Using Adwords to 'prime the pump' on AdSense?

[dones]

First post, and I tried to search for relevant threads, but here goes:

I have a blog I've been working on for nearly a year, and I just moved it to Blogger.com for various reasons. I'm now very interested in AdSense for a bit of income but I don't have any readership that I know of. Of course Blogger is content to toot Google's horn and recommends linking to your site with AdWords. This is in the so-called knowledge base:
[blogger.com ]
It says I can just do a little bit at a time with daily budgets, etc, but the reason I'm posting in this forum and not in AdWords is because I want to know if it's necessary. I know from reading several threads this week that many posters here also use AdWords, so I'd take some advice on that front.

Are there other ways of increasing readership and site traffic without paying for it? I've put my new blog address on my email signature and also some other forum sigs I have elsewhere. I submitted my main page url to Google for scanning. What else should I do?

Thanks for the advice, from an old newbie.

[diamondgrl]

Build links to your site. That will attract the search engines. The more links, with the higher PageRank, the better. Read a bunch of threads here in the Link Building forum.

[dones]

Wait...you said, 'Build links to your site'...do you mean get other websites to link to mine, or should I post links to other people's sites. The link development forum seemed to be focussed on the latter. Admitting my ignorance, this appears to be a strategy to increase PageRank through trackbacks. Is this correct?

If so, doesn't that require people to read your website *first* and click through?

I also read this article:
[blogger.com ]
and submitted my url to the blog directories listed. I guess this is a good way to start, but it doesn't seem like much.

[europeforvisitors]

Using AdWords to build traffic on an AdSense-supported blog or content site is awfully risky, and even if you could make it work, you'd need to spend an enormous amount of money to earn significant profits.

[diamondgrl]

By "build links to your site" I meant that you need to convince people to link to you. That may mean getting free links from sympathetic webmasters or paying for links.

Posting links on other sites can be a very risky strategy as well. Google caught on to the forum-spam, blog-spam, guest-book-spam scam a long time ago.

[Macro]

There are many threads here on improving traffic but they'll take some finding. Spend a lot of time here and you'll have millions of visitors.

Try submitting to niche directories. Try searching for "keyword" + "Add URL" to find sites that may be willing to let you add a link. Try variations on that like "Add your URL", "list your site" etc. Write articles for others with a proviso that they link back to you. Participate in co-operative ventures online - like wikipedia. Participate in forums that will allow you to link back in your signature. Play clean, avoid spam of all types. And keep reading. Good luck.

PS: Just don't send out bulk unsolicited mail to webmasters asking for links or reciprocals links. There's strong feeling against that at the moment