The 9 step ultimate guide on how to increase your subscribers

Sep 22, 2007 in Blogging Tips, RSS

There are a few basic and important things that make a the big blogs stand out, statistic wise, from all the rest. These are traffic, inbound links, conversions and of course the number of people subscribed to its RSS feed. A blog with let’s say 2000+ readers is a sign that the respective blog is a well established one, with regular readers and is regarded as a authority. It is very important to not underestimated the importance of the feedcount. To help you all increase your feed I’ve devised 9 step ultimate guide that are sure to boost your RSS numbers no matter what, from a few tens of subscribers up to a few hundred.

Firstly, if you haven’t already, you should sign up for a account at feedburner.com, it’s the best RSS count tracking service you can get. Just follow the simple steps in the FAQ and you’ll have your feeds up and ready for counting in no time.

1. Don’t display your subscriber numbers if they’re too low. A common mistake blogging beginners make is displaying they feedburner count when at really low rates. You have to understand that humans most of time work under the ‘flock’ principle, we’re all basically sheep , so when ever you see a small community you don’t really have any desire to join it. Same things apply for RSS counts as well, if you see “3 readers” in the chicklet you will most certainly feel this isn’t a active community and might not want to subscribe to the respective feed. At what time do I recommend displaying the feedcount? I would say 50-100 is a decent number, but i would go as far as 200.

2. Make subscribing as easy as possible. It is extremely important to highlight various subscription methods to the user; what I recommend is you use the standard RSS icon and make sure it stands out, also add some a few addition popular subscribing methods like bloglines, Google reader, MyYahoo, netvibes etc.

3. Inform people what RSS is. A lot of internet users on the web don’t know what RSS is and how to subscribe to a website. It’s very important you make a page on your blog dedicated to informing and schooling users on what RSS is and how to use it. You can see a sample on how to achieve that at my Subscribe landing page.

4. Ask people to subscribe to your feed. You know how sometimes kinds words or a simple “please” can do wonders? It works for blogs too, just add a little strip of text at the end of your post saying “If your enjoyed this post, then might consider subscribing to my RSS feed.” If you’re a first time visitor to this then you may have noticed the cool square at the beginning of the post.

This is little message shown by a Wordpress plugin called What Would Seth Goding Do (let’s get past the name), that uses cookies to distinguish between new and returning visitors to your site. If a new visitor access your website 3 times or more the message won’t be displayed anymore. You can customize the number of times it will be displayed, where it will be displayed and of course your address.

5. Divert your feed. If you didn’t know it already it’s possible to direct your subscribers that receive feeds from “yoursitename.com/feed” to your feedburner account. Thus your feed count will considerably grow and you can be rest assured that all your subscriber are accounted for. You can do this with a handy plugin called Feedsmith, supplied by the lovely people from feedburner.

6. Provide full feeds. If you using Wordpress 2.0+ then you know that your feeds are partially displayed by default, so that users if they want to read the whole post have to visit your blog. This is a major drawback, it’s very important to provide full feeds so that you have a consistent large readership. To display full feeds I use and recommend Cave Monkey’s Full Text Feed, a very handy pluging and requires only uploading and activation, nothing else.

7. Submit your feed to directories and forums. By submitting your feed address to feed directories, forums and feed pingers you will drastically improve your feed count. Dot Sauce has compiled a very good list of 55 active RSS directories to help you improve your rankings.

8. Offer a e-mail subscribing option. A lot of people don’t like to use RSS readers, so for that particular category of people you should provide a e-mail subscription service. Feedburner has such a service incorporated by default, you just have to login to you control panel and activate it. Optionally you can display a e-mail subscribing form.

9. Reward your subscribers. An other method that could help your feed count boom is offering your readers a incentive for subscribing, preferably a freebie, whether it’s a free e-book or, as it was the case of very successful campaign a friend of mine launch, giving out free pens with your logo for subscribers. Be creative and think of cheap, but fun rewards.

Hope this helped, if it did you might consider subscribing to my Full RSS Feed. I’ll be covering a lot of great tips such as the ones above in the future.

This article is part of the Building RSS Group Writing Project.

The The 9 step ultimate guide on how to increase your subscribers by Tibi Puiu, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

33 Replies

Mark Fulton
Sep 22nd, 2007 at 2:50 pm

Thanks for mentioning my RSS directories article! Definitely some good tips, excellent write up. I will be subscribing to your feed for sure
Bull3t
Sep 22nd, 2007 at 3:09 pm

Brilliant! Thank you ever so much, I have just followed this step by step and am hoping this helps improve my subscriber amount.

Thanks again.
A Blog about Nothing
Sep 22nd, 2007 at 4:04 pm

Great tips, especially about telling people what RSS is. Sometimes we just take it for granted that everyone will know what we want them to sign up for.
Tibi Puiu
Sep 23rd, 2007 at 3:10 am

@mark no problem that was a must have resource
@Bull3t give me a hollar on how well that worked
@ablogaboutnothing That’s in the top3 must dos, if you want to increase your RSS count. Especially if you’re operating in a less internet savvy niche, like plumbing.
Bull3t
Sep 23rd, 2007 at 5:28 am

@Tibi Puiu: Okay, will do. I have today and yesterday submitted my blog to around about 75 websites hope this will help too.
Bull3t
Sep 24th, 2007 at 11:51 am

I have just checked my subscription count today and noticed that it has shot up from 7 to 42 after I completed this tutorial! Although I also submitted my blog to over 75 feed directories as well as follow this tutorial, I can happily say that this helps. Thanks Tibi Puiu!
Tibi Puiu
Sep 24th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

You’re very much welcomed
Steven Snell
Sep 24th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

Well said. As a subscriber I strongly prefer full feeds, and those with partial feeds tend to be ignored.
dott-com
Sep 24th, 2007 at 11:55 pm

Great tips, that is what new blogger should do. I don’t display my feed count from the first day I start blogging. A show off maybe works if you had thousand of subscriber number.
KP
Oct 1st, 2007 at 9:58 am

Hi Tibi, you have great post. I like the idea of “What Would Seth Goding Do” plugin, I have tried to activate the “What Would Seth Goding Do” plugin too, but it does not seem to work on my site. I still could not figure it out.
Interwebhunt
Oct 10th, 2007 at 2:47 pm

The freebie theme is always a winner, people are completely selfish when they see “Free”. One of the best promotional items you can have is a free how to ebook or some small token give away.
How to Write an Ebook
Jan 31st, 2008 at 9:48 pm

Great tips. Anyone who follow these steps and provides frequent, quality posts will have a successful blog. Thanks.
Simlock verwijderen
Feb 28th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

I am not a blogger, but if I see that an blog has a low PR or a low subscribers list, I don’t subscribe. Because if the PR is higher and the subscribers list shows an high number, it means the blogger gives good content and is well-known. That sort of blogs I want to read.
Mohamed
Mar 20th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

Hi,

OK - I was beating my head against the wall trying to figure out why my RSS subscriber count through FeedBurner is so low when I can see hundreds of accesses through the stats panel - then I found this post and item #5 and the “ah-ha” moment! Aaack… don’t know why I didn’t think about that sooner!!! Oh well - live and learn. Thanks for the great tips! #7 will also come in very handy!

Regards,

Mohamed
Tibi Puiu
Mar 20th, 2008 at 3:58 pm

@Mohamed: hehe, glad you found the post useful
Raj
Jun 12th, 2008 at 11:35 pm

This is helpful. Keep the tips coming…
Jacob from Group Writing Projects
Jul 11th, 2008 at 4:57 am

Hey Tibi, you should enter 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.
Jacob from Group Writing Projects
Jul 12th, 2008 at 4:35 pm

Hey Tibi, thanks for coming by my blog, but to qualify for the contest, this article needs to have a link to my contest’s announcement post (see comment above).
Tibi Puiu
Jul 12th, 2008 at 4:59 pm

@Jacob: got it, linked back.
Brad Shorr
Jul 15th, 2008 at 8:25 am

Great post! #5 is a big help for me also.
jacki janse van rensburg
Jul 29th, 2008 at 2:45 am

i know nothing about rss feeds, and thought i would go to my favourite ‘go to’ person about blogging - YOU!

been missing you, hope you are back to blogging soon.

i still cannot understand what the advantages of rss feeds is to the blogger. if the reader reads the post, does it still count as a hit on my stats?
jacki janse van rensburg
Jul 29th, 2008 at 2:51 am

please write a ‘rss for dummies’ post when you are back?
Tibi Puiu
Aug 1st, 2008 at 4:31 pm

Hey Jackie,

I’ve just sent you an e-mail
Michael
Apr 13th, 2009 at 6:41 pm

You people out there just do not get it. How many of us read your instructional blurbs like the one above already know what you are talking about? I don’t. I tried to set up the feed thing and hit all kinds of roadblock with terms I can’t understand, html crap, and what not. If I know what all that meant, why would I be on your site trying to learn how to do whatever it is you say I can do?
CiztalkKall
Apr 21st, 2009 at 7:00 pm

Hey Everbody

I just joined this forum.

Great job forum crew!

Just recently I read that there is a cure for diabetes on http://www.healthcaredaily.org
Is this way of curing diabetes mentioned actually true, If so I should have found out earlier! The website http://www.healthcaredaily.org looks legit

Could you someone tell me if this healthcare information is for real?

Thanks

CiztalkKall
vinoth
Jun 29th, 2009 at 2:43 am

thank u for ur valuable information…..this made me increase my subscribe count to nearly 100……

Trick no 10:
send a polite mail to ur unverified subscribers to activate the service…..

trick no 11:
when u place a subscribe by mail form,ask them not to forget to activate it

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