How I Gained 3,323 Subscribers in 3 Months

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 09:49 PM PDT

This is a guest post by Celestine Chua. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.

In the past few months, I have been working extremely hard at growing my blog The Personal Excellence Blog. The net result is a 3,323 subscribers growth in the past 3 months which I’m very excited about. In today’s post, I’ll share with you the key steps on how I achieved this and hope you’ll learn something for yourself.

How I Got Started

Even though I started The Personal Excellence Blog in Dec ’08, I did not concentrate on its growth up until April this year. Before April ’10, my subscriber count (via RSS/email) was 1,790. For a blog that was less than 1.5 years old, it was a decent subscriber base, but it wasn’t big.

So in April, I got serious about growing the blog. I set specific goals, created clear plans and got down to work. Today, it’s the start of July 2010 and 3 months have passed. Below are the results:

Feedburner Stats (Dec ’08 – Jul ’10)

feedburner stats

Feedburner count for The Personal Excellence Blog since it started in Dec ’08. The growth in ’09 was gradual as I did not do anything specific in traffic building. I was writing my best content but did not market much. As you can see, the subscriber base grew rapidly in the past few months (the spike started from April ’10 onwards).

Subscriber Breakdown Week by Week (Apr ’10 – Jul ’10)

stats2

A week by week breakdown of my subscriber count from 1st week of April. From Apr ’10 to start of Jul ’10, my subscribers has grown from 1,790 to 5,113 subscribers, a difference of 3,323 subscribers. The average increase is 277 subscribers per week. While it may seem small for big blogs like Problogger and Daily Blog Tips, this is very sizable growth from a blog with an original base of 1,790 subscribers only.

6 Biggest Steps That Helped Me Achieve The Results

I’m sure some of you are curious on what I did to achieve this result and I’m more than happy to share with you here. There are no gimmicky tricks here – these are all real strategies which all of us can apply right now.

1. Set clear goals and plans

You got to have clear goals. It’s good that you want to grow your blog, but by how much and by when? After all, getting just 1 more subscriber can also be seen as growing your blog. Is that all what you want or do you want more?

I had very clear goals when I started. I used subscriber count (via RSS or email) as the key performance metric (You can use other metrics if you want. I feel subscriber count is the most ubiquitous and robust measurement for blogs). I laid month-by-month subscriber goals, then broke them into weekly goals. Before the start of each week, I would design an action plan with clear steps on what to do (guest posting, free ebooks, etc – refer to steps #2-#6) to achieve the target of the week. Then at the end of the week, I would review to see what worked and what didn’t work as I design my plan for next week.

Goal setting and planning are critically important – Unfortunately, many bloggers grow their blog through a very random approach and it gives them random results. It was proper goal-setting and planning that served as the backbone for the results. If you’re interested in the goal setting framework I use, I wrote about it in detail in ESPER: 5-Step Successful Goal Achievement Framework (7-part series). This is an extremely robust goal achievement framework I use to achieve my personal goals as well as in my 1-1 coaching with my clients.

2. Do Massive Guest Posting

Guest posting was easily the largest contributor to my increased traffic in the past 3 months. Besides writing at The Personal Excellence Blog, I was doing massive guest posting on other personal development blogs – large ones like LifeHack.org and DumbLittleMan, to the smaller blogs. Here is my guest post count in the past 3 months:

April 2010 – 7 published guest posts
May 2010 – 8 published guest posts
June 2010 – 5 published guest posts (some sites I submitted to in June have a longer publishing lead time, so some of them will be posted in July instead)

Note that the guest posts weren’t random short posts – each post took a considerable amount of time and was on average 2,000 words/long (the longest ones were over 3,000 words). This guest post you are reading is about 2,300 words.

There were important lessons I learned on how to maximize your traffic through guest posting:

Guest post at larger blogs. In general (assuming all other factors remain the same), the larger the host site, the more traffic it’ll bring you. If you’re going to take the effort to write a guest article, you want to get the maximum exposure possible. Generally host sites with >10k subscribers would be a good, though writing at a blog with 5k subscribers will definitely be helpful if your reader base is small at the moment.
Choose sites similar in theme with yours. If you have a blog for pet lovers and you guest post at LifeHack.org (a personal development site), it’s not going to bring you many readers. Be targeted in your approach. Look for sites in your niche to guest post at. Since The Personal Excellence Blog is about personal development and peak performance, I chose similar sites to guest post at. Currently, the 2 key sites I guest post at are Lifehack.org (85k subscribers) and Dumb Little Man (65k subscribers).
Put your top value in your guest post. Just because it’s a guest post doesn’t mean you should put lesser effort into it. Writing your best content and ensuring it does well in your host’s site is both beneficial for your host as well as for you. If it gets high traffic, it’ll also lead to higher clickthroughs to your site. For example, my guest post 42 Practical Ways To Improve Yourself at LifeHack.org did very well – it had over 1,300 retweets and facebook shares (average post on LifeHack gets is 150+) and is the #1 pick on Lifehack.org out of the hundreds of articles posted this year. Subsequently, it brought the most traffic to my blog out of other guest posts. The time and effort you put into your (guest) posts show – put in the due diligence and readers will visit your blog for more (and possibly subscribe) if they like what they read.
Cover a topic that matches both the host’s blog and your blog. On one hand, you’ll cater to the maximum number of readers at the host site. At the same time, it’ll attract readers who will be potentially interested in what you have to say in your blog.
Use linkbacks in the guest post. If the host allows linkbacks to your blog, use them wisely. Be sure to check if the host has any limit on number of links and keep within the limit.
Put a subscription link in your author bio. Make it easy for readers to subscribe by putting your RSS and email subscription link in your bio. Some blogs have limitations on the author write-up and may request you only have 1-2 lines. If so, prioritize what you want to put. If you look at my author bio in this guest post, you’ll see I included both my RSS link and free subscription for my newsletter.

3. Offer an incentive for subscribing

If you want to grow your subscription count, you have to give readers an incentive to subscribe, preferably via email/newsletter. If you are a regular reader of Problogger, you would know about the importance of having your own email list, which is crucial for your product/service marketing/launches. I recommend using free ebooks / information products as incentive as it’s convenient and highly relevant for blog readers.

Up until April this year, I never had any sign-up incentive for readers. After seeing my article 101 Things To Do Before You Die is the 2nd most popular article on my blog (it also landed me an interview with CNN regarding the topic of bucket lists), I turned it into a pdf ebook with the same title and gave it away as a sign-up gift for those who subscribe to the free newsletter (feel free to sign up for my free newsletter via my author bio below to get the ebook) . I also prominently displayed this ebook incentive in my sidebar (see image below):

ebook cover

In the week I launched the free ebook (Apr Week 3), I had over 600 new subscribers (much higher than the average weekly growth of 200 subscribers), a large part driven by the free ebook. I believe many of these new subscribers were readers who bookmarked my site, consistently read my articles but just didn’t subscribe as there wasn’t a reason. Today, the 101 Things To Do Before You Die ebook remains important in generating sign-ups for my newsletter.

Some notes about your sign-up incentive:

It should be related to what your blog has to offer. Otherwise your readers just going to sign-up and unsubscribe later on when they realize your blog is about other stuff. In my example, people who are interested in creating bucket lists are generally also interested in personal growth/development and hence will appreciate what I write about (daily reflections/tips on living our best life)
It should be elevant to your readers’ needs. ”101 Things To Do Before You Die” is a catchy topic and very relevant since everyone will have a list of things they want to accomplish in his/her life before he/she die. A good way is to see what are the top articles on your blog and use them to spark ideas for your sign-up incentive.

4. Offer free ebooks with top content

In April ’10, I created a Free Ebooks section and converted my most popular series and articles into free pdf ebooks. While it took time to put together the articles, format them nicely and design the ebook covers, it definitely paid off. My ebooks section became wildly popular – to date, I have 8 free personal development ebooks covering key personal growth topics (how to discover your purpose, successful goal achievement, book of 300+ inspiring quotes, how to overcome procrastination, dealing with disappointment, etc) and over 15,000 downloads in total. The ebooks section itself has nearly 20k views on Stumble Upon.

It seems that even though the same articles are available on the blog, having them in ebook format has its own value as readers can access them easily on their computer and read when they’re offline. Not only that, new readers can easily scan and see your top content there, rather than weed through all the articles. It’s also a great way for them to distribute to their friends/family, which serves as positive WOM.

My ebook tips for you:

Look at the most popular articles / series at your blog and turn them into ebooks
You can use My Ecover Maker to make your covers for free. I scoured the whole internet for an ebook cover maker and this was hands down the best.
Include a personal foreword in the ebook, as it’s possible someone new ends up reading it. It should introduce them to your blog and interest them enough to surf over and read more.

5. Place your subscription link in a prominent spot

Your RSS /newsletter sign-up link should be prominent and easily accessible. It always puzzles me why some bloggers put their RSS link in hard to find places. In a highly cluttered internet environment where people have low attention span, you want to make it very easy for readers to subscribe.

blog screenshot

I checked out numerous blogs and found out the top right hand corner is the most common spot to place subscription icons. If you look at the screenshot above of The Personal Excellence Blog, I place my RSS / Email links in the top right hand corner.

6. Practice the 8 habits of highly excellent bloggers

Last, but definitely not the least. There are 8 habits common across highly excellent bloggers which I’ve identified. They are:

Deliver their best value in every article
Work harder than anyone else
Practice what they preach
Don't write to please
Keep things real
Not afraid to be vulnerable
Keep upgrading themselves
Transform lives with their writing

Each habit has been equally important for me in gaining readership and will bring you blogging results if you practice them duly. I’ve written them in detail in 8 Habits of Highly Excellent Bloggers (my guestpost at Problogger) with specific examples of each habit and how to apply them as a blogger, so be sure to check them out.

Moving Forward

I’m definitely not stopping here of course – I’m working even harder now to increase my readership base in the next few months (and years) and look forward to the growth ahead. If you have been enjoying my articles, be sure to subscribe to my feed and newsletter (links in my author bio) for more great high value content.

Are there any traffic building / subscriber building tips which work great for you? Feel free to share in the comments area so we can all learn together

About the Author: I’m Celestine Chua and I write at The Personal Excellence Blog on how to achieve your highest potential and live your best life. Get my free ebook guide 101 Things To Do Before You Die now by signing up for my newsletter (100% free, unsubscribe whenever you want). Please connect with me on Twitter @celestinechua too.

Original Post: How I Gained 3,323 Subscribers in 3 Months

If I Had Time Available I Would Make an iTV Website Today

Posted: 27 Aug 2010 07:21 AM PDT

As you probably heard about, Apple is going to have a product announcement event next week, on September 1st. There is a lot of buzz around it right now, because industry pundits expect the Cupertino company to announce its new TV set top box, called iTV.

Some people are saying that this new device will revolutionize the TV industry. It will probably be connected with Apple iTunes, where people will be able to buy shows on demand and what not.

I am not sure how accurate the predictions are, but if the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad are indicators, iTV is going to rock and make a big dent in the market.

What does this mean for bloggers and webmasters? It means that if you act fast, you might be able to build a quite popular and profitable website around Apple’s new product. Some people are killing it right now with iPhone and iPad related websites, and iTV should follow alike.

If I had some time available I would start building such a website today. I even researched some domains, and there are good ones still available. Examples:

AppleiTVReview.com/.net/.org
AppleiTVReviews.net/.org
AppleiTVNews.net/.org
AppleiTVGuide.com/.net/.org
iTVreview.net/.org

At this point you might be asking: “Won’t Apple come after me if I use one of these domains?”. In theory it is legal to use a trademark on a domain name as long as the consumer will not get confused and think you are the official trademark owner or related to it. That is why Paypal cannot take down PaypalSucks.com. A domain like AppleiTVReview.com clearly indicates you are not related with Apple in my opinion, but talk to a lawyer first if you want to be sure and don’t take my suggestion as advice (yeah I am covering mine…).

Anyway my plan would be to put the website up today, start putting some content there about the iTV rumors, and start building some backlinks. Then on September 1st I would follow Apple’s announcement closely, and if the iTV turns out to be the product they are announcing, I would keep building/promoting the site to make it an authority inside its niche.

I already have too much on my plate right now though. What about you? If you have time available I would give this a shot. If you end up making thousands of dollars buy me a beer some day!

Update: Our readers are acting fast. It looks like 3 of the domains I mentioned were registered in the past 30 minutes. I am looking forward to seeing the site you’ll guys will build there, and good luck with it!

Original Post: If I Had Time Available I Would Make an iTV Website Today

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