Blog carnival:

As the name suggests, blog carnival is meant for and being controlled by bloggers.It is a quite different from the web directories.There are many bloggers using 'blog carnival' to express themselves.

How does it work?
Basic principle : Choose the category and submit your article to specific carnival.

When a blogger creates or arranges a new carnival, it is listed and published on homepage.Hence, all the members come to know about it without any complications.What a publisher needs to do is search for the category which suites best to his/her blog and then submit the article to it.This article gets published on the blog of carnival manager (who arranges the carnival).
Every carnival creator puts some limit on the final date of article submission.
The carnival can be repeated after some specific time period.For a few popular topics among bloggers, the repeated carnivals are required because of its large scope.

e.g.If you are blogging on 'mental fitness and stress management', search through the category Health, find the best suitable carnival, get the details about owner, submit the article and you are done.

Advantages:
1.Increase in blog traffic + Get a backlink from carnival host blog.
2.Free and quick sign up.Simplicity of article submission.No maintenance.
3.Good stage to express yourself.

Sign up for Blog carnival.

Social networking sites: Get targeted traffic

If you are not satisfied with the amount of traffic from search engines, the social networking sites may work for you.
The social networking sites include different "communities".The members of such communities are really interested in that subject.They are always looking for something new which is being written and which is related to that topic.And if they find it, they will directly bookmark the source and will try to share it with others.

How to use them?

1.First of all, you must join a social networking site.There is a large number of such sites like orkut, facebook, myspace,windows live spaces etc.For more such sites, check this list.

2.Find the communities related to the topic of your website.
e.g.If you are writing about the transfers of football players, join the communities like "Manchester united fans", "We like ........" etc.The community members will take interest in your articles for sure.Keep in mind that if they like your website, they will be daily visitors, which will help to build steady traffic.Moreover, they will share it with their friends with similar interest, thus indirectly helping you to increase the traffic.

3.Make sure you keep posting in communities.Reply to the topics is must.Don't just keep spamming.
You just cannot tell the members that "I own website xyz and visit it".This will not make good impact on the reader.
You can write something interesting (start a new topic) and after the content, put a link to your site.This will make a huge difference.The readers who liked the content of the topic, will surely visit the website for details.

4.Be an active member of the community.Keep opening new topics, polls etc.Reply to the topics in your own style.

The social networking sites are increasing in number and the response to them has always been good.The best part about such sites is that if a person likes it, he/she will ask friends to join it.This brings out a rapid growth in that website.Once it starts gaining popularity, the number of members keeps growing at very high rate.The site which has been started just now, may see 1,00,00,000 members within 1 year.
Till now,the main source for traffic has been the search engines.But the social networking sites are emerging out to be the excellent alternative to them.
This may work for you.Try it!

How to get Search engine traffic:

Major sources of traffic to many websites are search engines.If your website is ranked well in search engines, you are going to get good traffic.The engines which will bring surge of traffic are Google, Yahoo and MSN.
The only way to get the good pageranks in search engines is to keep writing original, attractive and fresh articles.More you write, better will be the results.
The articles you write must be reader-friendly.After writing any new article, make sure you read it once before logging out.It is as important as to write an article.Read it from the point of view of reader, and you will suggest yourself a few changes.

What should I write?
1.Write on current issues.
2.Write the articles such that they will draw interest even after 10 years.

I don't have time to write.What should I do?
Some of us may face this problem due to tight office schedule, overtime job, study etc.You can hire someone to write for you.There are a few websites that offer you articles for a few dollars.
But I would suggest you something different.
Try to take out some time, say 15-20 minutes everyday, from your busy schedule.Just think on something different which is related to the topic of your site.Once you start thinking, you can write.If you write 2 good articles, they are sufficient to keep the readers interested in your site.

Submit your website to web directories:

One of the way to get steady traffic is submission to web directories.

What is web directory?
A web directory is not a search engine, and does not display lists of web pages based on keywords, instead it lists web sites by category and subcategory. The categorization is usually based on the whole web site, rather than one page or a set of keywords, and sites are often limited to inclusion in only one or two categories. Web directories often allow site owners to directly submit their site for inclusion, and have editors review submissions for fitness.

What to do?
Search for different web directories and submit your website/blog to them.Each submission may require 2-3 minutes.There are lots of web directories and it is a tedious job to pick good directories.
To save your time, there are a lot of softwares available for submission.With submitting your site just once, you will submit it to hundreds of directories.
I found one which will be really helpful for you to submit your website to more than 1500 web directories.
Click here to submit your site!!
You will have to download the free software and submit.

How to get traffic to your blog?

Here are some smart tips that really work:
1.Write comments in other blogs:It is really a good feeling for a blogger to get some comments from other blogger.This "good feeling" may help you in getting traffic from other bloggers.
How to do so?
-->Find the blogs of your interest (not necessarily of the same topic)
-->Post comment on the 1st post on home page like "I liked your blog.......................I will tell my friends about it.I have a blog on ............Here is a link to my blog......................................Do visit it and tell your friends about it."

2.Writing in forums/groups:
-->Search for the forums related to your topic.
e.g.If you own a blog on "Cricket" Or "Soccer", search "cricket/soccer forums" in Google.
-->Join the forums/groups
-->Post your comments in best possible way.This will attract other members to read your posts.If you put a link to your blog after your post, you will surely get helpful traffic.

3.Tell your friends about the blog:
-->Use emails as a medium

4.Use social networking sites:
-->Use Orkut, Facebook etc. to spread the word.

Content is King!

Search Engines love unique and fresh content.The search engine bots always try to pick something new which is different than others.So it is better to write on our own rather than copying from other websites.
Let us take one example-a blog on flowers.
It is very easy to copy the different pictures of flowers, information about that flower etc. from other internet sources.But the visitor will appreciate your efforts if you have put some photos taken by yourself.Write your own observations about each flower (e.g.about the experiments you performed on particular flower).If you write about the life cycle of flower with example( pictures),the visitor will like it.He/She will surely tell his/her friend about this and your blog will become popular slowly.
This is the power of unique content!

If you have 50 posts copied from other website and on the other hand, if you have 1 unique post on other blog, you will perform better on the 2nd blog.It is very important to attract the search engine bots to crawl your blog and fresh content will do this for you.

Keep aim of writing 1 post per day or 4-5 posts per week in this manner.You will gain traffic which will indirectly increase your revenue.

Increase the traffic:

Here is the most important part which directly affects the Adsense earnings--->traffic.
It is not easy to get healthy traffic to your website/blog,but here are some tips which work good:
1.Unique content:If you have original and unique content,the search engines will love your website.If you have copied the content from some other website, search engines will neglect your website.Fresh content affects your website traffic.
Example: If you have a website whose topic is "Cellphones", then try to write about each product from the customer point of view.If you compare the similar looking phones with some pictures, the visitor will like it.If you show visitors the camera picture quality rather than just giving it's specifications, they will appreciate it.

2.Search Engine Submissions:Submit your website/blog to different search engines like Google,Yahoo,MSN.
Here are the links to do so:
Google-----> click here
Yahoo-----> click here
MSN------> click here

3.Build inbound links:Inbound links in short mean "getting visitors from other website".
Just search in Google for the topic of your website/blog, find other sites which have similar subject as that of you.Contact the website owner and tell him/her about keeping a link to your site on his/her site.This kind of link exchange will help you in getting you the inbound links.