do’s + 3 Don’ts

How To Create A Profitable Blog Brand

How To Create A Free Resource Library That Grows Your Email List

How To Host & Promote Your Blog Giveaway

How To Find Niche Keywords That Drive Traffic With Competitor Research

Connect With The Profitable Travel Blogger Podcast

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