Starting a blog and want to generate some traffic? One of the very first steps in promoting your website is submit your quality contents to article sites, web directories and social networks. As you get more experienced, there are tips all over the web to help you improve your blog’s search engine ranking. These tips are called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and are widely applied to help websites gain more traffic. IMO, if you see yourself blogging in the long run, its better to buy a domain name and host the blog yourself. Of course, once your blog is well populated, register a Google Adsense account and start earning some money by putting advertisements on your website. It may not be much initially but more than enough to cover your hosting expenses.