First, may I say, getting subscribers is not easy. It takes work, regardless if you are managing a blog or not. If you are running a blog, a subscriber count could be the easiest thing to improve though.

When it comes to numbers for this site, I have three major goals that I try to accomplish. I try to get more unique visitors, I look for ways to keep them engaged longer (more pageviews per session), and I try to get more subscribers. I have the goals broken down in easy steps that I believe I can accomplish, and try to keep the three in sync.

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Yesterday I received an email from one of you asking me where the graph came from on my recent post, Get Free Usability and Design Tips by Not Subscribing.

The graph came from FeedCompare.com. All you have to do is type in the Feedburner name into the form, and their you go, a two year history of numbers graphed just for you. Use BestWebImage to give it a try. When you do, make sure you look at the two year view. You can see why I am such a huge fan of my new method for getting “subscribers”. Continue reading »

 

For those of you that know about the plugin Feedburner Smith you know how handy it is turning your Feedburner RSS link into a more friendly (your original) feed link. Last month I finally installed it on this site, and a week later I uninstalled it.

The reason for killing it off was because I was losing a more important part to my site, and that was the knowledge of where my subscribers are coming from. Here is a cool tip on how to track where your subscribers are coming from if you use Google Analytics, and how redirects are not cooperating, aka cool tip/bummer deal. Continue reading »

 

Researching methods to improve subscriber numbers I have found lots of ideas that could help, and a lot of them that just stunk. Here is a quick what not to do, and three great ways to get more. Read to the end on this one, the third and last tip could be one of your best bits of advice. Continue reading »

Jul 172009
 

Every morning I like to read blogs and forums. Here are the top three I found of value today. Continue reading »

 

I recently ran into a web forum discussion about losing RSS subscribers. They had listed a few predictable reason, and I immediately thought that this would work better as a poll.

Here is the poll: Why Do You Unsubscribe From RSS Feeds?

Archive of Web Usability and Design Polls

 

One of the things I like to do with my analytics is log the changes I make to a website using a journal. Another thing I like to do is look at those changes a month later.

Now You See it, Now You Don’t

A month ago today I returned my big RSS button found in the introduction message on my home page. Two months ago I had removed it to see if it would influence my subscriber growth at all. With it gone, I watched the numbers slowly dwindle, and it actually decreased my subscriber base by 5% over the course of a month. Ouch! . The day I returned the button my graph immediately turned around, and gained 10% more subscribers over this last month. Not great considering my numbers, but in the right direction for sure.

This lead me to another change that I made today, reducing the size of my introduction message just a little bit more. This put the RSS button even closer to the hot spot of this site making it an easier eye target. The other benefit of reducing the introduction message was that it simply removes descision and reading time. Giving information faster to get that desired action.