Every blogger wants to increase their subscriber count, but I have realized to increase your subscriber count you need to find out why your readers subscribe to your blog. Yeah you write great content and they subscribe. But what if you are writing good content and seeing no results than what do you do?

Find out why your readers subscribe to your blog? So you can write what they want and get more subscribers.

1. You motivate them - Sometimes people subscribe to your blog because you motivate them. Either by showing them your income, or sharing your experience. You motivate them, and they wish to be successful like your site some day.
2. They enjoy your company - Well you are interesting. Your readers love the way you talk. They like your tone. They read your blog for fun and they enjoy every bit of it. They know you from some social media like Plurk, and they like to see what you are talking about.
3. They want your knowledge - They want to know what you know. They like to learn everything from you. So if I am talking about marketing, you want to learn it. If I am talking about customizing wordpress, you want to learn it. Your readers want to do the same thats why they subscribe.
4. They love freebies - If you are giving away something for free. They want it. Alot of readers subscribe to your blog because they want your goodies and freebies that you are offering.
5. They want to stay two steps ahead of you - Yes alot of the times your competitors subscribe. Well I subscribe to my competitors blog just to stay updated and see what they are doing. Because I don’t want to stay behind, I want to stay ahead of them. The only way I can do that is if I keep up with them, so I know what speed to put myself on.

Now those are the reasons why your readers subscribe to your blog. So what should you do? Most people will already know what they need to do, but here are some tips to get you started.

1. Start Giving - People love freebies, so why don’t you start giving them freebies. Be generous, and try to share some stuff that you know. Your knowledge won’t decrease if you share, but you will only get better.
2. Be Interesting - I have came across alot of blogs that have no tone in their writing. I mean come on people lets be realistic. I don’t want to go on a site and read 1000 words that are in blah tone. Make it interesting, funny. Whatever you do just grab my attention. Read my post on why people don’t read your blog that will help.
3. Be the Leader - Try to initiate things. I have said that multiple times. Don’t be a follower. Try to innovate. Be imaginative and Be creative.

Now that you know why your readers subscribe to your blog, give them what they want, so more of them subscribe. Also check out my post about How you can find new RSS Subscribers for your blog.

RSS, Really Simple Syndication, is a very simple but powerful tool used on websites. Mostly used on blogs this tool allows the readers to subscribe to the website and stay updated with the recent updates. Aside from having good content for your users to subscribe, sometimes Rss design and placement also comes in handy to increase your subscriber count.

In this post I will be sharing tons of free icons sets for rss as well as examples of best feed placement. Note: These icons does not belong to Balkhis therefore before abusing using it make sure you read the guidelines provided by the designer.

Let me put the general guidelines for the use of these icons:

Do not take the credit away from the designers.
Do not sell these icons
Stick with personal use unless commercial use is allowed by the designers

Ultimate goal of bloggers

The ultimate goal of bloggers is to have a large loyal reader base which they keep track by using RSS Feeds through feedburner and track the count of their subscribers. Many things decide whether your user would subscribe to your website or not. One of the things are the right placement for the RSS Buttons, and how well you embed it on the website.

Best Placement and Practices of RSS Designs

Best Placement of RSS Designs are mostly toward the very top. Making your reader scroll to find the RSS is one of the mistakes many bloggers make. The more creative the RSS Button looks, the more it will impress the users and will lead them to subscribe.

Below are some of the best / creative examples of RSS

You can see this icon at the top of this page. This style embeds with the design and looks natural.

This was one of the most unique rss symbols I have seen. Very nicely done, and It is animated.

This is another example of how simple an RSS Design can look yet blend in and still look good.

Very cool background for the rss. Unique !!!

Smashing magazine has always put up great resources on the web for web designers. There icon is one of the coolest.

Now that you have seen some of the unique and good looking RSS Buttons, let me present to you the bunch of free collection of icon sets. [The rest is in the full post]

I was looking at my subscribers that i gaines in one month and i was quiet happy with the number. I have 87 Subscribers on Balkhis which is quiet an accomplishment for one month the blog has been launched. Or atleast i think so. I believe if i go at the rate i have been going for the past couple days it won’t be far away that i reach 1000. Now i analyzed strategies of other bloggers as well as used common sense and advices that i recieved from online friends to achieve this. Here are some of the things i notice that helped me increasing the subscribers.

You need to have the RSS Button embedded into your design and have it stand out. As you see many top bloggers such as Shoemoney, John Chow, and many others have the RSS Button on their site stand out. You will notice top quality blog designers will make sure that you have the rss button visible to your user without having to scroll the page. When i designed Balkhis, i read alot about rss and embedded it in the design at the top of the page.

Next thing you want to do is…. Read on the full post.

I will share some techniques i used to make mybloglog works best for me at balkhis. First when i joined my sole purpose was to get that widget, but as i looked more into it, I realize how useful this was. I actually went ahead and started trying some of the things that i think might work. First, I knew that the readers that i am getting is through the search feature of theirs because how else will they find a relatively new site?

I added some decent keywords that relates to Balkhis, such as earn money. Once that was done i let it stay for a day and checked the result in traffic, and infcat the traffic increased as i add some decent keywords. My next goal was how to get people to visit my community (Balkhis).

http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/balkhis/

I started joining other communities that were related to my niche. Now you can’t abuse the service because they only let you join 15 new communities a day, so i joined 15 the first day, and continued the process for 5 straight days. I kept adding other people’s communities the ones that i found kool. Just to build a better network, and when you join someone else’s community your picture shows up in the community member list, and thats how people can find you. As well as it shows other people who join the same community as you in your user page.

http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/members/syedbalkhi/

More in the full post