How to get more RSS subscribers ?

[AlexDumitru]

I have been administrating a lot of high traffic blogs since a few years, but I've never been able to get too many RSS subscribers and I don't understand what I do wrong.

I'll let you know what I did, what I'd like to do and it would be great to talk about it and exchange out experience.

What I did

1. I placed big buttons in the sidebar
   
2. I placed texts and buttons above and below the articles
   
3. I placed email forms above, below the articles and in the sidebar
   
4. I placed the subscribe buttons in the header
   
5. I made a page where I explain what RSS is and linked it from underneath the RSS buttons.
   

What I am planning to do

1. A subscribe popup which explains them that it's free, I send no spam and offer them both options ( RSS and email )
   
2. Offering them something free if they subscribe by email, but I didn't know what, because of the niches ( tech, auto etc. )

[maximillianos]

It may not be your buttons, but your content. Is is something visitors want to get notified about? I don't know about you, but I don't subscribe to any RSS feeds and I'm on the net all day every day. I just prefer to visit sites I like when I want to.

[AlexDumitru]

That's you, but there are millions of people who use RSS are websites with much less traffic than mine have more RSS readers.

And yes, I think content might be an issue, though I'm not sure.

[phranque]

do you include the link element in the document head for the rss feed?
this will add the rss feed icon to many browsers, typically in the address bar.

[AlexDumitru]

Yes, I do

[piatkow]

For most net users RSS is a solution looking for a problem.

I had minimal take up when I used it on a previous site. The big value that I found was that I could use packaged software to read my own feed and format it onto my site so that I could maintain event listings as XML in the RSS file only.

[JS_Harris]

What I did

1. I placed big buttons in the sidebar
2. I placed texts and buttons above and below the articles
3. I placed email forms above, below the articles and in the sidebar
4. I placed the subscribe buttons in the header
5. I made a page where I explain what RSS is and linked it from underneath the RSS buttons.



What I am planning to do

1. A subscribe popup which explains them that it's free, I send no spam and offer them both options ( RSS and email )
2. Offering them something free if they subscribe by email, but I didn't know what, because of the niches ( tech, auto etc. )

I am not enticed to sign up with you based on the 5 things you've done or on #1 of what you plan to do, if you offer a free air freshener on #2 of what you plan to do I might though I don't want to give away my real address to people I don't know.

The #1 thing that makes me grab that rss feed is content. If I like what your site has to say and its on a topic I am interested in I'll even look for it when no buttons are there. A tip: figure out who your target audience is and find a way to get them to see the page. Next offer a pop-up or impossible to miss free email/rss signup offer.

[emthree]

I was able to get a substantial reader boost from my twitter followers. Try building a relationship with your readers.

[lammert]

I placed big buttons in the sidebar
I placed texts and buttons above and below the articles
I placed email forms above, below the articles and in the sidebar
I placed the subscribe buttons in the header
I made a page where I explain what RSS is and linked it from underneath the RSS buttons.

That's all wasted time. People who subscribe to RSS feeds are web savvy. They know what RSS is, they know how to subscribe and they have already an RSS reader or service installed. If they want to subscribe they will probably use the RSS button in the address bar which is shown by all modern browsers if you have setup your header links properly.

There may be two reasons why there are not many people subscribing to your site:

• People are not interested in receiving information about updates of your site because of the type or quality of the content
• The visitors of your site are in general not web savvy and don't know, nor care what an RSS feed is

In both cases it's better to put your effort in something which really increases traffic or revenue. Remove the big buttons and texts from the articles because they use expensive pixels in the user view port which can be used for other things.

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], emthree!