How To Get 101 Subscribers to Your New Blog in Thirty Days
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I have a dream.
I have a dream of getting 101 subscribers to this blog within 30 days. You can help by subscribing now.
I’m no Martin Luther King or anything, so this is not a big dream, but nevertheless it’s non-trivial. I have a niche blog that’s almost five years old that doesn’t yet have 101 subscribers. Getting 101 subscribers to a brand new blog that’s starting with 10 subscribers (YES — we have reached double digits as of today!) will be a non-trivial accomplishment. But I think it’s worth shooting for!
It’s March 10th, 2008, as I write this. I’ll post it on March 11th. 30 days hath September and so on, so by April 10th, I need to be showing 101 Feedburner Subscribers.
Why Do You Want More Subscribers?
No matter what your online writing business model is, you can benefit from having more subscribers. Especially if selling advertising is part of your business model, a huge subscriber base is an absolute must. If you’re offering blog ghostwriting or similar services, a blog chock full of subscribers is a work product showing what you can do by way of promoting your client’s business. If you’re selling information products online, folks who subscribe to blogs are the types of people you want in your target market. Even niche bloggers may find that having more subscribers will get their articles more attention than they would otherwise, leading to more incoming links and incoming referrals.
My Brain-Dead Simple Ten-Part Plan
The eleven part plan I’m using is below.
If you subscribe now, you’ll get to follow my attempt to reach this goal and you’ll find out if my eleven part plan really works or is all wet. Either way, though, together we’ll learn techniques for getting more subscribers to our blogs and doing more business!
Ready… set … go!
- Start where you are.
I started out with ten subscribers (Hooray — I only have to get ninety-one more!). If you don’t have ten subscribers already, it may take you thirty-two days. For extra credit it’d be neat if I could get to 111 subscribers by April 10th. That way I’ll know I added 101 to my original ten. But let’s be clear: my base goal is 101 by April 10th. - Start asking people to subscribe on your blog.
Start asking people to subscribe at the end of each blog post. In a post like this talking about your goals, you could make something of a joke or game out of it asking people to please subscribe at least three times. OK, that’s three. I don’t want to annoy you with it. - Fix up your feed.
Burn your feed with Feedburner, if you haven’t done so already. Fix up your subscription area and make it prominently visible. Make sure that people can subscribe via RSS or email. Free services for offering email RSS subscriptions are available through Feedblitz and Feedburner. - Put up a FeedBurner subscriber chiclet. You want to show how many subscribers you have now. Don’t worry about those cheesy ten subscribers. You’ll have 101 in a month. The past is simply prologue. Your new subscribers want to see your plan for new subscribers succeed, because if you can do it, so can they!
- Offer a free ad. Offer an ad for free for a period of time (three months, six months, one year) for the webmaster who gets you the most new subscribers. A new ad format that’s very popular is the 125 x 125 pixel format. I’m going to put up a spot on my blog to host four such ads, and use winning one or more free ad as an incentive.
- If you have other blogs or other social networks, use them. (If you don’t, it may take you 101 days or what have you — use what you have available). Ways to use your other blog include writing a post linking to your subscription drive. On social networks, one think I’m going to try is sending a message out to MyBlogLog Community or the like. Link to your free ad offer and other posts.
- Blog about your subscription drive.
Every few days you want to tell people about your subscription drive. Once every 1-3 days seems about right for the first week, then once every 3-7 days for the rest of the period. You don’t want to overdo it. Everyone likes public radio, but everybody hates a telethon. - Ramp up your social networking. There are hundreds of social networks out there. You may already be a member of one or more — and your friends there miss you and haven’t heard from them in awhile. Don’t let them down. Tell them what you’re trying to do.
- Email bloggers about your free add offer. You’ll want to use this suggestion with some care, and realize that top bloggers get lots of requests for links, help, etc. Be polite in your approach, humble about your current blog traffic, and generous in the length of the ad they can win if they help you. I’ll post a sample email you can use in a future post. (Hmm . . . how will you be notified when that post comes out? If only there were a way to see when new blog posts came out for a given blog…).
- Ramp up your commenting. Are you meeting new bloggers who might see your ad? My goal for the period of this promotion is five comments per weekday. Remember, don’t spam the comments about your program — your goal in commenting is to participate in other peoples’ conversation and get them to stop by your blog.
- Ramp up your posts to other blogs. Maybe someone’s asked you to do a guest post recently, and you’ve been putting it off? If their blog is about how to promote a blog or has anything to do with online marketing, maybe now’s the time to go write that guest article! Make sure to mention your free ad offer.
March 11th, 2008 at 6:08 pm
God luck, John. I subscribed.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:31 am
Great advice, and very simple for anyone to do. Another thought would be to put up a post on how to subscribe to an RSS Reader (Google Reader for example) so people will be sure to understand what it’s all about and be more likely to subscribe. While it’s great to get a bunch of random subscribers, my blog is more local oriented so my goal is to increase the number of local subscribers.
March 12th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Linda,
Thanks so much for the comment here and over on the Tomato! I appreciate it.
Yes, you have an excellent point about educating people about RSS. Problogger.net Darren Rowse has some excellent examples / material about that as well that I’m ignoring at my peril, but I’m going to follow your advice ASAP. The other thing I need to do is get a subscribe by email box going — I’ve done that on other sites, but really I think teaching about RSS works better.
March 12th, 2008 at 11:45 am
I’m one of those old fashioned people that doesn’t like RSS…although I do have the option on my blog. But I like to subscribe via email. I would like to subscribe to your blog but I must be missing the email subscription link.
I’ll read your RSS post to see if you can convince me to use it. I have tried it in the past but didn’t like it.
I definitely enjoy your writing style and would like to see how this project works out.
March 12th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
Marty, you’re absolutely right. That’s one of the things I need to implement. I’ll try to get it done within the next day or two and let you know. Thanks for pointing it out, and for the kind words about the writing.
March 12th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
OK, Marty — it’s there in the upper right hand corner. I’m using Feedburner so the subscription would be daily (assuming I said something that day).
Thanks again for the heads up!
March 12th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
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March 13th, 2008 at 11:32 am
new subscriber question (!): how do you put “free” ad spaces on your blog like you have? Great job on your blog–
March 13th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Thanks Tuscan,
I pretty much just add the code to the wordpress theme directly — it’s pretty brain dead html so far. Do you think it’d make a good post? I’m away from my main machine right now but I’ll try to either email you or write about it shortly. Thanks for the subscription!
March 14th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
John-
Good post. I think all real estate bloggers should aspire for more readers, but you are right, unlike non-re bloggers, boy each one comes slowly! Maybe because real estate is so transactional that most people are not looking for a long term read.
On a side note, I added a Wordpress Plug-in called “what would Seth Godin do”. I doubled my RSS readers by adding this plug in that pops up the first 3 times someone visits your blog asking them if they want to subscribe. Check it out here:
http://www.richardkmiller.com/blog/wordpress-plugin-what-would-seth-godin-do
March 14th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Scott,
Yes, real estate blogs have several hurdles when it comes to building subscribers, including a non-national, local audience, the fact that the audience is “everyone who wants a house” rather than the more technolically savvy group who uses RSS readers, and the fact that people looking for a house are looking for a house, not a read.
That’s an interesting plugin — strangely enough given its name it doesn’t look to me like Seth Godin uses it!
I steer clear of pop-ups generally, but maybe I’ll experiment with it some time. Thanks for the heads up and the visit.
March 15th, 2008 at 11:05 am
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March 15th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
I didn’t realize that having 42 readers on a niche RE blog about 50’s and 60’s classic homes and historic neighborhoods in Las Vegas was a terrific base. I’m going to challenge myself to match your 101 in the next 25 days.
March 16th, 2008 at 12:53 am
Hi Jack,
Thanks for the visit. Good luck with it!
I’ve been blogging in Sacramento for years and years and I’m only about at twice that. It’s easier to have a higher subscriber count when you have a potentially national market and if your topic is somehow related to writing / blogging / marketing or the like.
March 17th, 2008 at 11:13 am
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March 18th, 2008 at 4:56 am
Nice idea, smart, have subscribed.
March 18th, 2008 at 6:59 am
Thanks, Wade!
March 21st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
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March 22nd, 2008 at 8:47 am
Great post!
I subscribed! I am on a similar quest myself. Although starting with more than ten.
March 25th, 2008 at 5:48 am
Hey this really helped. Check my feed count now. Two days!!!
March 25th, 2008 at 7:22 am
Nice.
March 28th, 2008 at 12:00 am
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March 30th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Dear John,
First i thought its a deceptive way of poasting a comment as it will definitely drag a visitor to your site but after that i felt sorry as your post really mattered most than i thought.You will be surprised to listen i have watched more than 10 posts and gone through each post with out missing a word.So good is your way of presenting that its hard to belive that you have less subscribers than actually you should have.All the very best for your future goal of 101 subscribers and let me congratulate in advance and let me be the first to wish you in this regard.Sorry for giving such a lenghthy comment but i cant resist myself posting such a big comment.
March 30th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
Wow, thanks! Yes, I think getting that subscriber count up will take longer than I thought, however I am very interested in learning how to grow as a blogger from the type of blogging I’ve done in the past (basic SEO stuff) to trying to build more of an audience.
Thanks again for all the kind words.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:46 am
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April 11th, 2008 at 6:13 am
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April 20th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Hi, John…
I just want to make a review your post at my blog in my language. I don’t mean to steal from you. If you mind I quote your post, I was take this down like you wish. I’m sorry about this matter.
Thank you.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:53 am
Reviewing is fine. What it originally had, all eleven bullet items copied in English verbatim, was what I was originally responding to. That’s not a review.
Thanks.