One of the biggest goals for any blogger interested in being successful is to increase their RSS subscribers.  When blogging it looks better when you can say “I have 1,000 RSS subscribers,” rather than saying, “I have 1,000 daily visitors to my blog.”

This is because RSS subscribers show others that your content is good enough to keep coming back.  Just because you may have 1,000 daily visitors, it doesn’t mean your blog is worth much.

Many of those visitors could be first time visitors, or only visited because you had one good post out of the hundred or so that you’d previously written.

Being able to give advertisers a large RSS subscribers number means a bigger payout when placing their ads on your blog.

In order to increase your RSS subscribers you have to write great content.  But even if your content is mediocre, there are still some tips to follow that will help.

Offer A Full Feed

Many bloggers only offer a small portion of the posts in their feed to subscribers.  The basis for the thought being that the reader will click the link to read the rest on their blog.

While some readers will click the link, most don’t have the time to go somewhere else to finish reading your post.  They’ll move on to another feed that contains the whole post.

Many readers will unsubscribe simply because you don’t offer a full feed.  Why subscribe when a person can just visit your blog every time they want to read something?

If you don’t have a full RSS feed, I’ll unsubscribe every time, no matter how great your content is.

Don’t Display A Small RSS Count

Things that are popular already tend to get more popular, and things that aren’t tend to remain that way.

If a visitor to your blog sees that you only have 10 RSS subscribers, they’ll think one of two things.

• If others aren’t doing it, why should I?
• You’re a newbie and don’t really know what your talking about, so you’re not worth wasting their time.

People tend to go with the herd.  Many are afraid to try something unless they see others doing it.

I recommend not displaying your RSS feed count until you reach at least 200-300 subscribers.

I’ve seen some people even fake their feed subscriber count to help increase their subscriber numbers.  But while it may work, if you get caught and called out on it, you will lose all credibility from that point on.

Make Subscribing Easy & Noticeable

If it’s hard to figure out how to subscribe to your blog, no one will do it.

Like many have said over and over, if you don’t make it easy, you lose business.

Most RSS subscription buttons are located in the upper right side of a blog, so readers will often look to this area first.  If you put it there, you dramatically increase your chances of getting subscribers.

Also adding the option at the end of each blog post helps to give readers something else to do when they finish reading.  On some blogs, this helps to build subscribers better than the traditional upper right corner.

Ask Your Readers To Subscribe

No matter what methods you decide to use to increase your RSS subscribers, the most simple and direct method is to just ask.

Many bloggers will go their entire blogging career and never ask for anything.  If you never ask, you’ll never receive.  The most someone can do is to tell you no.

By the way.  If you like my blog, would you mind clicking here to subscribe?

What do you do to increase your RSS subscribers?  Do you have any methods that are absolutely incredible?