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I’ve been slacking a bit in the last few days, with the most quality coming from my lovely guest posters, so I thought it was the appropriate time for one that would actually help bloggers out there. :lol:

This blog recently broke 200 RSS readers - with nearly half of them coming in the last month or so… as my buddy over at Serial Monetizer forcefully hinted me to do ( :razz: ), I will be aiming for 1,000 RSS readers by the end of the year, a feat that will be pretty, pretty hard… not impossible though if I continue putting in the necessary hours, which I assure you I will do. Anyways, having a contest is fine; the $150.00 definitely helped with the increase, but what tips do I have on getting up your RSS feed count?

1) Be persistant

If you’ve read a few of my posts over the last few days, you’ll notice that most of them mentioned my subscriber contest… by constantly reminding the reader that it exists, people were pushed to subscribe then and there, rather than wait for a while before they did. As you might also notice, I have that annoying little line of text prodding readers to subscribe to the RSS… that’s a handy little Wordpress plugin called Subscribe Remind, and once again - it helps.

2) Be bold

Sure, I mentioned the contest many times, but we all know that most Internet users have a short time span - heck, most of the visitors do this website won’t even read a full post. By putting up a large banner advertising my contest at the top of the page, as well as making it easy to subscribe to RSS due to the links in the sidebar, quick surfers can have their interest spiked up enough to stay on a bit longer. As you’ll also notice, like in this post I have occasionally stuck the Subscribe via Email form right in your face… if people see it enough, they’re eventually going to do something about it.

3) Market it!

You can have the best contest in the world, with an amazing amount of prizes… if no one knows about it, your contest means jack all. This is perhaps the most important point - for this one, I left quite a few comments on various other blogs right after the contest was started… note, not spammy ones, but ones that showed a genuine interest in what the blogger had to say, and this sent a bit of traffic my way. I also promoted it through the various forums I was/am a member of; when you mention money, people are bound to be interested.

What if you want to increase your RSS count, but don’t have the necessary funds to start up a contest?

1) Write quality content

Not just once, but consistently… if people see you producing quality on a regular basis, they will sign up to read what more you have to say.

2) Link to other bloggers

Linking to other bloggers not just gets them to visit your website (whenever I see an incoming link, I check it out) but will also leave trackbacks if you link to specific posts. Be evil and use an appropriate evil anchor text and people will click through… just out of curiousity. :twisted:

3) Ask, ask, ask!

If you don’t have the money to buy your own prizes - you could always ask. In the first contest I held, a lot of the prizes were generated by other blogs - people that will often be happy to part with something, be it advertising, eBooks or even cash of their own in exchange for a backlink. I used to hand out free copies of the Wealthy eBook when asked… various other bloggers will be happy you took the time to approach them and will offer you their services :)

That’s all for now. I do have a limit on quality production at a time, you know :razz:

Also, a mini-celebration for TUK; we’ve broken 2,000 comments, all thanks to you guys.

That rate is around 14 comments/post, not bad at all. :)

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!