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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.

I received a really great question sent in from Dave at a really crazy and unique blog called, Tailgating Ideas. First off before I go into my post, I want to encourage everyone to visit his blog. A blog about tailgating… now that is original! Nice work Dave!

Anyway, his question is a very simple but very good question to ask. He wants my opinion on when should a blog author start displaying their RSS FeedBurner Subscription numbers?

Should you install the FeedBurner Chicklet right out the gate at ZERO and look like a total noob, or should you wait until the numbers get higher? If so, then how high?

Here is his voice mail sent into me, take a listen:

This question was so awesome, I had to cover this topic in three parts:

Part One:

Part Two:

Part Three:

If you have a question that you would like to ask me, call me! Phone lines are open 24/7. I offer a wonderful way for you to not only learn more about blogging, but allow you to score some extra traffic along the way. All questions are posted live on my blog for all my readers to listen to and check out the references within the post. Call in your questions to (931)368-4120.

Here is a question that was called in by Owen from The Linux Blog. He asks, why is it important or rather, why should he invest the time into using FeedBurner. Take a listen to his question.

*I learned that the GrandCentral Voice mails are not appearing in my feed, If you’re reading via RSS, you’ll have to physically visit my blog to listen in, I apologize. If that starts to become an issue, I may start downloading the raw MP3 files and uploading them to my service, providing you with a direct downloadable link.

I use FeedBurner because it is an easy way for me to manage multiple RSS feeds with one account. I have one FeedBurner account that allows me to manage over 100 RSS feeds. Second reason I use FeedBurner is for displaying the chicklet. Aside from Google PageRank, FeedBurner RSS numbers are becoming a widely accepted metric for judging a blog’s level of authority and popularity in the blogosphere. I proudly display my RSS numbers. Third reason is for being able to provide a way for my readers to read my content from the convenience of their email inbox. Many people don’t like RSS feeds or RSS aggregator, they are old school, like me!

Here is my GrandCentral response to Owen.

Do you have a question you want to ask me? Give me a call anytime at (931)368-4120. Phone lines are open 24/7, 7 days a week! Your question will appear live on my blog! This is a great way to get answers and get traffic to your blog all in one shot. What are you waiting for, call me!

I have established a phone number strictly for the purpose of accepting telephone calls from my readers. Last month created a new service called, AskGarry! That service was awesome because I could directly answer questions that my readers had. Unfortunately, it required quite a bit of time and work to maintain and I had to discontinued it.

Today I am pleased to introduce the service back! The new AskGarry! isn’t going to be as complicated as it once was. The new AskGarry! is simple. If you have a question related to blogging or any of the other topics that I write about on my blog, simply pick up the phone and call me 24/7 at Tel: (931) 368-4210.
By default, your call is going to go straight into voice mail where you can proceed to record your question. Once you record your voice mail and hang up, I will then receive an instant email notification of your call. From there, I will be able to listen to your question and embed it live on my blog along with an answer to your question. On some instances, I may even call you back!

In the voice mail, you may leave your name and your blog URL if you want to score some free traffic. Do not leave your phone number as it will show up automatically on caller ID. If you state your phone number in the recording, I will not air your question unless you tell me otherwise.

If you need your moment of fame and have a legitimate related to the many topics I write about on my blog, feel free to call me anytime, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year. Your question will go live on my blog.

Call me at Tel: (931) 368-4120. Give it a try RIGHT NOW!

Here is a free style article that offers some pure insight and suggestion on how you can increase your FeedBurner RSS subscribers.

1. Don’t refer to this as “Increasing Your FeedBurner RSS Subscription numbers. These are real people, with real feeling, thoughts and emotions. They are not to be associated with numbers. If I want to be associated with a number, I’ll go sit in the waiting room of a doctor’s office.
2. Consider the fact that many of the people visiting your site for the first time are not really bloggers. They are people who landed on a post page within your blog who are simply searching for information. The information they seek happens to be written on your blog. Invite these people to visit often and explain to them how the best way to do that is. Provide a written paragraph at the bottom of your pages briefly explaining about your RSS feed and how it can benefit the users who stumbled on one of your posts from a search engine.
3. Stay on topic. People typically read your blog because they are interested in your expertise in the topic you blog about. They too share a common interest and will tend to link to you numerous times from their own blog. For the people that link to you on many occasions, you should contact them and thank them and also ask if they wouldn’t mind mentioning about your RSS feed next time they plan on writing about you.
4. Word of Mouth Marketing: Very important! I am sure that most of us have a decent sized email address list. However, within that list, there may only be a handful of people that we’re really close to. That is absolutely perfect for tip #4, which again is, Word of Mouth Marketing is Powerful. Take 10 people, your most closest email buddies and send them an individual email and ask them if they wouldn’t mind taking a moment to send an email to a few of their closets friends explaining about your blog. For example, If I received an email from David Cooley, Mark Sierra, Christine Senter or Joel Comm telling me about a personal favorite blog that they like to read, I would definitely check it out and I am very sure that I would subscribe to it. Why? Because a close friend sent me an email with a recommendation. I truth my friend’s judgment. Word of mouth marketing is very powerful. Send an email to ten trusted and well known friends and ask them to help spread the word about you.
5. How has monetizing been working for you? Not too good… that’s ok! Ask yourself if you would be more successful winning clicks into your RSS subscription form or more clicks into Google Adsense. If you think that you would get more clicks into your RSS subscription form compared to monetizing campaign clicks, then lose the monetization and self promote your RSS feed instead.

After reading this post, what else can you think of? What I have written is a great start, but I am sure there are tons of more tips. What can you think of? It doesn’t matter how big or small or even how stupid it might seem. A tip is a tip and I would love for you to share yours. Drop me a comment and help me expand on this topic. How else can a blogger increase their Feedburner Subscribers?