DISQUS

Wap Advertising · 1 year ago

Great information on how to grow your subscribers.

Parallel Import Cars · 10 months ago

I'll be eagerly testing the tips to see the results on my subscription statistics.

Racing School · 11 months ago

I only have less than 50 subscribers. You are the big boy to me. ;-)

Singapore Hotel · 10 months ago

I must agree with that. It's not easy having thousands of subscribers.

Seo Singapore · 11 months ago

I think constantly adding content in the blog is still the fastest way of growing blogs. Tries some viral refer a friend scripts and it had proven to be a disaster with Hosting Providers preventing the use of these scripts.

Back Pain · 10 months ago

Yes, the viral script from Mike Filsaime was a disaster. My friends hosting provider shut down his website and he had to installed a dedicated server after that.

Louis Gray · 1 year ago

A lot of people took what I said about links a little differently than I had intended, which only proves I didn't write it very well. What I was trying to get across was:

1) Blog links, over time, are delivering a lower % of total traffic
2) The same blogs, year over year, are delivering less traffic
3) Aggregation tools, like Digg, FriendFeed, Techmeme, etc. are getting more important

It is linking that enables the Web, period. It's linking that enables Google search to work, for Technorati to work, etc. It's not about whether I got jaded when my subscriber count went up, but instead, about watching the trends and making comments on what I'm seeing.

gsmaverick · 1 year ago

Just a sign that times are a changin!

robdiana · 1 year ago

Well, that's what happens when you say something controversial :) The key thing to remember is that everything is relative. As you say, as you get bigger, links mean less, but sites like Digg, FriendFeed, etc get more important. At least you started a good conversation.

Mark Dykeman · 1 year ago

Good way to add to the conversation, Rob.

Bradley McSpinn · 1 year ago

Quite insightful. Nicely put.

Matik72 · 1 year ago

Thanks Corvida. That has been one of my internal conversations. I like the blogging as a means of communicating. I am trending more towards the organic approach as I am new to this field. Links are always appreaciated. :) Right now, I am deciding whether lifestream or specific interest is what drives me to post. It surely has not helped to be sans pc for 3 weeks. The RW job took precedence over the rebuild but that is all up an running. Now comes the fun part. Translating my notes into blog posts.

Avatar · 1 year ago

the best example i can think of right now that is a definitive booster is Leo Laporte. any small blogger that gets linked by him boosts from 1000 to 3000 subscribers overnight in one go as well a huge spike of traffic that can o course kill your blog. the thing is for the linked blog to be able to retain the new subscribers.

Kevin Bondelli · 1 year ago

That's a really good point about the strategies/effects related to traffic building changing with the size of a blog's readership.

Shey · 1 year ago

Great advice Rob, thanks!

Robert Gable · 1 year ago

"A small blog will not get any search engine traffic, mainly because there are not enough links to build any authority"

Authority isn't the only way to get search engine traffic. I'm a niche blogger and happened to title my (non-delicious link) posts in a manner that is search friendly e.g. google for "terry-riley sun rings".

robdiana · 1 year ago

I see your point, but even in a niche you need some linking. If this was an SEO article (which it was not meant to be), then there is a ton of information that would be missed, good titles, good description, keywords, etc.

jokeyxero · 1 year ago

Very useful, thank you.

DGentry · 1 year ago

Digg, StumbleUpon, Google Reader shared items, Friendfeed, and so forth are all valid techniques to find readers. The most important aspect to finding one's audience is getting exposure at sites which people with those interests already frequent. I know thats obvious but its a mistake I've frequently made, not aiming at the right target.

I blog about programming topics, particularly low-level problems in embedded systems. Essentially all of my current subscribers found the blog via two articles which spent most of a day on the front page of reddit's programming section.

More recently I discovered FriendFeed and have been posting and commenting there, because its fun. I'll go out on a limb and say not many people on FriendFeed are interested in postings about MIPS assembly or Linux filesystems, based on my blog statistics showing exactly 2 referrals from friendfeed.com.

FriendFeed is certainly fun, but until it has a considerably larger community with a larger diversity of interests it will not be a way to promote blogs on most niche topics. You have to find the sites where people with those interests already congregate, which in my case is reddit.com, news.ycombinator.com, etc.

robdiana · 1 year ago

Yeah, real-time and embedded systems are very niche topics. I can not comment on the best places to go because I do not know much about them. If anything I would have recommended Reddit as well.

I probably should have been more specific about finding the right social site for your topic. There are a ton of niche networks and social sites popping up.

robdiana · 1 year ago

Wow, I lost web connectivity early yesterday, and look at what i missed. Thanks to everyone for the praise. Keep up the conversation.

SEO · 10 months ago

It has been more difficult to get on the front page of Digg, especially with the fact that Digg is now focusing more on bigger news on authority sites. Twitter is a better choice for creating awareness and quality traffic.

Whereisaron · 5 months ago

A lot of thanks, now i know on how to grow my subscribers.

Liontin · 5 months ago

My subscribers will be improve soon because of this info. Thank you.