35 Guaranteed Ways To Increase Your RSS Subscribers
I know you want to increase the number of people who subscriber to your blog. In this article I provide 35 guaranteed ways to increase your subscribers. This is the second article of my RSS Subscriber Series. The first article discussed the importance of RSS subscribers. Now let’s get more people to subscribe to your blog.
- Produce Great Content. I hated having to put this first because this is the advice that everyone gives. But, there is a reason everyone gives this advice. There is no reason for a person to subscribe to your blog, if you don’t provide anything worth reading. You have to give your readers a reason to come back to your blog. If there is no reason to come back, why should they subscribe to your blog.
- Post everyday. Let’s think about why people subscribe to a blog. It is so that they don’t miss any future posts. Therefore you need to be writing great content and publishing new content at a high enough frequency to make them think that they might miss an article. I think that at least once a day is good schedule to stick to. Make your readers fear missing one of your articles.
- Don’t post off topic. Stay focused on your blog’s topic. Readers will not want to subscribe to your blog if you jump from one topic to another.
- Use the large orange RSS button. People look for this orange button. It has become the universally recognized symbol for RSS feeds. I have seen sites that you can get the RSS button in different colors. I stay away from the other colors because the orange button is so easily recognizable now. Bottom line is that you want to make it very easy for your readers to find your RSS button.
- Put your RSS button above the fold. If you are trying to get your readers to do something on your blog, like sign up to your RSS feed, make sure that it is above the fold. People are more likely to see anything that you put above the fold. A great example of a blog with an RSS button prominently positioned is Andy Beard’s Blog.
- Offer a full RSS feed. Many people using RSS feed readers will not subscribe to a blog with only a partial RSS feed. I won’t. I have over 300 blogs in my RSS reader. I cannot read all of the articles. Therefore I use it to scan for article that I am interested in. I want to be able to scan the entire post, not just a snippet. Performancing has listed use of a partial RSS feed as one of the 41 reasons a blog fails. Vandelay Website Design has also written a great article discussing full versus partial RSS feeds. dcr Blogs has written Six Reasons Why You Need A Full RSS Feed. If you don’t believe me about using a full RSS feed, check out these articles.
- Allow your readers to subscribe by email. It is hard for a lot of us bloggers to imagine people not using RSS readers, but believe me only a tiny percent of Internet users use RSS readers. Therefore, you need to promote a way for these people to subscribe to your blog. The best way to do this is to allow people to get your articles emailed to them. Everyone uses email today. There are many services that you can use to create an email form, but I use Feedburner. Feedblitz is another popular service to use for handling email subscriptions. Here is a good article by John Chow about increasing your RSS subscriptions with RSS by email. Entreprenuer’s Journey is a great example of a blog that highlights the subscribe by email feature.
- Reduce the number of steps needed to subscribe. Using Feedburner to burn your feed is a great way to optimize the efficiency of the subscription process. I highly recommend using Feedburner’s RSS subscription service. In another article of this series I will describe the benefits of using Feedburner. According to a study performed by MarketingExperiments.com, they were able to increase their subscription conversion by reducing their subscription process by only one step. Shoemoney has a good article on how to increase your RSS subscribers using Feedburner.
- Write an article explaining what RSS is and how to subscribe to your blog. Bloggers tend to be very technologically savvy. Sometimes we forget that our readers might not know what RSS feeds are and how to use them. You should write an article on your blog explaining what RSS is so that your readers will know that subscriptions are available. Darren Rowse has a great What is RSS? page on Problogger.net. DoshDosh also has written a great example for how to tell your readers about RSS subscriptions. Also, please check out Rich Gilcrest’s article describing RSS feeds.
- Write an article explaining how to use RSS feed readers. A lot of people do not know what an RSS reader is and how it can improve their lives. You should write a post detailing the different RSS Feed reader options. Scobleizer has recently interviewed Eric Engleman, General Manager of Bloglines. Here is a great video explaining Bloglines that you can embed into an article explaining RSS feeds. Definitely give credit to Scoble.
- At the end of each article ask your readers to subscribe. A reader is more likely to subscribe to your blog after she has read one of your great articles. Therefore, make it really easy for them to subscribe by placing an RSS icon or text based link at the end of your article. Daily Blog Tips has listed this as one of his 40 best tips for setting up a blog.
- Use the MyBlogLog Widget. One of the best ways to increase the number of people who subscribe to you blog is to ask them to subscribe. Sometimes readers need to be encouraged or coaxed to subscribe. Maybe they aren’t even thinking about subscribing or maybe they are not using an RSS Reader. By asking them to subscribe, you remind them that subscription services are available. These next few tips provide ways for you to track who is visiting your blog, so that you can send them messages requesting them to subscribe. The MyBlogLog widget allows me to track who is visiting my site. When a new MyBlogLog visitor appears in my sidebar, I click their avatar and send them a message. I typically thank them for visiting and ask them to subscribe, including a link to my RSS feed.
- Use the Bumpzee Widget. The Bumpzee widget works the same as the MyBlogLog widget. Using this widget allows me to track visitors who belong to Bumpzee. I send them a similar message.
- Use the BlogCatalog Widget. This is another visitor tracking widget. It track people who register with BlogCatalog.
- Make sure that your blog’s RSS feed auto-discovery is working. You might have noticed on your web browser has a little RSS icon. This icon appears whenever your browser auto-discovers an RSS feed on the site your are surfing. Go to your site and make sure that Internet Explorer and Firefox auto-discover your feed. Some subscribers are used to subscribing this way. You don’t want to miss out on adding a subscriber because your blog’s auto-discovery is not working.
- Use the “What Would Seth Godin Do” plugin. This plugin allows you to ask your readers to subscribe to your blog. This plugin is great because you can configure it to display a message only to new readers.
- Email readers who have left comments on your blog. Ask them to subscribe. If a reader is willing to leave a comment, they probably are the type of reader who would subscribe to your blog. Make your messages personal. The point here is to network with these commenters.
- If a reader emails you, make sure that you email them back. If a reader is emailing you, it is likely that they will take the time to subscribe to your blog. If you do not email them back, why should they invest time in reading your blog. It is important for us to remember that our readers’ time is precious. If they are reading your blog, they are investing their labor in you. Do not let them down.
- Link to your RSS feed when leaving blog comments. I am not sure that I feel comfortable doing this, because it might tick people off. However, it might be a great way to add subscribers. I will leave it to you as to whether you feel comfortable using this tactic.
- Offer unique content that your readers can’t get elsewhere. By making your blog unique, you encourage people to subscribe to your blog, because they can’t get from others the information you are providing. If you just reiterate what others are saying, people might as well read the others.
- Write easy to scan content. Blog readers want to consume a lot of information quickly. By making your writing easy to scan, people will be able to more easily read your content. Additionally, when writing your posts, think about how they will look in a feed reader. People do not have time to read every feed. Therefore by making easily scannable content, people are more likely to read your posts.
- Write Interesting Headlines. Make sure that your titles stick out. Sometimes the only chance you have to entice a reader to read your blog is through your title. If your title is not interesting, they will move to the next website without reading your article and certainly before subscribing to your RSS feed. When people are reading posts in their feed reader they often scan headlines and read the articles that have interesting titles. However, make sure that the headlines fit the content of the article. Nothing will make you lose a subscriber faster than writing irrelevant headlines. To get a good feel for interesting headlines check out the most popular articles on Digg or Sphinn. The popular articles tend to have great headlines.
- Offer a free eBook for subscribing. This is a great way to get people to subscribe. Incentivize them with more valuable content.
- Offer free content using the Feedvertising plugin. The Feedvertising plugin only displays certain text to people subscribing to your RSS feed. If you make it known that only subscribers will be able to access valuable content, people will subscribe to your blog.
- Guest blog on other bloggers’ blogs. By guest blogging, you are creating attention for yourself on other bloggers’ blogs. This gives you a chance to convert their subscribers into your subscribers. Be careful though. You need to write great content when guest blogging. If you post subpar articles on your guest blogging gigs, you will waste your opportunity for attracting new readers to your blog.
- Participate in blog carnivals. A great way to get noticed by a lot of bloggers and their readers is to participate in blog carnivals. The more you can get readers’ attention the more you can grow your number of subscribers.
- Encourage other bloggers to post guest articles on your blog. Not only does this add great content to your blog, the guest blogger will typically write an article on their site asking their readers to check out their guest article on your blog. Hopefully, some of their readers will also become your readers.
- Start a podcast. Creating podcast episodes is a great way to encourage people to subscribe to your blog. Not many bloggers are using podcasts. So this is a great way to stand out in the crowd.
- Be active in forums. Build you online presence and brand by actively participating in forums. By helping people within your niche people will come to know you as an expert in your niche. By being an authority in your space, people will want to subscribe to your blog. Here are 10 forums to make you a better blogger.
- Link to your RSS feed in your email signature or forum signature. This will allow your readers to immediately subscribe to your blog. I would link to both my site and my RSS feed. That way the reader can choose which action to take.
- Link out to other blog articles. By helping your readers find other great content you can create loyal followers. Your readers will want to subscribe to your blog, because they know that you will lead them to other valuable content.
- Submit your blog’s RSS feed to RSS directories. By submitting your RSS feed to RSS directories more people can find your feed and your blog. DotSauce has a great list of 55 RSS directories that you can submit your feed to.
- Use paid advertising to generate a lot of traffic to your blog. If the paid advertising targets people interested in your niche, hopefully some will subscribe to your blog. I recommend using Google Adwords or StumbleUpon paid ads.
- Your content should include your opinion or commentary about news within your niche. People are more likely to subscribe to your blog if they want to know your thoughts about topics. They can get news from many sources, however, you are the only person who can give them your thoughts.
- Publicize your subscriber number. Once you hit 100 subscribers, I recommend that you publicize the number of subscribers that you have. People like to follow, not lead. If people see that others are subscribing to your blog, they will be more likely to also subscribe. The term used around the blogosphere is social proof.
Please subscribe to my RSS feed so that you don’t miss the other articles in this RSS Subscriber Series.
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Fab | November 5th, 2007 at 2:05 pm #
Very great tips here Fred!
)
Anybody wants to write a guest post on my blog? (see points 25 and 27
jessica | November 5th, 2007 at 2:06 pm #
Awesome Fred. I am going to work on some of these today! Jessica
Josh Garner | November 5th, 2007 at 2:12 pm #
I have to admit, though I push MyBlogLog on my blog, I would be hesitant to place 3 widgets on my site. But then again, you seem to have done so quite nicely. I’m going through a redesign so I’ll give it a shot.
I particularly like the idea of a post on RSS and it’s use. Perhaps placing a “What is RSS” permalink right by the Feed Button would make a great call to action.
Great post.
DJinHouston | November 5th, 2007 at 4:01 pm #
Great Article. I’ve only implemented a few of these. I would love to see my RSS numbers grow on my current blog and on my new ones.
Thanks Fred.
chipseo | November 5th, 2007 at 4:11 pm #
Great list, thanks for the post. I am still caught in the middle of my thinking on #6. I offer a full feed but often add a “more” tag to my posts so they don’t dominate my front page.
I think there are several positives about a more tag, although the one big thing is it cuts the feed with the more tag as well.
I am sure there is a way to code the feed to provide the full article and still be able to use the more tag so us long-winders can have a clean front page, I just haven’t had time to look into it yet. Thanks again for the list, Scott
Kyle Eslick | November 5th, 2007 at 4:24 pm #
Well said. Content is indeed king, but I think having a prominent Orange RSS button is a great way to promote this.
Tim Broder | November 5th, 2007 at 4:39 pm #
thanks a lot for the tips, I’m going to have to try the ones that I’m not already doing.
aksn1p3r | November 5th, 2007 at 4:57 pm #
Guest blogging takes dedication from the “100bloggers” who might opt in. Would be great to see 100 Great bloggers. An example i like is thoughtleader.co.za.
They are the team of Mail&Guardian newspaper.
Tad Chef | November 5th, 2007 at 6:49 pm #
Just 35? Lazy bast*** you!
David Rogers | November 5th, 2007 at 8:14 pm #
Great article Fred – no need to come knocking at mybloglog door – I’ve subscribed. David
Bloggerites | November 5th, 2007 at 9:00 pm #
Great advice and well timed. Started a new blog and done a few things on the list to help with RSS subscribers.
Great looking blog you ahve here Fred!
WordPress Advice | November 5th, 2007 at 11:13 pm #
Hey ,
I just see your site in IE 6 and there are lots of html based comments visible. You got to take your site to some doctor.
I think you just misplaced some tags.
Steven Snell | November 6th, 2007 at 12:50 am #
Thanks for the mention, it’s appreciated.
Prathik | November 6th, 2007 at 2:05 am #
Well you have written lot of interesting things but these are all points of common sense, but the way you put it was nice.
The 35th point was good, as soon as we hit a good number we should tell it to the public and this will make more people subscribe.
You can modify point 23, rather than offering free ebook, just offer them some interesting thing which they won’t find in the internet.
Brian Brandt | November 6th, 2007 at 10:31 am #
guess your not over the 100 subscribers yet
!
great post though… summarize everything fine…
shy guy | November 6th, 2007 at 3:29 pm #
Good and many tips..
There’s many ways that I dont know..
Thanks..
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charles | November 6th, 2007 at 9:41 pm #
Thank you for the tips and I have done some of them already.
Fred | November 7th, 2007 at 1:27 am #
Thank you guys for all of your very kind comments. I am glad that you like my article.
Jill | November 7th, 2007 at 7:05 am #
Hi,
Nice article, I subscribed because the big orange button was calling out my name.
A question, how did you get the feedburner subscribe to email box (was it from WordPress or from Feedburner or a plugin?)
thanks!
Jill
Blog Angel Team (Joanna) | November 7th, 2007 at 8:23 am #
Fred, you’ve got a great round up of tips here, thanks.
On #19, using your feed as your signature, I’ve seen a few folk do this and found it very irritating – I just wanted to look at their blog, not sign up to their feed. For me it seems counter-productive – they lost a visitor, never mind a potential subscriber!
Joanna
Fred | November 7th, 2007 at 12:45 pm #
@Jill – I got the code for Feedburner. You sign up for their feed by email service and then drop the code into a WordPress widget box.
@Blog Angel Team (Joanna) – I agree that this is tricky. I suggest that you add two links. One clearly marked that it will send the reader to your site, the other clearly marked that it will subscribe the reader to your feed.
Never trick you readers. This is a good way to lose subscribers.
Jug | November 7th, 2007 at 1:03 pm #
This is a nice and in-depth article. Keep it up, Fred! I’ve subscribed to your RSS feed.
Fred | November 7th, 2007 at 2:10 pm #
Jug,
Thank you so much for subscribing!! I will keep writing valuable content.
tAxX | November 7th, 2007 at 5:11 pm #
Today RSS is very powerfull tools, great post.
Ruth Lanham | November 7th, 2007 at 6:14 pm #
Thanks for the info. I’m new to blogging and this article is very helpful.
WarriorBlog | November 8th, 2007 at 4:49 am #
Awesome list! But posting a great article every single day can be very hard…
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Clement | November 9th, 2007 at 7:02 am #
Nice article! Got here courtesy of a Darren Rose link to your “65 Must Read StumbleUpon Articles” on Facebook. I must congratulate you, Fred, for such a nice blog, very informative. I have since subscribed to your RSS feed:)
Keep it up!!!!
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doniek | November 10th, 2007 at 5:58 pm #
RSS is future of bloging
Jamaaludeen Khan | November 10th, 2007 at 11:21 pm #
Thanks for these great tips. I’m doing many of these already, but the extra ones are a great help. My blog is busy climbing the Amatomu rankings very quickly, so now I want to expand my RSS readers. An RSS post is next…
Nishanthe | November 11th, 2007 at 4:13 am #
My Feedburner stats showing much higher than, what actually it might be. Do you have any idea, why is that?
anyways..thanks for the great article.
-Nish
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Great Article! Learnt a few things.
Utah SEO | November 11th, 2007 at 8:38 am #
Offering an alternative subscription source via email, like you have done with Feedburner, is another great option for users.
James - DigitalKeyToInfo | November 11th, 2007 at 8:50 pm #
Many of these are good just to getting readers to your blog in addition to subscribers.
Great list.
Josef Katz | November 12th, 2007 at 2:46 am #
Thanks for sharing this list. You have a lot of great info here. This list will come in handy.
david deangelo | November 15th, 2007 at 4:31 pm #
Good tips Fred. I got here through CLIQ from Tads blog!
MIXED MARKET ARTS | November 16th, 2007 at 1:34 am #
Excellent tips. God bless google for forwarding me to this post!
Sol Lederman | November 17th, 2007 at 5:13 pm #
Great article. Thank you.
On #11: Can you recommend a plugin that’ll make it easy to ask someone to subscribe at the bottom of every post?
On #20: I’m not sure I necessarily agree. I think there’s a place for a blog to succeed reporting on the best stuff out there? My fairly new blog is doing well and a lot of what I do is review what’s out there of high quality. Maybe that’s unique content and we’re talking about the same thing, though.
Fred | November 17th, 2007 at 5:44 pm #
@Sol- Here is a plugin that I found – http://www.trevorfitzgerald.com/projects/subscribe-remind
It is called Subscribe-Remind. This should help you!!
Lara Saad | November 19th, 2007 at 12:55 pm #
Very good article.. I really like it and I got a lot of ideas to try. Thanks a lot Fred. Please visit my blog and tell me out do you think… I am a new blogger and I am so open for any advise.
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Fiar | November 23rd, 2007 at 3:44 am #
Good roundup, Fred. There are a few points I’m not sure I totally agree with, but then, you have more subscribers than I do. Some are things I would do if I had more time, and a number of them are part of my routine already.
Goal Setting College | November 23rd, 2007 at 9:24 am #
Good advice, Fred. But I’m not sure about the point on “link to your RSS feed when leaving blog comments”. Perhaps a bit of grace and skill is need to avoid sounding spammy. And I attest to the freebies point. I do offer a free ebook for signing to my own site and it’s a fantastic RSS subscriber base builder!
Cheers,
Ellesse
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Nice, long post!
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Sheila @ GoVisitHawaii | November 27th, 2007 at 5:37 pm #
Hello – I’m visiting from the Litemind group writing project. I really like your article.
Regarding your point 7 on offering e-mail subscriptions, my blog has almost 40% e-mail subscribers. I think that the percentage of RSS feed vs. e-mail feed can be niche specific in that the less techie a blog is the more likely you’ll have e-mail subscribers. I honestly didn’t know what RSS was until I started blogging back in March. So, I try to keep the language about subscriptions as untechie as possible. I call it free “updates”.
OK…I’m off to subscribe to your feed now.
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Solacetech | November 30th, 2007 at 1:55 am #
Great article!!! Sorry i got to it so late…
Lawrence Cheok | A Long Long Road | December 1st, 2007 at 3:39 am #
Hi Fred, thanks for these tips.
Although I have seen these tips repeated on other blogs, you have compiled them into one single useful reference article. Kudos!
Fier | December 1st, 2007 at 9:19 pm #
Your article is one of my favorites and my personal choice for the Litemind’s Writing Contest. I wish you luck. Please keep posting outstanding stuff.
stumbled it.
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holli jo | December 2nd, 2007 at 8:37 pm #
This is a really great list of resources! Thanks for sharing these ideas.
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thanks fred for the valuable article .. you’re the man !!
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earning by blogging | December 20th, 2007 at 2:17 am #
A mostly stellar list. I’m not sure about cluttering up my blog with so many widgets though. 3 is too many. Don’t forget all the other badges, banners and stuff that blogs are bound to have as well.
But the points about making it easy to subscribe and including email options are great.
cheers
mbm
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Thom | December 23rd, 2007 at 1:24 pm #
Hey, great ideas! Being a new blogger myself, I’m going to get to work on some of these today? Thanks again!
-Thom
Julie | December 25th, 2007 at 12:02 pm #
Great information…thanks!
Fred | December 25th, 2007 at 12:55 pm #
Thanks Julie. I am glad that you liked the article.
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Chris Reeder | January 16th, 2008 at 11:59 am #
There is a great video that explains RSS @
http://chrisreeder.com/2007/07/21/GreatExplanationOfRSS.aspx
Darryl | January 17th, 2008 at 3:03 pm #
This by far the most comprehensive list of building subscribers to a blog I have ever seen.
Excellent Job!
You got my vote.
Allen H | January 23rd, 2008 at 4:58 pm #
Very good post, I have bookmarked it and stumbled it.
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Moshe | February 20th, 2008 at 6:09 pm #
Hi there,
To start with – I want to say that I enjoyed this post, there were some really good suggestions (although I think that a good deal of them related more to marketing than to RSS subscriptions).
I always assumed that having truncated feeds was the way to go (get them to go to your site type attitude) – but I understand now that that may not be the case. I plan to check out those links that you mentioned to learn more on the issue.
I thought that the suggestion that one checks that their RSS feed auto-discovery in the browser works is also a good one. Any suggestions of what to do if it doesn’t work?
Also – how does one offer a free ebook for subscribing? I mean technically speaking, how does one do it? Can you make it part of your feed?
In terms of blog directories — are there any tools that you recommend to help with this?
In terms of linking to your blog in your email address — Feedburner has some nice tools for this (including a banner ad that rotates through your last five posts). You can find it in the Headline Animator section under the Publicize Tab tab in your feedburner account.
Some of your other suggestions I’m not as sure about. I For instance, I saw the Seth Godin plug-in and opted not to use it. I don’t see how valuable it is if a) I have the Orange RSS feed symbol in the upper right-hand corner as well as a request to subscribe to my feed at the end of each entry. I don’t think it’s a good idea to seem to pushy. This would make a good experiment to see if this plugin actually helps or hinders.
Also, I’m not so sure about the idea of emailing people who leave a comment on your blog. I’m not sure that people who leave comments on a blog wish to be solicited to subscribe to an RSS feed. This sounds like a good way to turn someone off to your blog.
To a lesser extent I can imagine the same being true for the Widgets you suggested (although I think that since the email there is usually internal to the Widget one’s using it’s less of a problem.
Speaking of the widgets – don’t you think it looks a bit strange having three different widgets on one’s blog – all of which do the exact same thing?
In terms of leaving a link to your RSS feed in blog commens — I don’t think that’s a great idea. It’s too spamy IMHO.
Once again, a very nice set of suggestions — keep up the good work.
All the best,
Moshe
15 Modi per Aumentare gli Iscritti al Feed RSS | Marketips.net | February 26th, 2008 at 2:31 am #
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UtahSEO-PR | March 13th, 2008 at 1:52 pm #
Provide great content is always best.
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Dave | March 17th, 2008 at 12:45 pm #
Here’s a tool to generate rss feed icons:
http://www.smashupgraphics.com/content/rss-feed-icon-generator
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Iain Hamp | April 19th, 2008 at 10:43 pm #
Thank you for the great post and tips – as a fledgling blogger (in the professional sense, anyway), I’m sure it will prove useful as I work to improve my site and the experience my readers have when they eventually come to it
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Thanks a lot for this extensive blog post this is gr8… thanks again
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Kevin | June 17th, 2008 at 8:29 am #
Great article. I can’t wait to implement these tips at my blog at 20smoney.com
Jacob from Group Writing Projects | July 10th, 2008 at 5:25 pm #
Hey Fred, great list.
You should consider entering these tips in my Building RSS Group Writing Project:
http://groupwritingprojects.com/blog/building-rss-group-writing-project/
All you would need to qualify for over $350 in prizes – including consults with Liz Strauss and David Airey – is to link your above article to the announcement post at the above link. Although additional tips before Sunday night’s deadline would increase your chances of winning even more.
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John Dilbeck | August 22nd, 2008 at 1:15 pm #
Hi Fred,
You have a great list of ideas here for increasing your blog’s RSS and email subscribers.
I’m already doing many of them, but you’ve reminded me of a few I haven’t implemented on my newest blog, yet.
In #30, I disagree about linking to your RSS feed URL. Never trick your readers.
I think linking to your most popular article or to the home page is the proper thing to do, but not the RSS feed.
Thanks for the reminder to add a page to explain subscribing to my blog and another page to explain RSS. How could I have forgotten to do that?
Act on your dream!
JD
Utah SEO | September 8th, 2008 at 11:51 pm #
From #1 on, this is a great resource
EverybodyGeek | October 20th, 2008 at 5:15 pm #
Number two is a tricky one. And I’m often wondering, am I going off-topic? My blog is about everything related to computers: software, the internet, blogging, games, etc. I almost can’t go off-topic, but I keep wondering, is the scope of my blog too wide to make people wanna read more?
Great list btw!
BibleSEO | January 5th, 2009 at 12:18 pm #
Excellent Post…Very Informative…Thanks…
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