Driving traffic to your blog is very important, I agree with that, but every new blogger should know that
at the beginning, subscribers are more important than traffic. You know .. visitors come and leave, subscribers read you every day and it’s very important to build a community, and have strong connections with your readers. So how do you convert traffic to subscribers?
- Write great posts
Yes, this is a must. Nobody will ever come back on a blog that has poor content and nothing interesting. I know, you can’t have 100% original content, the blogosphere is immense and the internet too but you should say the things in a different way, be unique with something, come with something new! And don’t forget, many bloggers think that there’s a rule to write daily, like many posts per day. This is completely wrong. It’s better two write 3 awesome posts/week than 15 so and so posts/week.
- Make it easy to subscribe
So you have great content, and your readers want to subscribe at your blog, but it’s pretty difficult to find the subscriptions button or the box where they have to enter their e-mail. You should make this two things very visible. Look at my blog, the top part of my sidebar is reserved for these, but don’t believe me, take a look at other succesful blogs like problogger. Or at the end of your article you could write something like “If you liked this post, please subscribe” and include a link to your feed there.
- Offer something free for the ones who subscribe
We all like free stuff, don’t you? So this is a great tip to increase your subscribers number. You could offer an ebook written by you (a 50 pages one should be ok) or a free review on your blog. As I said, everyone loves free stuff! And if you have great content, that readers will remain subscribed.
- Teach your readers what’s rss and how to use it
You can never know. Maybe many readers of your blog don’t know what is RSS and how to use it so it should be a great idea to write a page where to tell them what’s a RSS and how to subscribe.
- Show the number of your subscribers
If you have something like 100 subscribers or even more, you should make that visible on your blog. New visitors will see that and will think that there must be something good at your blog if you have so many subscribers.
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nino
May 23rd, 2008
Thanks for this article, was really interesting and useful for a new blogger like me
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May 23rd, 2008
Indeed, quality content is still the king. If you can offer any best freebie, it’s gotta be free useful content. That’s what will help maintain the interest of your existing subscribers.
Bamboo Forest
May 23rd, 2008
I think one must rely on both first and always on both. You could have the most profound material in the world — but without a drop of traffic, you wouldn’t gain even a single subscriber.
I would say, they both go hand in hand. You can’t really have one without the other. What it comes down to is… If your content is mediocre, than traffic will not count for much. But, if your content is excellent, traffic will mean everything, because it is the opportunity for gaining more subscribers.
Alex
May 23rd, 2008
Yes, that’s true. What I was trying to say is that at the beginning you should rely more on the subscribers number. I know, without traffic there won’t be any subscribers but the point is to transform that little traffic you receive at the beginning in subscribers.