How to get more RSS subscribers

Random visitors to my blog are nice but getting a new RSS subscriber to my feed is great. I feel that this is truly the most important parameter of a blog, how many people are monitoring it for new posts. So, how does one go and get more readers to subscribe?

1. Place your RSS feed subscription in a prominent part of all pages to make it easier for readers to notice it
2. Track the feed using services such as Feedburner to get more insight on what gets readers interested. (you might also want to consider using the non free ProStats for the reasons discussed in Pronet advertising's What I learned from FeedBurner TotalStats)
3. Allow subscription via email to your RSS feed
4. Set your posting frequency to one that your readers are comfortable with. Posting on regular times makes your reader expect your next post
5. Insert call to action into your RSS feed. Allow people to forward via email or recommend this RSS to a friend
6. And the most important one is ... Write stuff that your readers are interested in. I know that this is a real tricky one as no two readers are the same, but knowing your readers allows you to create better and most suited content for them.

I got the idea for this post from Conversion Rater's post named Believe It Or Not, This Blog is Growing which is a blog that I really like.


Related posts:
Tips on finding breaking news
Increase traffic to your site
Web stats from my blog

Tags: RSS, Feedburner, Feed, Blog

Selling a product... Pasta cooker

The Internet marketing guru Seth Godin just published a post in his blog about the Pasta Express. The Pasta Express is a plastic tube in which you place your pasta and add boiling water. I have to admit that I actually considered buying one when I heard of it. After reading Seth's post named Your pasta problem, I am pretty sure that I won't be buying it anytime soon. This is truely an amazing peace of product marketing that makes me feel I was fooled.


Related posts:
Zune - hidden media player
TrackBack in blogger
Digg - find your story

Tags: Pasta Express, Seth Godin, Product, Marketing

Tips on finding breaking news

Here's a nice post from ProNet Advertising about finding news sources that can be used to generate content for your blog. It's always hard to find new content for a blog and this tip can bring great value.


Related posts:
Digg - find your story
Increase traffic to your site

Tags: News, Blog, Content

Spreeder - learn to speed read

Spreeder is an online utility which trains you in the skill of speed reading. How does it do this? The main reasons that cause people to read slowly are their natural tendency to verbalize the text they read as well as backtracking to the beginning of sentences to understand the context of a word. Spreeder solves this by showing the text one word at a time at a speed that can be configured. Many people who played around with this application claim it improved their reading skills by more then 200%. Can it improve yours? Try Spreeder and let me know.


Technorati Tags: Reading, Speed Reading, Skill

Sling - new flash game

It's been a while since I found a new flash game to share with you. But here comes Sling.
Sling is a green glob of goo consisting of a hand attached to a head by a long strip of springy slime. Players use the mouse to click and drag on Sling’s head, pulling him around to attach him to different items, or pulling back and releasing him to ‘slingshot’ him to another location. Real-world physics are used to model Sling’s springy arm, his motion and collisions.
Just see for yourslef:


Related posts:
ClickDragType - game with no instructions
Red Square game - a good way to pass the time


Technorati Tags: Sling, Flash Game

Increase traffic to your site

I found a great collection of articles named "How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic -– The Ultimate Guide". This list is a great source of knowledge for any website owner (or blogger) who wants to increase their website visitors. I really liked Seth Godin's "How to Get Traffic For Your Blog".


Related posts:
What is Technorati?
TrackBack in blogger
Digg - find your story


Technorati Tags: SEO, Digg, Traffic, Website, How to

What is Technorati?

If you don't know the answer to this question, it might be a good time to checkout Preetam Rai's post about The “tagged web” and Using Technorati for some more information. The basic idea is that Technorati is a tag based index of the blogosphere that allows you to do tag based searches of topics you are looking for. I am using Technorati to get insight on what readers are interested in.


Related posts:
TrackBack in blogger
Digg - find your story


Technorati Tags: Technorati, Blogosphere, tag

Microsoft takes on YouTube with Soapbox

In an attempt to stay ahead on current online trends, Microsoft launches a beta version of their YouTube competiton under the name of MSN Soapbox. Login is still by invitation only, but there is a real silly video on the front page for you to check out.


Related Posts:
Zune - hidden media player
YouTube - Video sharing site


Technorati Tags: Soapbox, MSN, Microsoft, YouTube, VIdeo

Zune - hidden media player

There is a lot of buzz going around the Internet these days about Microsoft's answer to Apple's iPod... Zune! So, where can you find more information about this new product? The most obvious answer would be Microsoft's site but they seem to hide it somewhere where it can't be found. Could it be in the Zune marketing site? Nah, nothing there but some flash fun. What's the matter with you people? Don't you want us to know more of your product? I got it, this is probably some sneaky marketing trick?

Zune currently has around 1.8 million search results in Google


Technorati Tags: Zune, iPod, Microsoft, Media Player, Apple, Google, Marketing

Pope online - the vatican web site

Following up on the latest news on the Pope's speech on the Islam, I tried to find some more information on this story and where better to search then the Vatican website?
Well, the Vatican website is probably aimed at holier people then myself as I was not able to find any mention of the speech or make sense of this site at all.

Can you?


Technorati Tags: Pope, Islam, Vatican, Website

TrackBack in blogger

Trackbacking in the blogosphere is considered to be the polite way of letting someone know that you've linked to their post. While most blogging platforms such as WordPress support this, Blogger does not. In the past few weeks, I have searched for some sort of hack to allow me to send trackbacks to my fellow bloggers and found a solution which is described below in a manner that anyone can implement.

Adding a trackback ability to blogger posts:
1. Use Firefox
2. Install GreaseMonkey - GreaseMonkey is a Firefox extension which lets you to add bits of DHTML ("user scripts") to any web page to change its behavior.
3. Install the Blogger Trackback Userscript and get trackback functionality directly from your Blogger dashboard. Every time a post is published you will be asked for trackback URL that you wish to inform.

I am just rounding up the data here but the real honors should go to the people who developed Firefox, GreaseMonkey and of course the Blogger Trackback Userscript


Related posts:
blogger trackback
How to get more RSS subscribers
Technorati tags and searches



Tags: Firefox, GreaseMonkey, Grease Monkey, Blogger, Trackback, Userscript, Ping, BlogSpot, Ajax

Go2Web20 - Web2.0 directory

Looking for a Web2.0 company? Go2Web20 is the place to find it. A very cool flash interface allows you to search by date, tags or just free text for the company you are looking for.


Related posts:
New widget in my blog - MuseStorm
Digg - find your story


Technorati Tags: Go2Web20, We 2.0, technorati, technology

ClickDragType 3 - 5 new levels

One of the most popular posts on my blog is ClickDragType.
It's a great flash based game that leaves you in the dark as it does not provide any instructions on how to play it. A new version of it is just out named ClickDragType 3 and offers 5 new levels to the existing 10. Try it out and you won't be dissapointed.


Related posts:
ClickDragType - game with no instructions
Red Square game - a good way to pass the time
Getting paid to play games

Technorati Tags: game, ClickDragType, flash

Digg - find your story

If you haven't visited Digg.com then now is the time. Digg is a user driven story rating system that allows users to post links to new stories and URLs and have other users rank them according to their likes and dislikes. If you browse Digg's homepage or category pages you will be exposed to what is really happening online in real time. Bloggers use Digg for 2 major reasons. The first is to publish their own posts and get more traffic to their blog while the second is to monitor uprising trends and blog all about them at the right time. While there are many sites that are based on user content ranking, Digg is regarded as the market's leader.

You can also read some more about this at Guy Kawasaki's How to Use Digg to Get Traffic or at Neil Patel's Using digg and Netscape to get traffic


Related posts:
Web stats from my blog
TalkDigger - track your blog links
Digg traffic usage


Tags: Digg, social network, user generated content, traffic

Free Antivirus by AOL

Antivirus is probably one of the most important software you need on your computer.
While my office PC is protected, my home PC (it's really a laptop) has gotten used to numerous trial versions of leading antivirus programs. I have just found out that in a new marketing campaign, AOL is offering a free version of Kaspersky Labs antivirus which is considered by most people I know to be the market's leader. All you need to do to get your copy is to register at their website with your email (if you don't want your email exposed just read my post about one time email) , download your copy and activate it using the activation code sent to your email.

Let's see if more companies start offering valuable software for free as part of their marketing campaigns.

Download link: free antivirus


Technorati Tags: Free, antivirus, AOL, Kaspersky, security

Web stats from my blog

I have been using all sorts of web analytics software to try and find out what my users want and like. The too web analytics tools I currently use are 103Bees and Performancing Metrics.
I try to spend a few minutes every week seeing what posts were popular and which ones brought new traffic to my blog.
Here are some stats for you from last month's reports:
Most popular page was the homepage while the second most popular was Red Square game - a good way to pass the time.
The best referer to my blog was Keyword Misspelling Tool from Matt Cutts's Problogger followed by a search in Google for google vs office.
Most popular search term was red square game closely followed by clickdragtype hints
Top rated outbound link was Red Square


Does your site implement some sort of web analytics? If so what are you doing with those stats?


Related posts:
103bees - SEO oriented analytics
SEO tips - avoid spellchecking
Google Trends - what are we searching for?
How the Internet changed the way we communicate


Technorati Tags: Web Statistics, SEO, analytics, 103 bees, Performancing metrics, stats