Eerik from XP tricks has won this jump-the-queue blog review worth $150 as a prize in the Lets Win This Contest Together that ran for a month at Shanker Bakshi’s blog and concluded on 1st September. Inspirit Blog had sponsored the contest with prizes worth $185. Today I am going to review Eerik’s blog XP tricks jumping over the queue of so many blogs already waiting for a free blog review from Inspirit Blog.

Having said that, I’d start with this blog review that will cover all the elements of a blog from its design and eye candy to the add-ons and content, from the management of navigation bar to the sidebar widgets, and everything else that is significant for a blog. Whatever I’d tell through this review will (of course) be related to this particular blog, but I’d recommend that all of you read through and try to pick the maximum tips from this review to better up your own blog.

Navigation Overview

5 posts on the home page is optimal and the read more tag has been sensibly used to optimize the length of the home page. You can dig through the previous posts by clicking on the Older Entries link below the 5 posts on the main page. However I am disappointed not to see the archives anywhere. Its hard to navigate older entries beyond a few pages without the archive in place. No having or listing an archive virtually kills the prospects of your previous blog posts getting their due exposure. You might get some search engine traffic to them but unless people read that buried comment, rate or review it, social-bookmark it, you’re not going to get good rankings in the SERPS (Search Engine Results PageS) even!

The navigation bar at the top is minimalistic with only the most basic pages listed there : About | Contact | Register. However when I ran through the links in the rightmost sidebar just above the footer, I figured a link to the Link Exchange page. That can come in the top navigation bar as well, instead of being down there so neglected! My personal recommendation yo all of you is to list all the pages on your blog together at one place, be it the navigation bar or a prime spot in the sidebar.

Besides all this, the posts have not been categorized (or labelled) and hence there is no categories widget in the sidebar or anywhere else on the blog. Sorry Eerik, but I am not at all pleased with the navaigation on your blog and I really recommend you add the archives in the sidebar, and tag or categorize your blog posts appropriately so that they can be easily accessed from the tags/categories widget. Also, move the Link Exchange page to the navigation bar from the bottom where no one will easily notice it. Your Link Here looks more like a text link ad-spot.

Sidebars and Footer Overview

The very essential features that I feel should always be there in a blog’s sidebars are navigation elements (as we talked above), feed subscription options, social bookmarking, social networking and blog promotion widgets, blogroll and resources link-list ( and advertising elements – if you wish to). Out of these basic elements, you have the feed subscription options in the right place on the home page, and social bookmarking buttions like digg, reddit, etc. on the single post page. You may add the RSS subscription options on the single-post page as well.

You should start working on other elements as well. The prime aim of any blog is building traffic. As soon as possible, join social networking sites for bloggers like blog catalog and mybloglog, entrecard, etc. and work on growing your blog’s community. Build a healthy readership base so that all your hard work doesn’t go in vain. If you’re investing your peace and time in publishing useful content, you should market it in the right way so that people actually see it. It’s important to build traffic and grow your blog’s readers community.

Considering that your blog is now 8-9 months old (Yes, I read back till the first welcome to XP tricks post), the MyLinks section just above the footer should not be empty as it is right now. See below how I use that space on my blog. A very basic footer with copyright information is okay. You may add a privacy policy or disclaimer there. Else, its fine.

About Page

Another important thing that you should take care of while writing an About page is that it should give the reader an idea of what the website or blog is about and who’s the person behind it. You’ve briefed about XP tricks in 2-3 lines but I did not see your name anywhere in the whole blog. I would have never known that you’re Eerik if you’d not told your name while entering the contest.

Advertising

You’re using Google Adsense smartly on the main page with text-links unit just below the title and an ad-block below the post. Nice places to put those ads, actually. However consider avoiding the in-line ad placement in your blog. I find that quite distracting as your blog’s content container isn’t as wide that it’ll accumulate the ad quite well. You should consider this post of yours and see how the image used in the post is being pushed out of view due to the ad placed along with it. You may consider placing adsense somewhere in the sidebar, instead.

Content Overview

Overall, you’re blog has quite some content worth reading but not everyone is as patient as me to navigate through all the older entries through the link at the bottom. Work on your blog’s navigation bar so that posts and pages are easily accessible. Try to minimize writing content that can be found elsewhere on the internet and bring up more original and interesting tutorials, tips, tricks and tweaks unless the intent of your blog is to share the goodness of internet that is already there.

I hope that this review helps you optimize your blog and build some traffic and a healthy readers’ community. Feel free to drop your comments, share ideas and opinions and write about this review on your own blog to share with your readers.

Peace.

Shanker Bakshi’s third contest on his blog Lets Win This Contest Together successfully concluded on 1st September after running for a month. There were 208 entries in total considering 5 entries from a blog post about this contest and 3 entries from subscribing to the blog by email. All the entries were processed using random.org and a list of winners was generated.

Inspirit Blog had sponsored the contest with a 125 x 125 ad spot for a month worth $35 and one jump-the-queue blog review worth $150 ! That totals to prize worth of $185. The 125 x 125 ad spot worth $35 for a month is won by Amor Francis, a 31 year old female pinoy blogger from Manila, Philippines. And, the jump-the-queue blog review goes to Eerik. Congratulations to you – Amor, Eerik and all the lucky winners of Lets Win This Contest Together.

You can find the complete list of all the winners at Shanker’s blog. I am looking forward to another good blog contest coming up at Shanker Bakshi dot com soon. I am working on setting up the ad-spots as I lost the configuration while switching from windows based hosting to linux based webhosting, recently. Amor, you can email me the 125 square banner so that I can put it up here. And Eerik, your blog’s jump-the-queue review will be published tomorrow itself around this time. I recommend that you subscribe to Inspirit Blog through email to keep track of any updates.

Once again, I’d like to congratulate all the lucky winners of Lets Win This Contest Together.
Peace.

Shanker Bakshi is holding yet another contest on his blog which goes by the name “Lets Win This Contest Together“. The coolest thing about the contest is that the current weight of the contest is prizes worth over $850. This includes so many text link ad spots, 125 square ad blocks, over 15000 entrecredits and free designs and reviews from some of the best blogs around the blogosphere.

Inspirit Blog is also sponsoring the contest with a 125×125 square ad block worth $35 for one month and a free blog review jumping the queue of over 100 blogs that are still waiting to get a free blog review from Inspirit Blog. I have been associated with Shanker Bakshi and this contest since the idea was born and he shared it with me but some running errands kept me from announcing this to you.

Lets Win This Contest Together closes on 31st August, 2008. Participating is very easy and I should say you must definitely go participate in this one. All you have to do is either (or both) blog about the contest in minimum 100 words in a blog post on your own blog with a link back to the contest. This counts as 5 entries for the contest. You can also subscribe to Shanker Bakshi by email for 3 entries in the contest. The winner will be chosen at random and announced on 1st September, 2008.

Sponsors and Prizes:

Entrecard Credits

• 10,000 Entrecard Credits from Shanker Bakshi dot Com (worth $95)
• 1000 Entrecard Credits from Ragnarok (worth $10)
• 1000 Entrecard Credits from The Delano Observer (worth $10)
• 1000 Entrecard Credits from Newz Around Us (worth $10)
• 1000 Entrecard Credits from Michael Aulia dot Com (worth $10)
• 1000 Entrecard Credits from Rumbling Lankan (worth $10)
• 1500 Entrecard Credits from Gyutae Park – Winning the Web (worth $15)

125 x 125 Square Ad

• 125×125 Entrecard Widget Design by Mohit Aneja (worth $15)
• 125×125 block ad for one month on iLUVcontests (worth $15 )
• 125×125 block ad for one month on Shopping (worth $15 )
• 125×125 block ad for one month on XSrealities (worth $25 )
• 125×125 block ad for one month on Inspirit Blog (worth $35)
• 125×125 block ad for permanent on Fundraiser Support (worth $10)
• 125×125 block ad for one month on Lemback -Potpourri (worth $25)
  
• 125×125 Block ad for four months on Shanker Bakshi dot com (worth $60)
• Two 125×125 Blocks ads for one months from LegitGeeK.com (worth $320)

Text Link Ad

• Text Link Ad for a month on Ragnarok (worth $10)
• Text Link Ad for a month on WebTrafficROI (worth $10)
• Text Link Ad for a month on Mr. Javo dot Com (worth $10)
• Text Link Ad for a month on Blogging From Scratch (worth $10)

More Prizes

• 250×250 ad spot for a week at ROCKFUSE (worth $20)
• 468×60 ad spot for six months on Brood online (worth $100)
• One Free Blog Review (jumping the queue) by Abhinav Sood at Inspirit Blog (worth $150)

Isn’t this simply amazing? Well, if it is, what are you doing here. Go visit the Lets Win This Contest Together page, and when you have entered either through a blog post about the contest or through the email subscription, drop a comment to let Shanker know that you are in. If you want to sponsor the contest, too! you can drop Shanker Bakshi an email : shankerbakshi@gmail.com. And yes, if you visit his blog through this post, drop him a comment and let him know that you came from Inspirit Blog

In fact, I designed the above 250 x 250 square banner to help Mr. Bakshi promote his blog contest because Let Us Win This Contest Together is one simple and amazing contest that I have come across in a long time. If you wish to use this banner in your blog entry (which would really please Mr.Bakshi) you can use this code and paste it in HTML mode.

<a title="Lets win this contest together. Image designed by Abhinav Sood" href="http://shankerbakshi.com/2008/08/01/lets-win-this-contest-together" target="_blank"><img title="Lets Win This Contest Together. Design by Abhinav Sood" src="http://www.inspiritblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/wincontesttogether.jpg" alt="Lets Win This Contest Together. Image designed by Abhinav Sood" width="250" height="250" /></a>

Good Luck Folks!

Recently I saw this blog post by Brian Top Blogs @ Blog Engage – 5 Most Voted Blogs! on the Blog Engage blog. Though I have always secured good response to my posts that ever get submitted to BE, I wasn’t expecting to see Inspirit Blog on the list this time, because I had been quite inactive for some time. But to my amazement, Inspirit has been placed on #2 just after Raivyn’s meta blog- Idiot’s Guide to Blogging.

Its good to see that even though I fail to catch up with activity on my blog sometimes, but people still love to read the content published at Inspirit Blog. In the comments to that post and otherwise on their blogs as well, members have stated that they like Inspirit Blog as much as they like ProBlogger or CopyBlogger. Its such an honor, and I am done with the I-am-Happy dance to celebrate this already.

The answer is – YOU DON’T RESPECT THE ADVERTISERS!

Understanding why is it important to respect the advertisers

When someone buys an entrecard ad-spot on your ad widget – you may visit their blog or website once to check if it is appropriate to let them advertise on your space even for a day. And you’ll have to believe, some even don’t do that as they approve each and everyone to earn some quick entrecard credits. If this is your way, how do you expect others to visit your blog, leave comments or subscribe to your content?

Don’t take that as a taunt – take that as a quick tip. If someone is spending entrecard credits or some money (as in Project Wonderful, text links, sponsored posts or direct advertising) to advertise on your blog, visit them back. Read through their content and drop a few comments or subscribe if you feel like. You’ll soon realize that you are discovering far more fresh content this way than reading only the blogs and websites that you have subscribed to and/or visit regularly.

Click Fraud

Another way in which bloggers disrespect the advertisers is click fraud. I have been educating a number of my friends at college about blogging and how a blog can generate revenue for them. I have helped some of them with monetizing their blogs using adsense and other PPC (Pay Per Click) programs and they seem to have discovered generating false clicks as a good easy way to reach $100 pay-outs.

In various forums and chat-rooms people talk about how they get their ads clicked once in 3 days (or more) from many friends.. and still get their PIN and pay-outs. They are making money for themselves, but do not think about how much loss are they causing to the advertisers who spend so much money and time on running campaigns trying to sell their ideas, services and products.

Respect the Advertiser

Disrespecting an advertiser is of no good. If an ad campaign at your blog turns out to be an unproductive one – advertisers will stop coming back to your blog. You may make a good fortune initially by generating false clicks, earn many credits by blind-approval – but such profits will eventually die out when an advertiser won’t be willing to advertise on your website.

On the other hand, if you visit an advertiser’s website he may visit your website back. If you leave him a comment, he might leave you a comment back. If you buy his product, he may buy some from you. The same good principle of reciprocation goes for building healthy social networks. How do successful bloggers seem to know so many people online and off- and maintain active relations with their readership base. Just by giving some importance to these two principles : Respecting the advertiser (and making him stick to you) and principle of reciprocation.

I don’t read hundreds of blogs through my feed reader everyday – but I do visit anyone who’s up on my entrecard spot, go through the content and comment or subscribe according to the extent to which it influences me. The traffic I get in return is of such kind that converts. And this also helps me to discover fresh content that I might have otherwise missed out.

I respect the advertisers on my blog. Do you?

The logo says it right. Shareaholic is a must have browser add-on for any blogger and is one of my most favorite tools (Firefox add-on) for promoting my blog posts through various social bookmarking and sharing sites. It has been the easiest and the most convenient way for me, by far, to monitor the success of my published articles.

In the latest release, Shareaholic supports 18 sharing and bookmarking services with added support for Google Reader, Foxywire, Streakr and HealthRanker Beta besides the already available Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, Mixx, Facebook, Del.icio.us , etc. The extension can be easily configured, is free to download and use, and contains no Spyware or Adware.

Shareaholic adds itself as a small button besides the address bar (thats where you fill the website URL in). The various options are available in a drop down menu. It roughly looks like this screenshot, and the available options can be easily customized.

If you click on any option from the drop-down menu, it automatically opens in a new tab so you do not need to navigate away from the page you wish to share or promote. Plus, the URL and the title are already submitted so all you need to do is add a small description or tags and DONE. Nifty!

Whenever I publish a new blog post, I initially get the word out by twittering the article using this browser extension. You can also email the web-page you’re promoting directly to a friend to build the buzz. Then, if the blog post or web page goes up into the Digg, Mixx, Del.icio.us, etc. you can see how many saves, diggs or comments it could gather. If you want to, you can add you own votes in just a click.

Do you also use this extension? I highly recommend that you use this one, if you haven’t got it already.
Its quite productive and a nifty tool to make your blogging life easier

I’ll share a very recent experience. If you have been visiting Inspirit Blog for a while now, you’ll have an idea that I published my last post before this one, on 24th May. That means, I am posting today after a gap of exactly 21 days! I could not post for so long because I started to prepare for the 2nd semester university exams 5 days before they started on 29th. The exams lasted till the 10th of this month (they went all good, thankfully), and in the past 3 days I was engaged in a major theme upgrade and customization round.

A gap of 21 days is not a no-deal, and you probably know that things like this can simply kill your blog. Whenever I didn’t save for a rainy day, and the urgent need to skip blogging arose due to travel, studies, project work, or any other reason… The number of daily visitors and page-views, the number of RSS subscribers and other important metrics at my blog dropped considerably. And when I used to get back to blogging, I had to almost wear myself out, to revive my position in the blogosphere. Just like one does for a new blog, I had to start building my readership base over and over again, many times. The longest gap that ever happened to be between two consecutive posts, before this one was 11 days! And at that time, I lost over 60 subscribers and my Alexa ranking rolled back by a few thousands. Yeah, it hurts!

But this time, even after a gap of 21 days, the statistics at Inspirit have been amazingly stable! I have been getting 160+ unique visitors each day this month, on an average and the number of RSS Subscribers has incredibly rose from ~100 to a stable 180, after touching a peak value of 206, a few days ago. The only loss that I have noticed this time is a slight drop in my Google Adsense earnings, and an Alexa rank roll-back. I am hopeful, I’ll build it back, soon.

What does this tell me?

After an exhausting yesterday, I was checking out some blogs that started around the same time as this one. Those blogs, that offer equally good and informative content and were as much read as Inspirit Blog 21 days ago, have either the same number of subscribers as me, or probably less. Even when they are active and serving their niches well !

I do acknowledge that there also exist those blogs that have risen much above me, but that’s a principle. If you don’t work- you definitely pay a price. If you don’t run, you lose the race.

But I am just glad that I am not out of the game and am probably going in the right direction with my blog. I could have advanced much quicker than my competition if I could continue. But nasty life. Anyway, I am back and all geared up. Stay tuned for some insightful articles that I have been building up all these days.

How did I do it?

The readers kept visiting all the days I was away. Why? Simple. They liked the content. The first and the foremost thing to do when blogging is to write in the best way you can. Offer content that your readers find useful. I have stressed it a number of times that, discouraging anyone from reading your blog is bad! You should take special care that you’re not doing this.

Is that all?

I had to be away for a good number of days. One would get bored every time he saw the same blog-post over at the top of the blog. I needed a special formula to keep my visitors interested in my blog, through the same static page that they would see again and again. The idea that then struck my mind was amazing!

The Winning Idea

Instead of putting up a notice at the blog, that I was going to be away for a while, I only notified my followers at Twitter and other social networks that I use. I did this because I thought the notice would discourage the visitors to visit till I was inactive. But, in the few minutes that I spent online to check my emails in study-breaks, I used to interact with my readership through twitter, instant messaging and Blog Catalog, etc.

Someone visits your blog only if they know you are there! Interaction like I talked about above, kept sending visitors, subscribers and comments flowed in, to many posts.

The next part of the Winning Idea is the cleverer part. Read on, here’s what it is–

Instead of writing a post on a particular topic, I wrote a list. This was no ordinary list. I compiled a list of all the useful tutorials, blogging-related discussions, posts about RSS and subscriptions that I had ever published at Inspirit Blog into a single post called the list of most useful and popular posts at Inspirit Blog.

A blog post on a single topic would not interest some one every time he visited over the days I was inactive. However, with this list of useful blogs, I offered my readers not one post to read but many. And they all were indeed the most useful and popular posts that I published. The best ones that I wrote here.

I offered the visitor 30+ posts to read in a single post!

How many posts do you read at a blog in one go? Two, Three, Four or Five?

Even if my new visitors, coming from search engines as well as from forums, social networks, and not to forget StumbleUpon read one, two or three posts a day.. they had enough posts still left to benefit from. And in the mean time they were done with it all, I would be back again and give them more stuff.

The Positive Side-Effects:

Building traffic at this single blog-post meant building traffic at more than thirty other posts published here. The number of page-views and hits thus increased manifold. The bounce rate decreased. A large number of comments flowed in to the component posts, than the list itself. Then, I reaped the benefit of better internal linking (I revised a few posts mentioned in the list).

All the side-effects of a writing this ‘one’ list were POSITIVE.

Are you blogging in the right direction?

I am quite confident that I am going the right way with my blog. Are you?
Did you learn something from this post? Your comments are welcome.

When I wrote that post, many people put forward their point that the Alexa rating and ranking of a website not an accurate measurement as many people do not use the Alexa toolbar (Sparky), or their means of collecting information about websites wasn’t anywhere near good.

After the recent update of Alexa’s ranking algorithm, bloggers and web developers have talked and wrote much about it. Enough to give me an idea that Alexa rankings are now respected and seriously considered. So, I took a few minutes to compare these 2 social networking sites for bloggers, BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog using Alexa charts.

When I compared them in this post earlier, the snapshots were from the time these websites took off to the end of December, when the post was published. At that time, MyBlogLog’s graph had started to decline unlike the graph for BlogCatalog that was advancing gradually with a few ups and downs.

These newer statistics that I recorded a day before the road accident , continue from where the previous charts ended.

I had predicted in my earlier post that

BlogCatalog has been moving with a healthy steadiness low below MyBlogLog but has ever been rising gradually even with its own shortcomings in the system. Daily traffic rank trends and daily reach of BlogCatalog indicate that its not far from equalling its rival MyBlogLog or even surpassing it.

And these fresh charts show that finally BlogCatalog has crossed above MyBlogLog in terms of any metric recorded by Alexa. In fact, by quite a margin!

Why do you think this happened?

This is interesting because the MBL developers are working hard fixing major and minor issues with their system, and have recently added a lot of new features to the website. This doesn’t seem to help them, any way!

If you have used both MBL and BC, you’ll probably agree that the design and layout of BC is way better than MBL. The organization of tabs, widgets, etc is neat and comprehensive at BC but its quite hard for a newbie to get used to using MBL easily. In fact, a lot of people who are new to the blogging and social networking scene ask me about how to use MyBlogLog to their convenience.

Another important aspect that has created this rift between the curves for BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog on the graph is that MyBlogLog shows you the traffic for your blog while BlogCatalog gives you the traffic for your blog!
What do you think are other reasons for the decline of MyBlogLog and the rise of BlogCatalog? Which social network do you use? Which one do you like better and Why?

According to you, who wins the MyBlogLog vs BlogCatalog war? Drop a comment and let me know. I’ll then make a list and publish it here, any time soon. Let’s see what do we gather here and how can we use it to help both of these social networks get better.

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Get Inspirit | Blog delivered to your Email. Subscribe.

However, some blogs reward their commentators by removing the rel=”nofollow” attribute from their templates which gives them free backlinks! Such blogs are called DoFollow Blogs or No-NoFollow Blogs. BTW, Inspirit is also a doFollow blog so drop in maximum comments to get some free links from this PR 4 blog …

WordPress Plugin : KeywordLuv

As I told you, when you comment at a WordPress blog your name becomes the anchor text in the link that points to your blog or specific blog post, as per what you submitted in the URL field. KeywordLuv plugin has been developed (by Stephen Cronin) to reward your commentators by separating their names from their keywords in the link to their website, giving them improved anchor text.

So, if you’re commenting at a doFollow blog then you can use targeted keywords as anchor text to point the links to your blog or blog post, instead of using your name. KeywordLuv plugin requires a the blog to be doFollow in order to work, because linking using your keywords would be of no use unless these links are followed by search engines (Google esp.) !

Usage:

Using KeywordLuv is quite easy. If I enter Abhinav @ Free Blog Reviews in the name field instead of just Abhinav in the comment form, then the title of a comment would look like :

Abhinav from Free Blog Reviews says :

instead of :

Abhinav says :

The symbol @ does the magic here. If this symbol is not used between Name and Keywords, they’ll appear as they would normally on a WordPress blog with this plugin not installed.

The usage tip generally gets added to your comment form automatically and you can customize this message that appears from the plugin options page on your admin dashboard.

Download Plugin

You can download KeywordLuv Plugin from this plugin page. The plugin author has also nicely explained why anchor text is so important.

If you are running a link building campaign to get better ranks in the SERPS and improving your Technorati Authority, then consider commenting at blogs no-follow free blogs with either or both CommentLuv and KeywordLuv plugins enabled as an easy way to get free backlinks.

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P.S. : As I mentioned above, this plugin needs a doFollow plugin to be installed on your blog to function properly. Read How to Remove rel=”noFollow” from your blog and join the doFollow movement to learn more about NoFollow, DoFollow and how to remove the noFollow attribute from your blog.

Feel free to drop in your comments using the form below. Inspirit uses the KeywordLuv plugin besides being a doFollow blog and using CommentLuv, so take full advantage of it.

In the previous articles at Inspirit, concerning RSS Feed and Email Subscriptions, we have discussed:

* why should you start working to increase your email subscribers because they are so important, and
* how to customize the FeedBurner email subscription form.

Considering that a blog’s feed count i.e the number of subscribers at a blog are so significant in deciding the popularity of a blog, I and Audee (from Graphic Identity) have worked out this article that tells you some of the most effective tips on increasing the number of email subscribers at your blog.

Yes, these 8 tips are not the only ways you can boost the number of email subscribers at your blog, but are just a few of them. I’ll be touching this topic again in my future posts with more ideas to help you market you blog’s content by increasing your number of (RSS and) Email subscribers.

Before you go, implement anything else.. here’s one Universal Tip (Thanks for the heads-up, Michael ) that you should always bear in mind:

Write Killer Content or Any other Tips Won’t Help Much.

If you are fairly serious about promoting your blog then go right through the entire length of this post and learn from this 8 points compilation that we have put together after spending a great deal of our time.

1. Accessibility: Placing the Subscription Form at the right place

Your email subscription form should be such placed that it is most easily noticed and can be reached without any hassles. The top of the sidebar is a good place to put up the subscription options. Some bloggers choose to add the subscribe-by-email form on the top of the blog post (below the header), but for many… this is more of a distraction.

Placement of the subscription form is one of the most important but often over-looked factors that can greatly affect your feed-count in either positive or negative way.

2. Asking your reader to subscribe

It’s a good practice to append a short-note to the end of your post reminding the reader about the available subscription options. You should customize this note in a way that proves the most effective for you.

Try to read and learn how other bloggers around you are doing it. Play around a bit, till you find something that really works for you.

3. Customizing the Email Subscription Form

In one of my tutorial posts about Customizing the FeedBurner Email Subscription Form at your Blog, you can see how I added a simple subscribe-via-email form to the end of my post. If you can customize your email subscription form just the right way, you can empower yourself to place it anywhere on your blog and reap its benefits.

This serves the purpose of asking your readers for subscribing to your feed (see #2 above), as well as is a good placement tactic (see #1 above.)

4. Customize the Post Footer with better CSS

The best way to highlight your email subscription form is to customize your post footer with better CSS design. Just create a box with different background color and border for your note.

Even if you don’t have any idea about how to customize CSS, don’t worry. Just make sure that you set your note apart from the rest of the post with different headings or font colors.

5. Adding an attractive image and linking it to the subscribe page.

If you take a look at my recent post about why email subscribers are important and why should you starting working on increasing them, you’ll see that I have added fancy RSS buttons to the post itself and linked them to the email subscription page. If someone finds these graphic buttons attractive, most probably they’ll click on them and convert into a subscriber.

6. Email Branding: Customize the RSS you mail out as an e-Newsletter

Add some spice to a subscriber’s reading experience by pimping, the email updates you send out, like an e-Newsletter. You can customize the title of your RSS Feed, add a logo to the header or show related posts in the footer (options available with FeedBurner.) People will help you in your marketing campaign if they like what they see.

7. Writing Often: Keeping your blog updated

I am often asked a question by my readers that how do the posting frequency at a blog affect the number of subscribers at your blog. A point they put forward is if someone gets an email once in a while, why one would want to unsubscribe from your blog even when you’re delivering quality content.

My answer to this question is that if one has subscribed to your blog knowing that you offer quality content, one would want to receive it! And if it doesn’t come over for days or weeks together, why should he be wasting time and mailbox space for you, when he can get as good content from numerous other blogs around more frequently.

Well, this doesn’t really mean that you have to publish 2 or 3 posts everyday! Posting every day, on alternate days, 4-5 days a week or whatever way you’re comfortable but update your blog so often that your readers do not opt-out of the subscription.

8. Submit your feed URL to Feed Directories and RSS Aggregators

Submitting your feed URLs to feed directories and RSS aggregators can help you get more exposure to your feed and to the blog itself. If you have good content to offer, chances of visitors subscribing to your blog increase manifolds.

Submitting your blog’s RSS feed URL to sites like Feedest (Social Feed Reader and Directory) even boosts your Technorati authority by giving you a valid link back and helps widening your blog’s reach and popularity. Email subscribers generally increase in direct proportion to these metrics.

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This is not the first time that anyone is touching this topic, and there are a number of other good resources where you can find interesting and useful tips on increasing your RSS subscribers. These are some articles from the blogosphere that you might find resourceful:

* 35 Guaranteed Ways to Increase Your RSS Subscribers
* Remind the unverified users to verify their Email Subscription
* 11 ways to find new RSS subscribers
* How to use Feedburner to bring in more Subscribers

Hoping that you found this post useful, I’d recommend you subscribe to our RSS feed by Email so that we can deliver the latest updates from Inspirit right into your email account. Use the form below