The number of subscribers your blog gets is the measure of your success as a blogger.If you have good no. of subscribers you are successful.This is why every blogger is quite serious of increasing the blog readership.Infact , you are reading this article because you also are quite serious to increase your blog subscribership.OK , I promise I will not let you down.In this post I will talk about some very good tips to increase blog readership/subscribership.I will not present you with a list of tips that other blogging guides do.Instead I will first tell you about the basics about how and why people subscribe and only then I will come up with my tips.


How and why people subscribe to a blog?


Most of the people surf the net because they are in hunt of some information.If your blog provides the information, they subscribe.But from hunting for information to becoming a subscriber, visitors pass through certain steps which you should understand to increase your subscribership.I have depicted these steps in the following picture-
The three steps that people pass before subscribing are-

1. Finding your blog or feed- How can a person subscribe to your feed if he is not able to find your blog or your feed at first place.
2. Reading your content- A visitor subscribes only if he/she reads your content and likes it.
3. Finding the subscription button- Once a visitor likes your content he will try to find out the subscription button to subscribe to your blog's feed.

The tips I am going to tell you in the following paragraphs revolve around these three points.


Tips to increase blog subscribership-

1) Make your blog and feed more visible-

While there are too many blogs including this one which tells you about making your blog more visible but there are very few which will tell you to make your feed more visible.A blog can be made more visible by search engine optimization, commenting on other blogs and forums, and networking with other bloggers.

To make your feed more visible-

1. Submit your blog's feed to feed directories- You can find a list of feed directories here. Just submit your feed url to all of these directories.This will make your feed more visible to others on the net.
   
2. Make sure autodiscovery feature is working- Autodiscovery makes it easy for feed aggregators and websurfers to automatically find your feed and subscribe to it.You only need to put a html code to enable this feature.The details for enabling feed autodiscovery can be found here.
   
3. Leave the link of your feeds url in forums and comments-I have seen many bloggers leaving their feed's url in their signature.I am not sure how much does it works because I don't do this but many bloggers tell to leave feed's url in the signature.

2) Produce original and quality content-

I am sick of telling this in almost every post I write.The reason I always talk about content is because it is the soul of your blog.Without content your blog is dead.Furthermore, Visitors will subscribe only when you provide a solid reason to subscribe.And the solid reason is the quality content.


3) Make the subscription button more visible to visitors-

Visitors can become subscribers only when they are able to find the subscription button on your blog.If you have placed the button in some corner of your blog which is barely seen then probably you are losing many many visitors per day.To make your subscription button more visible-

1. Use a large sized orange button for subscription. People are accustomed of watching an orange button for rss feeds.So, always use a large orange button and not of other colours. A different coloured button may go unnoticed.
   
2. Place button on the top of the sidebar and below each of your post- Again people are habituated of seeing orange button on the top of sidebar and below posts.If they wish to subscribe they will go on to see these places first.So, place it there.
   

4) Facilitate subscribing-

Apart from the tips I have discussed above you have to take care of other factors like, encouraging your visitors to subscribe. Explain RSS feeds to your visitors who don't have an idea what it means.And give some incentives to the visitors who subscribe.I have seen many bloggers giving away ebooks to the subscribers.Some bloggers profess to cut off the steps to subscribe to minimum.All these strategies work quite well.


Increasing blog subscribership is not an overnight process.It is an ongoing process. Focus on producing a quality content and make subscription easy.Encourage your visitors to subscribe and do talk to them every now and then and you will see subscribers rolling in to your blog.
All the best !!!!

Read more.....

RSS, (Really Simple Syndication) has become so popular today and is being referred to by internet users as "Pull" Technology rather than "Push" Technology.

It's difficult to imagine that anyone who logs on to the Internet has not heard of "Spam." Most, If not all Internet users are inundated with these
advertisements, that we did not ask for or request.

For those of you that may not be familiar with the term, rest assured we're not talking about canned meat here. LOL! Rather, it is unwanted advertising from people that we neither asked for or requested to recieve. Spam is "Push" technology. "Pushed" in your face and inbox, wanted or not.



Many believe this brand of "Push" technology is or will be, the death of email. Yet, as long as there are individuals and companies that continue to use the illegal spam process, email will be around for
a long long time. The irony being, companies are raking in millions, selling spam solutions, to people and big corporations, that are Not Working!

RSS, is the Total Opposite of the above "Push" technology. When subscribing to an RSS Feed, subscribers "Pull" information into their RSS Readers and can only be done so if someone voluntarily subscribes to a particular RSS Feed. If they find it's not the information they want, they can simply unsubscribe and never have to recieve another message from the owner of that particular feed. Hence the term "Pull" Technology.

Utilizing RSS "Pull" technology has become a popular source of income for webmasters that use RSS Feeds on their websites. Here's How:

Let's say, you set up a one page mini-site or you could even set up a Blog. A Blog would be a quick and easy
alternative.

You can then host ads from either Google Adsense or the New Yahoo look alike Google Ads. When someone visits
your page and clicks one of your ads, You Get Paid.

If you've followed along and done the steps above, you've created a good starting place. You're going to need to
make sure your pages are optimized properly. This will ensure you get your page ranked high in the search engines.
Like any site or page, the more targeted traffic you get, greater are the chances that someone will click your ads.
Which increases your Income.

Now, by using the power of RSS you increase your pages earning potential. When you add an RSS Feed
to your page, you convert it into an ever changing, dynamic web page. Bringing you an abundance of visitors who, in all probability will return to read it.

Especially if you add 10 or 15 RSS Feeds to your page. You will create a dynamic, ever changing, self updating page. Providing valuable content that readers will want to read, over and over again.


Any web page can be turned into a dynamic web page. Just use the free RSS creator software called "Carp" This is one of the most popular free versions and can be downloaded here: http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

After you set the program up on your website and added the proper code to your website, then you will
need to collect RSS feeds that relate to the topic of your web page.

You've got your web page, It's topic is about writing articles. Go to Google News, Get their RSS Feed Code, Insert it into the designated Carp Coding, then make the necessary changes found below: http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=writing+articles&ie=UTF-8&output=rss

Same with Topix.net, adjust the code like this: http://rss.topix.net/search/?q=writing+articles&xml=1

Once you've got your web page uploaded, It will automatically pull in fresh content from Google and Topix about writing articles.

Do these things for any web page and watch your search engine ranking soar and also your Income!

Read more.....

RSS has been around for more than 10 years but has only recently become popular. RSS provides headlines and summaries of information in a concise and standardized way.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication (although versions before RSS 2.0 have been known by other names).


RSS feeds are written in a computer language called XML, a special mark up language much like HTML This means that they have mechanisms included that identify structures in a document. The structures define the content and how that content will be displayed within that document. RSS is what makes big news websites possible: RSS files are used to create a data feed which will deliver headlines, links or virtually any other piece of information to a channel viewer application, commonly called a news reader.


In simple terms, an RSS feed is a system that allows web content to be put into a standard format for viewing through an RSS feed reader. It allows the user to save time and effort by viewing recent content from many different websites, without having to visit the sites in question.


RSS Feeds or news feeds are growing quickly and have become a major part of the Internet but many users don't understand what they are. They allow people to see when their favourite websites have added new content without actually having to go to that web site, this can be done through simple, often free pieces of software named RSS readers.


Using RSS feeds is a great way to keep up to date with the latest posts from your favourite blogs and websites. You can use RSS feeds to get the latest news, weather,or movies, and be able to read them all in one place. RSS gives you the ability to have other websites have up to date, accurate information from you online in seconds. Headline news, technical articles, website updates, security alerts, or your favorite food recipes are just a few of the things that you can syndicate!


Many people set up RSS feeds to update in their My Yahoo, or Google page. You can also use them to keep informed with any groups that you belong to.


Rss feeds also can be used for online marketing very effectively.


If you want to promote your website, using RSS can get your URL listed with all search engines fast and easy. No more waiting weeks for your URL to get listed with search engines, RSS marketing allows this to happen almost immediately. This is certainly a good choice for new web pages that are looking to increase web traffic. Another awesome aspect of RSS marketing is that it can get your web page returned as the number one result for your web pages' most popular keywords.


For example, take a look at these results reported on MarketingStudies.net:
W. Atlee Burpee &nbspCo. (the garden seed people) saw their RSS strategy help them increase November sales by four times from just one trial feed featuring a 'seed of the day'.
USAToday.com reports that their RSS traffic is 'rising month after month by orders of magnitude', even though they are barely promoting their RSS feeds.


The need to provide fresh content is a challenge for most webmasters. Rss feeds are an easy solution to this problem. RSS feeds create a ever changing source of content syndication and need very little maintenance once set up. There are several advantages to using RSS feeds as a source of fresh content to your site.


Fresh content keeps your site visitors coming back and continually adds value to your website. It helps to establish you as an authority in your industry and makes people more comfortable buying from your site. RSS feeds greatly aids your site in obtaining higher ranking in the search engines.

Read more.....