Blogging means writing blog posts that capture more readers’ attention and make a memorable impact.  Here is a list of 15 things you can do right now to improve your blog and posts:  

1. Add some graphics.  Visually appealing graphics or images (diagrams if they suit the post) will help generate interest from your readers. Using multiple media techniques (text, images, audio, video, etc) mean more people will be engaged in your content.
2. Put a LOT  of effort into your headlines.  A headline should not be an afterthought; in many instances, it will be the only part of your post someone reads.  Make it count.  A headline is almost always the reason why someone decides to take time to read your blog.
3. Educate yourself about “viral” posts.  Educate yourself on what you need to do to create one.  Just one viral post can skyrocket the success of your online business. 
4. Call your readers to action. Give them a clear choice of “what to do next”.  Make sure you very clearly state the action you are requesting such as leaving a comment, or email you, or clicking a certain link. 
5. Make sure your post benefits your readers. Many bloggers write with the obvious priority of using YOU to benefit THEM.  Think about how to help your audience, whether by informing, encouraging, educating, or even just amusing them.  What comes around goes around… when you serve and help your readers, it will come back around to benefit you.
6. Do not hesitate to tell the world why they should listen to you.  Don’t spend a whole blog post bragging on yourself, but make sure to effectively share why you are qualified to earn the time of your readers.  People want to know why they should trust your ideas or judgement or advice. It’s building credibility, not boasting.
7.  Write, write, and write some more.  Ever hear “practice makes perfect”?  It is right on.  Building writing muscles is exactly like building physical muscles. The more you do it, the better you get, the faster you get.
8. Do not be afraid to share your thoughts.   Confident and informed opinions in this day and age of “political correctness” are rare.  Let people know what you think and you will stand out as a writer.  Be ready to support your opinions with convincing evidence, logic and clear thinking.
9. Organize your content so it can be easily scanned.  Many of your readers will just pick up your main points rather than reading every word.  If your main points clearly stand out, there is a better chance of people reading them. Use subheads, bullet points and call outs to help the reader “scan” your content. There is no better way to run off visitors than dumping a truck load of verbiage on them with no clue as to its content, only to have the reader feel like they wasted their time.
10. Share some stories.  Recounting interesting events from your past is a good way to connect with your audience.  Use stories to encourage and to teach.  Stories help people relate to you, visualize your ideas and more effectively “burn” your words into their long term thinking. 
11.  Think about your readers.  Every time you begin to write something, think about the kind of people that read your blog (even one person in particular that you have a relationship with).  Write something they want and need to read.  It’s a great skill to be able to read your own stuff and honestly think “was that worth my time if someone else wrote it?”
12. Review your old content and see which items were the most successful.  Re-use the successful stuff until it stops yielding results.  Consider taking an especially successful blog post and writing a series of posts on the same topic expanding on it. 
13. Be brief.  Before you hit “publish,” go through your post and remove anything that does not benefit your post.  Weed out unnecessary words and try to streamline your writing as much as possible.  Your readers will appreciate that you value their time by not asking them to read ten paragraphs when only two paragraphs would have accomplished the same.   TIP: Twitter is a great way to learn to “write lean”.  Chopping out unnecessary words, cutting out the fluff, using one word instead of four to convey the same idea… concise writing is successful writing.
14. Find someone exciting and interview them.  Your readers will enjoy it and chances are the person you interview will share your materials with their fans as well. 
15. Show your enthusiasm.  If you are passionate about your writing, it will show through to your readers (who might in turn catch some of it!)  If YOU aren’t excited about your content, how can you expect your readers to be?

There’s 15 ideas that will immediately improve your blog and your post writing. What ideas do you have? 

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Hey, Linky Blog just went over FIVE THOUSAND email subscribers… that doesn’t include casual readers, followers and RSS subscribers… that just the email subscriber list. That’s a great milestone for the blog and puts Linky Blog in the top tier of marketing and online business blogs! THANK YOU!!!

In my last post I invited folks to submit their ideas for getting more readers for their blog.  Any submissions I publish also get a link and blurb. So here they are…

Be sure to visit their blogs… what comes around goes around. Maybe it might be YOUR idea listed here next and you’ll want people to visit your blog.

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I figured people visit blogs because they are trying to find information, right? So why not offer them a chance to ask something they’ve always wanted know. I have them email me directly, but because of some of the subject matter; they have the option of me posting their questions anonymously. I’ve gotten great feedback so far, but won’t know how successful it will be until a few weeks in. Since we’re just starting with this, I’m waiting to see how it goes.  

I’m Michell Pulliam and I blog over at “Prowess and Pearls”.  It’s a blog mainly for women, but I do have a few male readers. J I blog to encourage, inspire and challenge women to do themselves well. My blog is written for women and women’s issues, i.e. (relationships, family matters, marriage, parenting, homemaking, etc.) is my niche.  

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Another great way to make sure that people are reading your blog posts is to have catchy, descriptive titles. People are often skimming through Facebook, email, or their favorite blog-reading sites and a great title is one way to make your post stand out from the rest.

You want it to be short and simple, clever yet straightforward enough that people know what you’re talking about. Before you hit the “post” button, read your title back to yourself. Is it something appealing? Does it portray the message that your post carries?

Aubrey is the creator and editor of Homegrown & Healthy (http://homegrownandhealthy.com), a website dedicated to sharing information about healthy, natural living.

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Comments

The one thing that has worked the best for me is commenting on other blogs.  I started out commenting on a few blogs but realized after awhile that if a person comments on my blog and I reciprocate by commenting on theirs, they will usually keep coming back to my blog and commenting.  It isn’t enough to leave just one comment, you have to build a friendship with the other blogger by returning to their blog and commenting several times a week.  It takes a lot of time but it is worth it. 

Blog Hops

I join several blog hops throughout the week and I try to comment on as many blogs that are linked up as possible to try to generate new traffic to my site.  I also started my own blog hop last week that I think is going to go over big…at least I hope so!  Since my blog is about dogs and I promote adoptions from shelters, I started a blog hop featuring a shelter animal from a local shelter or rescue.  I had a decent response the first week, but had lots that said they were going to join this week.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I will generate a lot of traffic from the hop, but more importantly that it will also get the word out about cats and dogs that need to be adopted!     

Lisa Brown writes about her three dogs and dog care tips on her blog, Dogs N Pawz.

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Build relationships with people!  Allow folks to know who you are.  Include pictures of yourself and an easy to find bio in case people would like to know more.  Share with people on social networking sites AND engage with them.  Respond to emails, comments and questions. 

Consistently produce quality work your readers will benefit from and enjoy but don’t be afraid to show readers your mistakes.  One of my more popular posts involves pictures of three or four failures before I got to the beautiful end result.  If you let people know you aren’t perfect but still try they will feel encouraged to try too. 

Amanda - mommy is coocoo  is a DIY and budget decorating blog with lots of laughing about the realities of motherhood and marriage. mommyiscoocoo.com

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I have seen my readership somewhat grow when I post comments on other sites or respond to other people’s tweets. I don’t go out and post comments willy nilly because that seems so insincere. I like to leave comments on blogs I truly enjoy reading. I think if you look at it as a labor of love rather than trying any grabby method to get readers to your blog, then you’ll attract the readership you desire.

My blog is a clearinghouse of stuff I’m working on around the house as a stay at home mom (crafts, gardening, etc.). http://mountainmamablog.typepad.com

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I think the best way to get more readers for your blog is to connect and support other bloggers by leaving genuine, non-spam comments on their blogs and participating in/sharing their events via social media. It’s a natural thing to do when you appreciate other bloggers’ content, but it also allows many more folks to learn about you and your site and become readers of yours as well. This type of sharing/networking will also lead you to many more bloggers and opportunities for new readers, plus allow you to create valuable blogging partnerships. 

My name is Shirley Braden. I have two blogs, Gluten Free Easily (glutenfreeeasily.com) and All Gluten-Free Desserts (allglutenfreedesserts.com)

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Blogging can be a lonely place if you do not have other people to support and encourage you. Go through your list of bloggers you have met in person and pull out the top ones that encourage you. These should be the cream of the crop and ones who are a cheerleader for you.

Once you have identified who is in your support system, place them into a special group. This can be done through a private Facebook group, Triberr, a private Google+ community or a private list on Twitter. Share your content in the group and ask members to share it through their social media channels. Not only do you have a supportive community to strengthen your bond, your posts are being shared through new channels. Collectively your tribe is stronger, which will naturally grow more readers for every member of the tribe.

Wendy Wright is a homeschooling photographer who dreams of becoming a Disneyland photographer so she can wear Minnie Mouse ears every day. In the meantime she teaches and hosts Mom’s Nite Out events when she is not increasing her gamer score on the Xbox 360. Wendy writes Choosing Love and Arizona Moms Network.  http://www.choosinglove.net  http://www.arizonamomsnetwork.com  

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Create a community in your niche - It might be your first instinct to feel that all of the others who blog in your same niche are your competitors, but the reality is that there are more than enough readers for us all.  When you create a sense of community in your own niche the support, camaraderie and knowledge that you gain through these relationships is invaluable.  And don’t be afraid to share their work with your readers.  Your readers will view you as an expert in your niche with great resources to the content they are looking for.  And the community you create will share your work and your exposure to a new audience will grow and evolve into new, regular readers.

Karah blogs at the space between, a DIY blog where she is currently chronicling her adventures in renovating a 1950′s Key West Conch home with a solid dose of self deprecating humor.  Join her on the journey to make the most of every space she’s in.

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Offline can be a useful as on-line connections to new readers. Find magazines in your niche and write a letter to the editor on some relevant topic. Even a comment or praise for an article is an opportunity to get your name in front of people. Writing articles for magazines can also garner new readers and let them know about your expertise. You may even get paid for articles! These can also be recycled into e-zine articles and later used on your blog or as a free giveaway to new subscribers to your list.

Edwina - Doll Street Dreamers is dedicated to creativity, offering on-line learning and patterns for making art dolls. www/dollstreetdreamers.com

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One of the greatest complains I have heard and experienced is the difficulty of driving traffic to one’s blog. If one thinks about it, you are competing against millions of other blogs, bloggers, websites and forums, all vying for your readers. Sounds hopeless? It’s not. Here are three things that will set you above the rest and help draw in traffic to your blog.  

Make Sure Your Content Is Green

Many bloggers believe that just writing about the important topics of today is what will attract traffic in days, months and years to come. Depending upon what you write, this may be true. However, to be honest, the longevity of an article truly depends upon being “green.” In other words, the topics your cover in your blogs/posts cannot become passé in a short period of time, nor loose its “freshness” in six to twelve months from now. Your writing needs to be relevant to the here and now but also to your future readers who come to your blog in six to twelve months from now. The best way to see if your writing is still “fresh” is to read it as if this was the first time you had ever seen the blog/post. If it reads “fresh” and relevant, then your blog is considered green.

Be a Social Butterfly

I have just recently come in my own when it comes to social media. Trust me, I am not the go-to person for everything Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or Google+. I have just barely scratched the surface. But what I have come to respect is that these social media mavens are power houses when it comes to readership. So if you want to offer readers a chance to taste some of your great content, then get to know these belles of society. Truly, the more you learn to navigate between these sites, the more you will find that they will offer you a plethora of audience members lining up to read your new content.

Talk It Up

No one likes a bragger, but no ones likes to bite the dust either. In order to get those readership and traffic numbers sky high is to talk up your blog. Go to different niche sites and join in on the bandwagon and talk, talk, talk yourself blue about what you have to offer. No one is going to do it for you. And besides, you are your best cheerleader anyway! The idea is to be authentic without being pushy. And while you are on these niche sites, why not be a great reader and a great commenter, too.  Not only will you show site visitors that you are intelligent, witty and bright, but also that you aren’t there just for links or other spammy reason. Talking it up about your site, and other sites, too will go the distance with regard to traffic. Because  there are a host of thoughtful readers who want to succeed as much as you do. 

Best of luck and let your blog shine, shine, shine.

Deborah L Melian is writer/editor on Dial M for Moms (https://www.dialmformoms.com). Dial M for Moms is an online resource for and about moms and includes such topics as family & parenting, home & garden, interior design & DIY projects, recipes, family travel and finance, and more. It is your go-to for sage advice and helpful tips. Have you dialed your mom today?™

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There you go… these are submissions from the invitation I put out on the last blog post.  Be sure to check out their blogs, and let me know what you think about this ‘reader idea” technique.  I think I like it. You get more good ideas, and those who submit get a link on this blog. Sounds like a win/win. What do you think?

Use Popular Social Networking

Email Subscriber Lists

Visual Appeal

Relevant Content

Easy Reading

Engage Your Audience

But… there is one pool of services and features that is often overlooked: your hosting package.   Most good hosting packages come with a truckload of additional features that most bloggers either aren’t aware of, or just have never taken time to investigate.  Every hosting service is different, but many of the additional options are common.

All of my blogs and all the Linky sites are hosted at Arvixe. I shamelessly recommend them every chance I get because they have taken FANTASTIC care of me for years now. I had thousands of dollars worth of domain names and hosting at GoDaddy that moved entirely over to Arvixe because of their great product and service. I have put numerous clients on Arvixe hosting and they all love it.  In fact, here is an email I got yesterday from a new user of Arvixe hosting:

I just spent two hours creating a blog, had it up on my screen, posts published, inserted a pile of photos, used a free uploaded theme, and was about to call it a night.  I called Arvixe due to some log-in issues. The tech support guy was really really helpful.   I didn’t spend more than a minute or two on hold and he stuck with me until I had the problem resolved.  So, GREAT SCORE for Arvixe.  Thanks for telling me about them.

Get the hosting I use and recommend here

So, I wanted to start out by letting you know what hosting I use, and next I want to show you the features they offer WITH THE HOSTING ACCOUNT.  I can’t tell you exactly what your hosting offers, or how to get to it, but I can tell you that many things are common and you may find your hosting offers less than what I describe.  The point I want to make with this post is this:

IF YOU HAVE NEVER INVESTIGATED WHAT SERVICES AND FEATURES
ARE INCLUDED WITH YOUR HOSTING ACCOUNT, YOU ARE
PROBABLY MISSING OUT ON SOME GREAT TOOLS AND OPTIONS
THAT COULD HELP YOU BE MORE SUCCESSFUL WITH YOUR BLOG.

With that said, below you’ll find what my blog accounts with Arvixe offer in extended features and options. I’m not going to try and explain every feature or option – just hit the highlights. My goal here is just to make you aware that your hosting package probably comes with many features. You can use the HELP information within your hosting to figure out what each option does:

Backups… they aren’t important until you need them.  Disk crashes, hackers, incompatible plugins, accidental deletions . . . you can never have TOO MANY backups. I backup my blogs and sites 3-4 redundant ways. A couple of weeks ago, this blog was hacked, and I had it restored and back online in about 30 minutes. Why? Backups.

“I already back up.”  If that is your initial reaction, my question is “how many different ways?”  If you think it is a pain to back up your blog using 2-3 different methods or services, think about the pain you’ll feel the first time your site goes down or gets hacked and then you discover your ONE backup method, which has never been tested in a real crisis, was configured wrong or stopped working.  Most hosting packages will offer some sort of backup service, sometimes automated. Make use of them.

File managers allow you to upload/download/delete/revise files on your blog. FTP accounts let you set up users who have FTP access to specific directories.

Security is the difference between a blog getting hacked all the time (it’s “when” not “if”) and blogs that are safe and sound. NO BLOG is 100% secure, you just have to deal with that fact. Strong, difficult passwords are your first best line of defense. After that, make use of any additional security features your hosting service provides.

A “log” is a record of activity on your site. Logs are then analyzed by statistics programs to give you useful information about your blog traffic. Most hosting services offer some form of web traffic stats.

Domains are the different web/blog addresses you have. So my domain would be “linkyblog.com.”   A subdomain allows you so to have another website/blog that uses the same domain name but a different segment such as “shopping.linkyblog.com.”

DNS is the “addressing system” of the Internet. It’s too much to explain here but you should educate yourself about the basics of DNS. When you set up new blogs, or have to move one, you’ll be glad you understand DNS.

Your hosting package should have a section that allows you to manage your databases. Most blogs such as WordPress are built on top of a database.  Occasionally, it is necessary to directly access your database (DB) to change a setting or restore something.  Messing around with your DB directly would probably need to be labeled an advanced skill, but a good hosting package will have tools that will make the process a little easier to manage.

A good hosting package will usually have a section like this that is a gold mine. Each of these options give you the build to install/use/activate different types of software and service. Softaculous includes a long list of cool stuff you can install: forums, shopping carts, community services, etc.

Web hosting has become very competitive and most hosting packages come with some section like this where a treasure of services and features can be installed with a click or two. Don’t overlook this just because you don’t know what it is at first glance. Take time to investigate each one or you may be missing out on some incredible stuff for your blog.

Advanced tools and options help you manage your blog. Again, you’ll just need to investigate each one to see what it does. Don’t ignore them just because you aren’t familiar with them. They are there for a reason.

Email is much more than just setting up a new account. Good hosting packages will have a suite of tools like this to help you manage email accounts, secure them, and deal with spam.

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “SEO” by now. That’s Search Engine Optimization. Your hosting package will often come with SEO tools. Let me offer a word from experience: don’t get too caught up in the SEO hype and sensational claims. The real trick to successful blog is concentrating on three things: great content, great products, and building your email list.   A little attention to SEO is a good thing but many people get far too distracted with SEO tricks and techniques.

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Check out your hosting package control panel and see what undiscovered treasure is hiding there. Better yet, get yourself some of the best hosting service available in my opinion at Arvixe… click here to see their WordPress hosting.

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NOTE: Anna Branch first emailed with a question and comment about hosting features which prompted the idea for this post. THANK YOU ANNA! Here’s a little something about Ann… be sure to visit her blog (if YOU have a great idea for a post that I write, I’ll give you a plug too!):

Anna Branch is becoming well known as a writer and quilt pattern designer.  In her blog: http://arkangelcreations.blogspot.com , she tells readers of her life in the backwoods of Ontario, Canada as well as quilting experiences and free patterns.  You can also read about her recent book: Scrappy Quilts and More from the Back Woods Quilter.

It’s exactly what the name says: infographics.  The first infographic is 16 great tips concerning email marketing and subscriber lists.  Click the image on the right to view the full-featured version which has audio and video. You can download it, print it, share it, get different sizes, embed it on your site and more!

Let me know what you think about the new site, and give me your wishes for new infographics.

Just a very quick survey to find out what your favorite topics are. I want to make sure I’m writing posts that fit what you want/need to learn about. So take 10 seconds for this 3 question survey:

I read a post this week from a popular and successful blogger who recently experienced his site being down for a week because of a DOS attack*.  DOS attacks are common and you have to deal with them, but what surprised me was this very knowledgeable and successful blogger (who makes GREAT money blogging) still had his blog on cheap shared hosting at a discount hosting service.  THAT shocked me.

I guess being a technical guy, a programmer, and a developer, I just assume that anyone knee-deep in blogging and websites for several years is going to know that once you start getting any real traffic or blog success, it’s time to invest in some high-quality hosting and dedicated (or semi-dedicated) server hosting.  Let me see if I can explain in simple terms.

You Get What You Pay For

When you are investing from nothing to maybe an entire $4/month for hosting, you get what you pay for: your blog is loaded onto a server with (typically) THOUSANDS of other blogs along with their files and databases.  To make matters worse, the cheaper, less-reputable services will horribly “overbook” a server in order to maximize profits at the expense of performance and reliability. It’s like an airline that sells way too many seats for a flight then the customers get to deal with the headaches and hassle (an airline would never do that though, right?).

So you bust your butt, your blog is growing, and you’re only paying $0-4  a month for hosting. What a deal!  Until one of the those thousands of sites get hacked, DOS’d, or by virtue of bad programming from one of those thousands of site owners, something takes down the entire server – along with your blog. Or maybe the overloading just affects the performance of the server and your site is loading slowly.  However it manifests itself, YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

The Good News

That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can get dedicated or semi-dedicated hosting for very reasonable prices. Semi-dedicated hosting is available for less than $50/month and dedicated for $100-300/month depending on the server you get (power, memory, storage, etc).

• Semi-dedicated hosting: you share a server with a FEW other people, and get dedicated processors and memory assigned to you
• Dedicated hosting: get a whole computer/server as your own

Gasp!!! $20-50/month… does that bother you? People have become SO cheap because of all the “free” stuff on the Internet. You want a great blog. You want thousands and thousands of people a day to come and read your blog, buy your products, and view your advertising.  You want your blog safe, secure, and always available. You have a dream of making a nice side income or even full-time income from your blog and your online business. But the thought of investing $35/month in reliable, quality hosting is just “too much” to consider. Really? You get what you pay for and if you are serious about blogging and/or serious about an online business, then you have to be serious about building the business correctly.

I can’t imagine a traditional business settling for a cardboard building because it is cheap; while hyperventilating at the thought of investing in brick, mortar, and lumber to construct a real building. And yet, that is the common response of bloggers and people online. “Oh, I can’t possibly spend $20, $40, or more  a month on real hosting… I’m not making any money yet.”  I’ve rarely (ever?) met anyone who can’t give up a couple of times eating out, cable TV, or some other luxury and save that much per month. It just depends on what is important to you. It depends on how serious you are about being a successful blogger.

To clarify, I’m not saying the blogger I read about this week didn’t have good hosting because he was cheap. He clearly is not cheap as he invests a lot of money in the quality of his business. I think he just didn’t know better (which still surprised me given his success).  I have a 10th of his traffic/income and I spend more than a $1000/month on hosting-related services. Now, I realize that is the exception but the point is this: I’m investing in my future. I sacrifice other things to make sure I’m prepared for success online.  He apparently didn’t know about “cheap hosting.” But now YOU do know. So what will you do with that knowledge? Ignore it?  Will you hear and not do? That is always a recipe for trouble.

You get what you pay for. Invest in your own success and don’t be cheap when cheap will hurt you.  If you ignore this advice now, you won’t be ignoring it later. Problems with cheap hosting are inevitable – not just possible.

I recommend Arvixe for quality, reliable, and very reasonably priced hosting. I have several hosting accounts with them, 3 semi-dedicated servers, and one dedicated.  If your blog is growing, don’t wait until it is downed for a week on some cheap shared-hosting service before realizing you need quality hosting you can trust.  You can visit Arvixe here…

* DOS Attack: 

In computing, a denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users. Although the means to carry out, motives for, and targets of a DoS attack may vary, it generally consists of the efforts of one or more people to temporarily or indefinitely interrupt or suspend services of a host connected to the Internet.

Perpetrators of DoS attacks typically target sites or services hosted on high-profile web servers such as banks, credit card payment gateways, and even root nameservers. This technique has now seen extensive use in certain games, used by server owners, or disgruntled competitors on games such as Minecraft and League of Legends. The term is generally used relating to computer networks, but is not limited to this field; for example, it is also used in reference to CPU resource management.[1]

One common method of attack involves saturating the target machine with external communications requests, so much so that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered essentially unavailable. Such attacks usually lead to a server overload. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_attack)

A reader made a comment to me this week that went something like this:

“I’m getting new traffic, and thanks to some of your Linky features (Tools | Followers) people are spending more time on my site and connecting with me but I’m not getting any new subscribers. My next educational goal is to figure how to convert traffic to subscribers.”

I’m glad they sent that comment. It gives me a chance not only to respond to them but to share my experience with all of you.  I’m having a fair amount of success getting new subscribers so I can speak with experience – not just in concept.

To be honest, I find getting subscribers from new traffic to be rather straightforward and easy. Not easy in the sense that it’s cheap, gimmicky, or effortless but easy with regard to the method of understanding it.  It involves two things;  and, as you read the rest of this, reference my signup area over there in the top of the right sidebar. I practice what I preach.

The Incentive to Subscribe

Everyone is trying to get everyone to sign up for everything. So readers are getting a little burned out on adding their name to a list. Aren’t you?  So put yourself in their shoes. Looking at your blog, would you sign up? Have you given enough reason, offered enough value, or enticed them with anything they actually want? Ask yourself honestly: would YOU sign up for YOUR blog (assume you are a new visitor and have little to no knowledge of your blog)?

So the first “easy” step is to offer an incentive (some bait) as an enticement – a lure to get people to decide “trading my email address for [your offer] is worth it.” I give  away a very nicely done eBook that is packed with truly useful information as well as 200+ tips on how to improve and grow your blog.  It’s real content based on my experience, not dollar-store junk.  A LOT of time went into producing this truly valuable and beneficial content.

It’s that simple.  There are many ways to make sure your incentive doesn’t work:

• Make the incentive this: “sign up to get an email when I post new content.”
• Offer a boring, been-there-seen-that-eBook-report just like a thousand other mediocre copycat blogs.
• Make it less than easy to figure out what your incentive is and how to get it.
• Make them give you a lot of information and jump through hoops to get your incentive.
• Have a generally boring, ugly, or tired blog which yells loudly that everything else you offer will be more of the same.
• Use a lot of language about “sign up,” “subscribe,” and “emails” to scare them off before you even get a chance to get their address on your list.

On the other hand, if you want your incentive to work magic:

• Make the incentive truly valuable.
• Make the incentive quick and easy to get.
• Surround the incentive with a high-quality blog and content.
• Make the incentive unique and excellent in quality.

Ideally, you want people thinking “I WANT the stuff that comes from this blog… sign me up!”  At a minimum, you want people to take the initial step of “yes, I’ll sign up to get this cool free thing they are offering, but I’ll probably just unsubscribe after I get it…”  Don’t fool yourself, that is very often the mindset of new subscribers. However, if you get them to sign up, you at least have a running chance to engage them.  Which brings me to the next step….

Keep Them On Your List

Now you’ve got to keep them on your list… easy to understand but much harder to accomplish. The first thing you’ll do after they sign up is either send them an email or direct them to a page that will WELCOME them and give them a way to retrieve their gift or incentive.  Don’t stop there.

Surprise them with a  “bonus” of some sort, but not some leftover they won’t care about. Make an impression… give them another gift of real value.  I give new subscribers a bonus eBook about online business.   Then, give them some additional valuable information in the form of links to popular posts, valuable resources, and “great whatever” you have on your blog. Make a splash, leave them thinking “WOW, I’m glad I signed up!”

Next, keeping in mind our goal is to KEEP them on our email list, send the first “content” email right after they sign up.  Why? To give yourself a chance with the folks who have it in their head to “get my free stuff and then unsubscribe.”  Here’s your real test though.  Very few people will give you a second chance… it’s a true “first impression.”

Make sure your first “content” email (this is the normal type of email they can expect from you) is demonstrably valuable to them; it should not be a sales pitch; and it should not scream “junk mail” or people will burn up your unsubscribe link (and even though they signed up voluntarily, often will hit the “spam report” button too).

That first content email sets the tone and your new subscriber will decide “Man, I really want the stuff this blog is putting out…” or “(yawn)… not worth staying on this list.”   Your first (and 2^nd and 3^rd and 4^th and every) content email to them must be of VALUE to them.  How do you know if your email marketing is a “value”? The recipient must have only one answer to this question: AM I GLAD I GOT THIS EMAIL AND AM I LOOKING FORWARD TO THE NEXT ONE?

You have to be serious and rough on yourself when you answer that question. Would YOU want YOUR emails? Be honest.  It will be the difference between keeping subscribers or having them bail out.  Subscribers do not mind an occasional “pitch” or “offer” via email as long as the vast majority of your emails SERVE THEM, are of value to them, and benefit them. Not you. Them.

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I’m currently getting about 50-100 new subscribers a day with an opt-out rate of less than 1% and the growing momentum is obvious. My daily subscriber number is steadily growing. That doesn’t put me up there with the 1-2% of elite bloggers but after years of being online and getting a handful of subscribers a week at best for most of that time, I know full well my current growth is something that most bloggers would jump for joy over.  Am I right?

You can check out my sidebar over on the right and see exactly what I’m doing. It’s no secret. Do the same. Mimic success.  That’s how you learn, improve, and grow.

What are your thoughts about getting and keeping new subscribers? Let’s have some Comment Cash fun… the comment, question, or suggestion that gets my attention the most wins $25 cash!

There are a lot of really great tools and software you can use for blogging or online business. We all have our favorites.  Here’s a page full of mine.

Everyone has different experiences, different discoveries, different ways of using the same software. The problem is, we rarely find out what other people have discovered and how they are using that plugin, service or software.

So, I’m going to share one of my favorite with you in hopes you’ll discover a great new tool… and then I’m hoNiping you’ll share yours with me and all the other readers. To make it even more fun and add a little competition to it. I’ll award $50 to the suggestion I think deserves it most.  Here’s one of my very favorite cool tools and how I use it:

Ninja Affiliate by MaxBlogPress

Truly a “must” have in my opinion. All my books and blogs benefit from this software; the best way for you to find out about the Ninja Affiliate software is to watch their video at their website. But here’s how I describe it to others:

• Create friendly links to whatever you want
  • Example: http://www.brentriggs.com/thisismypage.aspx?id=987 becomes “brentriggs.com/my-book
• Create friendly links for your affiliate product links
  • Example: my affiliate link to Arvixe WordPress hosting () becomes “linkyblog.com/arvixe_wordpress”
• Keywords on your blog get linked wherever they appear to anything you want
  • Example: “Brent Riggs” gets automatically linked to “www.brentriggs.com” whenever it appears
• Keywords on your blog get linked to affiliate sites automatically
  • Example: “WordPress” gets linked to Arvixe affiliate page: ”linkyblog.com/arvixe_wordpress”
  • Example: “affiliate marketing” gets linked automatically to Ninja Affiliate page

Ninja Affiliate is a “can’t live without” as far as I’m concerned. It makes “friendly links”, “automatic affiliate linking” and “keyword linking” an automated and super easy task.

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Okay, that’s my tool and suggested use.  It’s not the longest suggestion that will win the $50… it’s the one that most makes me go “WOW! I’m glad you told us about that!”

Use the COMMENTS below to leave us your cool tool and super suggested use…

The EPIC Book is over  FOUR HUNDRED PAGES – yes, 400 – packed with information, experience, knowledge, tips, advice, lessons learned, and practical instruction. Not 400 pages of big fonts, wide margins, and huge graphics that eat up a lot space so a big page count can be advertised. The EPIC Book has over 135,000 words, dwarfing typical good eBooks that usually average 20,000 – 30,000 words. Nor it is just a bunch of filler content and stuff you won’t read so I can advertise a high word count.

Every page in this book is useful and relevant, the very best of what I have learned and experienced in the last two decades of being online. I was blessed to begin online way back before the general public even knew what “the information superhighway” was, before we all truly grasped what the Internet would become. What you will find in this book is the experience of a long, long time online and countless rounds of trial and error, testing, learning, starts and stops, and a relentless passion to learn everything I can learn about all things blogging, internet marketing, and online business.

Linky Blog Subscribers Only

To reward the loyalty of current Linky Blog subscribers, I’m offering it to you one time at a price no one else gets who isn’t subscribed. This is not some gimmicky marketing technique. The retail price is $39.99 (and that’s almost ridiculous for a 400-page book with this much content); it’s $19.99 for normal Linky Blog Subscribers and $9.99 for two groups only for short time: 1) first-time new subscribers (get ONE chance to purchase at this price), and 2) my current Linky Blog Subscribers get one shot at this price.  I didn’t think it was fair or appreciative to give everyone else one shot at $9.99 and ignore the most valuable and loyal folks (current subscribers).

Here’s a taste of what you get in this remarkable book:

• Must-Have Resources, Tools, & Software
• Over 100 Killer Blogging Tips
• 65 Great Headlines to Get You Started
• Over 110 Brilliant Blog-Writing Ideas
• 80+ Online Business Tips
• Digital Photography 101 – A Full Guide to Digital Photography Basics & Concepts
• A Visual Guide to Online Business
• Genesis Week – First 7 Days Of Your Online Business
• Over 60 Profitable Online Business Ideas
• Over 50 Ways To Make Money Online, Writing, Designing, Publishing, Marketing & Automating A World-Class eBook
• Mistakes To Avoid – Lessons Learned From My First Dozen eBooks
• Checklist: 30 Things You Can Do To Improve
• An Interview With An Online Expert
• A Library of Useful Articles
• And more, more, more!

Risk Free, Guaranteed

Let me make this simple: if you get the EPIC Book and decide it wasn’t right for you or not worth your money, I’ll give you your money back. Plain and simple, no risk to you.

Linky Blog One-Time Special Price

Again, this is not a gimmick price to get you to buy now. The only reason I’m offering for $9.99 is plain and simple: gratitude. I’m grateful that you are a subscriber.  You deserve a special price because you’ve already invested your valuable time and interest in what I’m doing.

Got A Blog & Some Readers?

Want the EPIC book free and make some income too? If you have a blog with some decent traffic or fair amount of subscribers, you can do a review of EPIC or offer it for sale to your readers in a blog post or advertisement on your blog. I”ll send you a copy and give 50% of any purchases made from your site.  If you are interested, give me a shout at brent@brentriggs.com and let me know about your blog.

One Time

Here’s your one chance to buy EPIC Book at $9.99 as a loyal subscriber to Linky Blog. Not sure how long I’ll leave this post up, so if you want it, you should go ahead and get it.