Rely on subscribers first, not on traffic!

May 23

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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Author:
Alex Category:
Blogging 7Comments

7 Responses to “Rely on subscribers first, not on traffic!”

nino
May 23rd, 2008

Thanks for this article, was really interesting and useful for a new blogger like me

Find Articles 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.

Nhil / Call Center Gal
January 26th, 2009

Hi Alex,

I am still working on building my subscribers, aside from doing those suggestions, I also want to hold a blogging contest. What do you think?

And oh, thanks for following me on Twitter. Now I’m following you too.

Alex January 26th, 2009
Nhil, a blogging contest will definitely get some fuss around your blog. Contests are highly recommended, only that you need to have sponsors or money to launch one. Thanks for the follow!

datafeedr download March 8th, 2010
If you want to make money from affiliate marketing, it’s probably going to be helpful to know what this kind of Internet marketing actually is. In affiliate marketing you’re basically signing up to sell other people products.