How Do You Increase Your FeedBurner Subscription Numbers
As more and more time goes by, Feedburner subscription numbers are becoming more and more important. Keeping things really primitive and very simple: The more subscribers you have, the more of a powerhouse or authoritative figure you are within your niche group. I am not going to sugar coat this, if you don’t have a lot of RSS subscribers and don’t show the numbers off in your FeedBurner Chicket, then you may be a cool guy or gal, but not really looked upon as a leading authority by initial first impression.
Here are my thoughts. I believe that everyone picks nose. But, no one will admit to it. I believe that people who are aware of PageRank and have the Google Toolbar installed and have activated the PageRank display, check to see what the PageRank is one the pages they visit. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that checking the PageRank of pages viewed is one of the first things that people do. Second had to that is FeedBurner.
The first thing I do when I visit is blog is check the PageRank, then I check to see if the author is displaying their FeedBurner Chicklet. If you have a blog within the same niche of my blog and you’re not displaying your FeedBurner numbers then I believe that you are aware that your numbers are low and that you don’t want to publicly display them. This opinion is also coming from a guy that openly admits that he picks his nose. I have no shame.
So, if you’re open minded and have come to terms with the fact that FeedBurner is a vital and important metric that gives people a surface scan representation of your individual authority, popularity and rank within your niche, then the remainder of this article will provide some off the cuff tips that will help you increase your FeedBurner subscription numbers.
For me, it’s all about “Self promotion and marketing” When starting a blog or pursuing through the stages of developing one where building up readership and increasing the level of hierarchical authority within the chosen group or niche are important, one of the best ways to work towards increasing subscriber numbers is in carefully and heavily self promoting and marketing the FeedBurner RSS subscription sign up forms and links.
Understanding the common behaviors of people coupled with the common behaviors of how people surf the Internet is very important. People want to stay on track, they don’t like to deviate way from the course and they like to feel that work is being made towards getting to an ending.
When promoting my RSS feed I strategically create advertisements and place them on the hottest places on my blog. Here is a screen shot illustrating the top fold hot spots on my post pages.
The hottest spot is the long horizontal rectangular advertisement that tells people about my RSS feed and offers a reason why people should subscribe to it. I have another that matches its effort at the bottom of the page as show in the next screen shot:
In this screen shot you will see that I once again promote my subscription services and directly below that, more private advertisers.
Now, having shown this to you I will now explain my thought process behind why I have my blog and many others set up this way. It is all about “cause and effect” or for programmers, “If and Then”, which I like better.
When I design a blog I consider, “If and Then”
If the visitor finds my page then what will they do next?
In my case I design my blog with this priority in mind.
If a visitor finds my page then they will subscribe. If the visitor doesn’t subscribe then they will read my content. If they read my content then they will subscribe. If they subscribe they will then come back and visit my site again.
Throwing private ads into the mix follows the same suite of “If and Then” tactics.
The final thought that I want to express to you is this, it doesn’t matter if you blog as 10 visits per day or 100 visits per day, if you focus on capturing a high percentage of daily traffic and convert them into subscribers, your daily incoming traffic will eventually start to compound on you.
It is not about having a ton of traffic. These measures help you create the traffic. The more people that you can retain and convert into daily visitors, the better.
It is all about the “If and Then’s” and understanding the pattens of how people surf the Internet and how the human brain processes information. If you introduce something to a visitor before anything else, you plant the seed. If you follow up with the message at the end of the page and control what the visitors sees directly after the climax of reading the content, you take that same planted seed and germinate it.
I hope that you found this tip helpful. If you haven’t already done so, please subscribe to GarryConn.com. The subscription options are directly below.
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18 comments
Great article, I will implement some of these tips into a small redesign of my own blog this next week, and see if I can start to grow my numbers again.
I am very glad that you enjoyed reading the tips provided in the article. I look forward to taking a look at the work you have done. Be sure to drop another comment letting me know when you did the update.
This is possibly the best post I’ve read today. Keep up the good work and don’t let us down
-Mike
p.s. I gotta get my hand on your FOOTNOTE ads
Once again I feel you are talking directly to me. I’m just not quite ready to go big time. I’m going to have to make a “Garry Conn” folder on my Favorites so I can come back to these later. Thanks for the great content.
[...] http://www.garryconn.com…s.php [...]
I agree with you that you should promote your feed aggressively. However, I don’t judge a blog on their feed count.
I only have 600 or so rss readers. Would you consider me a lesser authority in my space?
By the way, there’s a reason my blog count is so low. I will do a video about that next week.
This post was featured in today’s Daily Blog Summary–a daily summary of the top 50 Make Money Blogging blogs.
@ Jim,
I am glad that you don’t judge people based on their feed count. Not sure what made you feel compelled to come forward with that. You asked me if I consider your blog to have a lesser authority because you have 600 readers give or take. Why would you ask me a question like that?
That question implies that you think that I judge people based off their numbers. While I don’t judge people and as you say you don’t either, I still look at PageRank and FeedBurner numbers to get an assessment on the individual ranking of that author. Isn’t that what stats are for? I am honestly not sure where you are going with the question you ask me, but to me it seems like that you are being a little bit defensive.
@Jim and Gary,
I pointed out on another blog recently that quality content and large numbers of readers don’t go hand in hand. Large numbers simply means the owner was lucky and got picked up by some random viral thing, or he markets his content well, or both.
High quality, unique content can bring tons of visitors, but only if someone sees it and tells others. I’ve always said a mediocre site with excellent marketing will always make more money than the perfect site with poor marketing.
I think that there are thousands of blog authors who sport content that is by far more superior than many popular blogs within their same target area, but they lack the ability to market and promote.
Blogging takes quite a bit of skills. Many of these skills come typical with training or education. I don’t call that luck. I call that being in a situation where blogging isn’t quite what someone originally visioned it being.
I believe in luck. I believe that bloggers can also get lucky. But I don’t believe that sites such as John Chow, Perez Hilton, etc.. got popular by accident.
Am I reading this quote from your post the wrong way? I took it as “if you don’t have a huge sub list you’re not an authority”. Perhaps I’m reading this wrong? That’s how it comes off.
“The more subscribers you have, the more of a powerhouse or authoritative figure you are within your niche group. I am not going to sugar coat this, if you don’t have a lot of RSS subscribers and don’t show the numbers off in your FeedBurner Chicket, then you may be a cool guy or gal, but not really looked upon as a leading authority by initial first impression.”
@Jim,
I don’t know what Gary meant, but I think I would agree with the idea of “if you don’t have a huge readership you’re not viewed as an authority in that niche.”
I’ve made a ton of money online, but most bloggers have never heard of me nor do I have traffic consistent with my expertise. In the “make money blogging” niche I have expertise, but I am not yet regarded by that niche as an expert–that is, until they actually start reading what I write. Soon I will have a decent list, just not yet.
@ Jim,
Come on now… do you really believe that I judge people like that. I was clear on the message in my article. I am stating the fact that overall, people judge sites and blogs by their rank. Just as many people judge others by their gender, race or choice of religion.
If I wrote a post that explained about racism to people who were unaware of that, would you also assume that I was racist?
Never once in this post or in any post written prior have I said that I judge people based on their numbers.
I help more people that stumble into this blog than most others of equal or higher authority would even give the time of day to.
It’s no big deal Garry, I guess I read your post wrong. No big whip!
You’re funny… I think that you’re playing the good ol’ ignorant card where in reality you’re not, Mr. PR4 Ask The Blogger and PR5 Daily Flipper.
You know darn well what I am talking about in regards to how cut throat things are in this small and wonderful place we call the blogosphere. And now you’re going to discount out your previous two comments as being an, “opps I misread your post.” and “ahh shucks, it’s no big deal.” You wanted to twist my words around, didn’t ya!
I’m being totally honest. I read it wrong. You’re telling me you didn’t mean it the way I read it. No biggie.
I believe you. I hope you believe me.
On another note, I really love the work you have done with your sites! Totally cool stuff man! I am glad that you finally dropped over here, I been meaning to do the same on your sites.
Maybe I’m a little off the beaten track here, but I could careless about page rank, So I dont check it. It’s in my mind just silly, nor when visiting a blog do I check their feed count I honestly couldnt tell you what mine is with having to look, nor Do I know what many others are. . I surf because I’m looking for stuff to read , learn or entertain myself. Its the same with do or dont follow, my blog is a do follow blog. HOWEVER I do realize that many people do this, so I do show my feed chick, she aint hot right now, but hey I’m sure I could drink her pretty
. Right now and for the past while i’ve been building up a post where I display other bloggers links and a link their feed in an attempt to help get the word out about some of the cool blogs I read and hopefully those that visit that post will find something of use and find a new feed that they wouldnt have found on their own. I’m not too sure if this is a good idea right now or not. Heck I’m even giving away spots on my blog for people to advertise their blogs on. But it’s good Karma in my mind, I’m not focusing on what I can get but rather on what I can give. BAd business? we’ll see !!!
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