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

Audee from Graphic Identity design blog submitted this guest post stressing on why should you work to increase your email subscribers and particularly why should you use Feedburner Email Subscription for this purpose.

Working on your email subscriptions (especially using Feedburner) is quite important in more ways than one. Here’s, why:

1. Stability of the subscriber numbers

FeedBurner counts an email subscriber for as long as they can send them emails. Unlike a RSS reader, if your email subscribers haven’t read your feed sent by email for several days, it is still counted. The count stops only when any subscriber choose to opt-out of the email subscription.

2. Estimating the REAL popularity of your blog

If someone chooses to subscribe to your blog by email, it simply means that they are actually quite interested in the content that you offer at your blog. It means that someone found your content worthy of finding place in their inbox.

Because email subscribers are that important part of your readership that will actually stick to your blog, the number of email subscriptions will tell you how many people actually “follow” you and how popular your blog really is.

3. Practical Consideration

Besides email subscription, FeedBurner offers their subscribers to keep track of syndicated online content within an RSS aggregator or reader (e.g. My Yahoo! FeedDemon, etc.)

Some people (including Abhinav) think that following blog feeds using a reader can become quite impractical when you subscribe to many blogs and can’t find time to read each and every new post. This can become quite irritating when you have to mark all of these blogs as read to stop seeing the unread-flashes everywhere, all the time.

With email subscription capability, subscribers receive the latest posts from their favorite blogs right in their inbox, similar to an e-newsletter. Plus, one can read the updates anytime they like to.

4. Focusing on the content, primarily

A blog might have a heavy design that might take ages to load for people who don’t have access to hi-speed internet and can especially be a painful experience for mobile (GPRS) users as well. Email subscription delivers just the content of a blog-post, thus letting your subscribers focus on your content with minimal distraction.

5. Full management control of your blog subscribers

If you’re using FeedBurner for managing the subscribers to your blog, you probably know how easy it is to manage your email subscribers list. It is easy to activate, deactivate or delete individual email addresses (in case you find that the subscriber is violating any terms of use).

FeedBurner allows you to export your list in Excel or CSV format. You can export these addresses and move from FeedBurner to another service at any time. You will also receive an optional email when people decide to unsubscribe from your updates.

6. Easy social bookmarking and sharing with FeedBurner FeedFlare

This feature available with FeedBurner allows you to add links to social bookmarking sites in the footer of each of your blog updates sent to the subscribers using FeedBurner Email service. This allows your email subscribers to submit your blog posts to their favorite social blogging networks with great ease and convenience. This is a great blog-promotion strategy that will help you market your content. There’s no use of writing great content if people don’t get to know that it exists! Right?

If you liked this post, and learned something from it… You may also like to read How to customize your Feedburner Email Subscription Form.

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