This is a guest post by Brandon Connell from BrandonConnell.com
If you are reading this post, it means that you are seriously curious about what I have to say, and want to find a few magic bullets to make money blogging. It’s good you are here then, because I am going to give you some gems to make your blog a huge success.
The secret to blogging success is building up your RSS subscribers list. That should be your ultimate goal, but not the immediate need that will make you money right now. It is however, what I am going to focus on in this article. Long-term cashflow should be your end-goal if you are blogging for income.
Before I release my secrets to you, let me volunteer that I am sitting here writing this while friends and family are out swimming in 100 degree weather. Not that I’m hurting in ice-cold air conditioning or anything… But the fact is that blogging takes work.
Even as I make a living from my blog, I make the time to write new content instead of jumping on every chance to have fun.
1. RSS Subscribers Like Incredible Content
There has been lots of debate online about the length of posts that work best on blogs. I have written posts as small as 300 words, and posts as long as 5,000+ words.
More recently, I have written longer articles. The reason for this is that it allows me to go into a topic deeply, and not worry about leaving out key points that I could have made.
Let’s face it, Google and other search engines also love lengthy posts. They thrive on unique text after-all. The longer your articles, the higher the chances that they turn up on the first page of SERPS (search engine results pages) for a few different search terms. More rankings equal more potential subscribers to your blogs RSS feeds.
2. RSS Subscribers Hate Spam
The thing about RSS subscriptions is that they guarantee an email from Feedburner, or other delivery method, which gives them direct access to your blog articles. Why does this matter? Lots of affiliate bloggers spam their newsletter subscribers with junk affiliate emails constantly.
I cannot tell you how many times I was forced to unsubscribe from a newsletter because it only sent affiliate hype letters and reviews. This really eats at me because I have gone out of my way to only give personal updates and top quality articles in my newsletters.
Of course, if you want to increase your income, you can take up my place on quality content newsletters only. Just because they are top quality articles doesn’t mean that you are unable to include a few small advertisements within your newsletter. It’s the stupid “Johnny made $10,000 in 48 hours” crap that makes people wish they kept their email addresses to themselves.
3. RSS Subscribers Are Loyal
If someone subscribes to your RSS feeds, it means that your articles have struck a chord with them. Why did this happen? Chances are they found you on a guest post somewhere, or they happened across your blog and found some great reading materials.
To duplicate this kind of activity, it is important to guest post and blog hop on like-minded blogs. I know that this has been said so many times, but the problem is that many of you simply have not listened and are now wondering why your blog is lacking traffic.
When I guest post on ProBlogger here and there, I end up with a hundred or more new subscribers to both my newsletter and my rss feeds. Imagine what would happen if you guest post on at least 3 blogs every week. Your new-reader count would go through the roof, and your blog comments would follow.
4. RSS Subscribers Like Secrets
To gain the attention of people who would end up being subscribers, you need to be open with your knowledge like I am open with you right now. Share the wealth of information in your brain so that others don’t have to learn it the hard way.
This is the information age. That’s why you could launch a product and make big bucks every month. People want information provided to them in an easy to read and understand format. Provide free information in that format on your blog, and your subscriber numbers will rack up into the thousands.
5. RSS Subscribers Like Celebrity
One of the biggest reasons I was able to have success was that I already had a name for myself. This didn’t give me a major advantage in the blogging world, but it enabled me to make thousands of dollars consulting for Celebrities.
You can gain some “celebrity” that WILL help you in the blogging world by partnering up with big bloggers that have created a name for themselves.
It is rather simple to network with major bloggers. Most of them will have a contact form on their blog. Come up with an idea that will benefit them greatly, and you will benefit from their existing brand when they go to bat for you.
Are You A Subscriber?
Do you subscribe to the standards that I listed? Are they in your belief system? If not, making these changes will dramatically improve your blog. After employing these tactics, you will see a huge increase in subscriber counts within a 3-month time period.
Top 10 Search Terms:
• wealthy bloggers • secrets of the wealthy
Those are some good tips. I don’t hear too much about RSS subscribers with regards to blogging as I did a few years ago. Most bloggers seem to be concentrating more on social networking than increasing their RSS subscribers.
Yeah Paul, but the problem is that social networking is a temporary thing. You have to be active on it constantly for it to be a valuable traffic source. With rss subscribers, the more you have, the easier your job gets in the long-run. That’s when you can slow down the hectic craziness of social media and focus more on quality content and “real” interaction rather than the fluff of marketing.
Great tips! I like number2 because spam is one of the biggest reasons why subscribers end up unsubscribing from a list.. I’m just an example of a guy who hate this.. Cheers!
I don’t know a single person that likes spam 😉
Now it is no longer a secret because you already revealed it all… Faissal, everybody hates spam and I just hope this will be resolve already.
‘Blogging takes work’ I agree… A SACRIFICE as you have seen blogging while other have fun. You are indeed a SMART BLOGGER.
I think that perhaps you meant Email subscribers and NOT RSS subscribers as the characteristics you share here tend to be for that. Nonetheless a valuable post indeed.
Hello Ivin,
NO, I did NOT mean email subscribers. RSS is the most important, and it’s rss by email that you should be building. A newsletter is a fragile thing, and not as effective as rss subscriber lists.
Thanks Brandon. I always thought your email list is more important. Something to think about for me 🙂
The reason I say otherwise is because an rss by mail subscriber gets EVERY blog post sent to them. Newsletters often go out once a week, once a month, etc. On top of that, you may only send promotional clickbank newsletters out, but would you do that with rss by posting only clickbank reviews as articles on your blog?
I get what you’re saying. My list doesn’t only take care of newsletters but also send out my posts, so it’s a double take. But if you don’t have that, RSS email must be done. So, I’ll agree with you there.
Re: affiliate emails, I am a crap salesman. So I focus on services instead. I don’t have to sell that because it sort of sells itself.
Wonderful post Brandon. I understand your points and I think I may have made some mistakes on some of my blogs in the past. I think that the right mindset is not to sell, its to write better and better content to attract tons of subscribers. After that, the profits should come.
That’s right on point. As a matter of fact, I can point to another blogger who is a prime example. ViperChill.com does a great job from start to finish with quality (long) content. That blog got tons of rss subscribers in a short amount of time.
RSS subsribers are important for blogs and all of your secrets are spot on. I don’t really focus too much on this important part for some blogs that aren’t updated much but I know keeping those subscribers happy and wanting more does a lot of good for your blog and your brand/reputation.
Hi Brandon,
Where have you been keeping these secrets? How come I haven’t heard of any of these until now?
Seriously, though, this is a gem! I think this is the first time I’ve read a post that touched on the importance of RSS subscribers in detail.
Yesterday, I subscribed to a number of blogs and looking back, what first caught my attention was the headline. If I like the content, I click on several more articles and if I find them a great read and I get lots of info, I click on subscribe.
I agree with the points that you made here especially about SPAM. The reason I unsubscribe is if I keep getting emails trying to sell me something.
Thanks for sharing these wonderful tips!
Celebrity gossips become hot topics and normally readers are interested in the lives of these rich and famous people however, this doesn’t mean that other topics are of less importance. There are many factors which makes a blog or a site successful and I strongly believe that as long as we offer quality content to the readers we shouldn’t be worrying too much 🙂
Hi Brandon,
It is without doubt that any RSS subscriber would hate to have spam in their email. The minute you spam your subscribers, the sooner you lose people on your list. This makes it important to send them only quality emails to make them more loyal.
I agree with all your points except the first one , UNIQUE and Lengthy do not necessarily mean the same thing , I personally prefer a short yet practical and to the point article to a long long article which is saying the same thing with so many more details. [except for tutorials]
I think RSS is just a part of the money making business. SEO friendly articles that appear on the first page OF GOOGLE IS MORE IMPORTANT rather than RSS.