The "in" thing right now in network marketing is definitely to have a blog! Doesn't it seem like every single person you know online has a blog? Personally, I absolutely love having a blog, because I made it, I write in it, and it makes me money. I feel like I accomplished something.

However, the problem with this torrent of new bloggers (I'm not criticizing, I'm a new blogger...) is that everyone and their dog is trying to rank on Google! Well, It seems like the "magic" number is to be ranked better than 100,000 in the world, so that's what everyone wants. So how can a bazillion marketers, plus all the other sites out there all rank in the top 100,000?

The obvious answer... they can't. So that means you have to be ahead of the game, get a leg up on the competition (now that I think about it, maybe I shouldn't share this post with you...haha). If you're just writing posts, you are going to be left in the dust because others are doing so much more!

The very first thing you absolutely need to know about blogging is that you need to use a self hosted WordPress blog. I'm going to share my top 10 favorite blogging tricks to get traffic and leads! Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Install the Onlywire plug-in and submit all your blog posts to social media bookmarks, your readers will be able to use this button as well.

2. Put up a video with you introducing them to your blog and say thanks for visiting, this is what you're going to get out of my blog.

3. Don't pitch with every blog post, post content that will actually benefit others.

4. Insert a visible opt-in form that appears on every page. My intro video also invites them to opt-in and tell them what they'll get if they do.

5. Put the Retweet and Facebook share plug-ins on your posts. The more you create a social buzz with your content, the more Google looks at it.

6. You personally can share your new blog posts on Twitter and Facebook

7. Make a video about your post on YouTube and link it back to your blog.

8. Use an article submitter to blast out your post to hundreds of article directories. The more "hooks" you have out there the more people are going to be "caught."

9. Make sure you have a keyword in mind and have that keyword in the title, description, tags, body, and anchor text (the text that you click on in a link)

10. Make a Squidoo and a Hubpage with links back to your original post on your blog.

If you do all of these things, I guarantee that your blog will get a big boost in traffic and therefore your Alexa ranking. It still takes time for your blog to start ranking, so BE PATIENT! I've had my blog up for almost three months, and the ranking is really starting to take off because I've been fairly (not completely) consistent with doing the stuff above. Now my blog posts are showing up on Google! It's exciting and it's fun seeing the results.

So start getting your blog to rank! Just don't beat me; ).