You can “get” traffic or you can “earn” traffic.
If you want to “earn” traffic, you have to be prepared to “creating compelling content” online and creating a powerful identity offline and online.
If you want to “get” traffic, you can use cheap tricks and tactics.
“Earning” traffic helps you in the long run and may not show big results in the short term.
“Getting” traffic shows big results in the short-term (may be) and hurts you in the long-term.
You make the call, of course.
Here are some of those cheap tricks anyway:
1. Be Controversial
Just say something like “Slum Dog Millionaire Sucks” even if you like it. If the popular opinion is that “Slum Dog Millionaire” is a great movie, you will get immediate attention – even if it is just out of curiosity.
Of course, if your stand is controversial but stupid, people will laugh and go away.
2. Do the Opposite
If everyone is saying something, say the opposite. If people are going west, go east. If people are saying Yes, say No.
Again, out of curiosity, you will get the attention. If your stand is baseless, they will laugh at you and go away.
3. Comment on popular blogs without adding value to the discussion
Most commenting systems will allow you to place a link to your own blog or website. You can keep commenting on popular blogs and get attention.
Of course, if your comments provide no value addition, you will get attention of people who have a lot of time at hand (but don’t care about value probably)
4. Argue stating exceptions
If a blogger says something and claims it to be a rule, argue against it stating exceptions to the rule. If the blogger points that out, argue against it. Keep engaging the blogger until the blogger gets fed up and concedes defeat. Now you can boast to the world that you “cornered” someone and won 🙂
5. Ask for a link exchange
Who knows – there may be other desperate souls who might link back to you <surprise, surprise>
6. Mindlessly link to other blog posts
Trackbacks from these blogs might result in clicks. If the visitors come to know that it was a mindless link, they may not come back again but hey, you can always find new blogs and new visitors 🙂
7. Jam your blog post with latest buzzwords and popular keywords
First, you might get some search engine love
Second, there are many plug-ins that provide “Related Posts” feature that links to other blog posts. Your post may start to appear over there.
Plus if you are linking to popular posts, you might get picked up by TechMeme or some other similar engine.
8. Broadcast your blog post to all your networks.
Sometimes it is easy to get a lot of “friends.” For instance if you want 10,000 followers on Twitter, try following 12,000 people – chances are that 10,000 of them will follow you back. You can now say that you are popular on Twitter and think that these 10,000 people are really “following” you and reading your tweets.
Actually, even if a small portion of them are reading your tweets, they will click through and read your post.
9. Endlessly spend money on any and every SEO trick
Who knows – some of these tricks may work and you might get more traffic. Why not?
10. Buy Traffic
Yes, there are ways to buy traffic but I put this in the end as it may not be cheap 🙂