Double Your FeedBurner RSS Numbers Overnight General by Joel Wagner - January 27, 2008May 29, 201612 This article is part of a Group Writing Project about Building RSS Numbers. I recently achieved the milestone of having 150 subscribers (I’m still hanging out in that area). In reaching that, I realize that many bloggers use Blogger to host their blogs and FeedBurner for their RSS syndication. That’s a good combination (I much prefer WordPress, but Blogger can be simpler to set up). This post will serve as a simple tutorial to allow people in this situation to double their subscriber count overnight. If not overnight, then quickly to say the least. I’ve noticed that a lot of the bloggers who have this setup seem to have low subscriber counts. I noticed that Learn Me Good is still hanging out around 30ish feeds each time I check it. It has been that way since I first discovered his blog. I checked it out in Google Reader and realized that I was subscribed to his Blogger feed rather than the FeedBurner feed. I have a strong feeling that there are a handful of Blogger users out there who will find this little trick extraordoinarily useful and personally validating as well. How do we do it? Follow the steps in this simple Quick Start guide from FeedBurner. Write a new post on your blog informing readers of the change and asking them to confirm that they are subscribed to the FeedBurner feed (this is not necessary, but it will encourage casual readers to subscribe anyway). Sit back and wait a few days and see the numbers dramatically increase! A few more tips to help increase your reader numbers: Post remarkable content Advertise your RSS subscriber numbers (or not…but don’t put a fake FeedBurner chicklet on your site) Make email subscriptions available Encourage readers to subscribe to the email feed, forward useful articles to friends, and invite friends to subscribe (even if they don’t read blogs) Submit posts to blog carnivals and hot them Link to lots of other blogs Invite guest posts Write guest posts Celebrate feed subscription milestones Joel WagnerJoel Wagner (@sywtt) began teaching band in 2002. Though he had a lot of information, his classes were out of control. He found himself tired, frustrated, disrespected by students, lonely, and on the brink of quitting. He had had enough. He resigned from his school district right before spring break of his second year and made it his personal mission to learn to be a great teacher. So You Want To Teach? is the ongoing story of that quest for educational excellence.See also 5 Reasons I Loved Teaching Middle School
Joel- Quick question. If I already am hosting a blog on blogger, then I should have FeedBurner as my RSS feed by default and not need to do your tutorial? But if I’m hosting a wordpress blog, your tutorial would be the way to go since it is not a FeedBuner RSS?? Does that make sense? Thanks for any clarification you can provide for my RSS challenged mind.
Ken: Not true. I just checked out your blog and the default feed is the one that runs through Blogger. Both are owned by Google, but the numbers of the subscribers are not included. The FeedBurner page that I linked to is specifically for ensuring that your Blogger feeds all run through FeedBurner. Enjoy! :)
I think mine is set up to go through feedburner now. Not sure if my subscribers will double overnight though. I guess we’ll see tomorrow! :)
Wow, talk about cool! Learn Me Good’s numbers went from 26 to 114 overnight. That is more than a 430% increase. I guess this stuff can work!
DAY-IMMMM!!!! I just got home, and I saw your comment before I actually checked my own blog, and at first I thought you were kidding! Although I really did was direct the blogger feed towards feedburner. There’s no way to do this through the control panel on blogspot, under the site feed option. Good call! Either that, or I had a ton of people sign up overnight!
You are really rockin’ over here! It’s been a while since I’ve been by, and I am so happy to see you enjoying some success!
I have no idea how people ‘subscribe’ to me, or how many do, but I know some do. How do I figure the rest out? Jonathan
Jonathan, I just found The Edublogger and it has some great tips on this very thing. + Adding a RSS Feed from Feedburner To Your Blog + How To Add An Email Subscription To Your Blog
Thanks for the entry in the contest. Stumbled this for you: http://groupwriting.stumbleupon.com/review/23284191/