MasterMind Blogger » Blogging Tips

Top 4 Methods On Getting More RSS Subscribers For Your Blog

S Ahsan — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:02:51 +0000

Increase Your RSS Subscribers

New bloggers always have several questions in mind. If you are one of them, then, I am sure that the first thing that hit your mind was how to get traffic to your blog.

You can get traffic through search engines, pay-per-click advertisements, backlinks and so on.

Good content will always bring good amount of traffic but it is never enough. A mediocre blog will have limited or certain amount of traffic through search engines and backlinks.

A blog is created for a purpose and for a certain group of audience. Search engine may bring you 1000 unique visitors but is that it? Are all of these visitors interested in your stuff? Well we can’t say that.

RSS subscribers are the best because they visit your blog whenever you update or write a new post. People subscribe to your blog because they want to learn from you and are interested in stuffs that you talk about. There are a number of ways you can go about pulling in more traffic and gaining influence with your readership and RSS is one of the best ways to do this.

Here are the top 4 winning tips on getting RSS subscribers for your blog

1. First, the most important, a lot of bloggers forget to put up the RSS sign up prompt or the icon in their blogs. I have noticed that most are concerned with ad blocks instead of RSS which is more important. Monetizing should come later and instead of putting up advertisements, you should put up RSS icons in the most appropriate and noticeable places. If you want your readers to know that the RSS option is available then simply stick it at the top of your pages.

2. You can put up several RSS images on your blog. People say that a picture is worth a thousand words. You can fill up your blog with tons of rss icons and images but don’t go crazy over it because too much of it can ruin the layout or make it annoying. But, instead of putting up weird ads and other junk, I would prefer to stick up the rss button where ever possible. Just Google for rss buttons and icons and you will find several decent ones that you can use.

3. What the heck is RSS? I was a newbie someday and so were other bloggers. Unless you are writing for a really popular blog, the fact is that a lot of people do not anything about RSS. Some people might click on it and leave; you have no idea how many subscribers you can lose that way every day. I am about to write a short RSS tutorial and put it on a noticeable area on my blogs especially beside or below the RSS button and you should do it too. There is no point sticking up the RSS button just like you stick up advertisements and other junks. You need to prove it to your readers and provide reasons why they should subscribe to your blog. You can write a short post explaining the concept of RSS which will not only build up your rep but also will show that your care for your readers.

4. Include your feed where ever possible. There are so many places where you can leave your feed address. Your blog shouldn’t be the only place where you put up RSS buttons. If you are an active forum member then try including your feed in your signature. If you have a newsletter then include your feed in every email newsletter you send out. Have you heard about web2.0 properties? I am sure you have created hubpages, ezines, wetpaint and such. You can include your feed in all these pages. Believe me, these methods will maximize exposure of your rss and blog and will dramatically increase your subscribers. I write stuff based on experiences and I hope you follow it to succeed.

I hope that the above tips help you on your quest to build the ultimate RSS readers list. If you have any questions or suggestions then feel free to express your thoughts through comments. You should also check out 7 Tips To Convert One Time Visitors to Subscribers

To your blogging Success…Check Out Related Posts:

Top 4 Methods On Getting More RSS Subscribers For Your Blog is a post from: MasterMind Blogger

35 Creative and Useful Ways to Make Your Blog Popular

S Ahsan — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:59:05 +0000

Make Your Blog Popular

There are many ways to make your blog popular. I have decided to compile a list of the most creative and useful ways to do it. Some of you might know some of the methods listed, some might find it funny; but I am sure that these tips work. I have come across a lot of blogs that are not doing well and some are totally off topic. Blogs need to focus on a niche. The following tips can help you to build a better blog and make it popular.

Write several pillar articles a week
Start a contest and keep up with it
Give away freebies whenever possible. We all love free stuffs.
Write about your life and experience once a while.
Share your secrets to success or something that will benefit others
Share your personal views and opinions with your vistors
Ask questions to your readers and write on the topics they are interested in
Start a controversy and keep it clean
Interview other bloggers and post the interview on your blog.
Write about other bloggers and their success stories.
Use humor in your post to some limit
Tweak your blog and maintain its health
Brand your blog with a good slogan and logo
Write an e-book that can add value to your blog and distribute it for free.
Give out t-shirts or merchandise with your brand on it
Introduce popular and legitimate affiliate and money making programs
Encourage your readers to share opinions through comments
Create polls based on the latest buzz
Break a story and let your visitors know it first.
Share link love
Request other bloggers to exchange links with you
Write about your blog’s achievement and success
Buy paid reviews from famous bloggers
Build or find tools that your visitors will find useful
Start a newsletter and keep your visitors up to date
Support a non-profit organization and encourage people to do the same
Organize a meeting in your local to connect all the bloggers
Create video tutorials and post them on youtube
Dig up some old popular articles on your blog and start a discussion.
Advertise on the newspaper
Get featured in a print magazine
Do podcasting whenever you can
Be an active user on social sites
Lookout for people who need assistance and help them out
Post often, help your readers and be yourself

I hope you find these useful. Feel free to share and add yours through comments

To Your Success…Check Out Related Posts:

35 Creative and Useful Ways to Make Your Blog Popular is a post from: MasterMind Blogger

4 Important Rules When Using WordPress

S Ahsan — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 05:33:05 +0000

4 Important Rules When Using WordPress

WordPress is the best CMS so far without doubt. If you are a blogger or an affiliate marketer then you should use WordPress. But hold it there and don’t get excited yet; before you use WordPress, you need to know my 4 important rules in order to make wordpress work better for you.

The 4 Important Rules

Rule # 1

Choose the best web host for hosting your blog. This is so important that without this you can’t go ahead. I know several new bloggers who come up to me and say that they have found some good “FREE” hosting and they are satisfied with it. If you are choosing a web host for your blog, then think wisely. Free hosts are never reliable and none knows better than me. I have tried several. As a matter of fact, I have also tried some cheap ones where I paid only $10-$20 for a whole year. I guess that was my biggest mistake. The servers were messed up and most of the time it was offline. The support kept emailing me saying that they were changing to a new server and so on and it never worked out. Now who would want to deal with such crap and waste time.

If you are serious about your business then be prepared to invest some money into it. Most budget hosts are often run by college kids or inexperienced people who purchase reseller account and then sell it off to others to make some pretty cash. Now imagine, if that guy stops paying his bill for the reseller, your site goes down the drain. I am sure you are not willing to sacrifice all the content and database which took you several days and months to build.

Now think about this and make the right choice. Go with the best and reputed hosting company that has various options. You will be able to upgrade to a better package to deal with your massive traffic when you make it big. I am sure that day is near.

Rule # 2

Plugins! You love them don’t you! There are tons of plugins that will grab your attention but stop right there. You don’t want to install every single plugin you like or see around. Some plugins can screw up your server and mess up your blog.

If you are not sure what plugins you should install for your blog then ask an expert or check out reviews. I have had bad experience with some of them previously and I have learnt from my mistakes. Just because I know a little bit of coding and able to deal with such situation, I pulled it off.

Although I have posted a list of the best plugins on my personal blog, I am compiling another list where I will include some of the best and newest ones and hope you guys find it handy.

Rule # 3

Back Up your database every day. Make this a habit. Now if you are thinking that logging into your php admin and exporting files everyday is hectic then guess what, you are still living in the 80s. You have plugins to help you do that. WordPress is just sweet. There are so many useful plugins that automate multiple things in wordpress and make your life easier. I don’t know what I would have done without them.

The hosting company backs up your database most of the time. But, even if they don’t, you have plugins to do it for you. Schedule it to back up every 6 hours if you have lots of thing going or just do it once every day.

Back Up – Back Up – Back Up . . . I guess it is stuck in your mind right now!

Rule # 4

DO NOT Go for the Automatic Upgrade option for the WordPress plugins. I know it is tempting but staying away from it can be beneficial. Some of them can be really dangerous as it might not be supported by the wordpress version you are using although, I believe that the latest wordpress 2.9 supports almost all the plugins but, you can never be so sure. Besides, you don’t need the automatic upgrade option. You can manually do that once you find out that it is compatible with your version.

Remove any automatic upgrade plugins you have installed . . . they can be detrimental for your blog!

I hope you follow all these 4 important rules because they will make your life easier.

Have pleasant experience with WordPress

To Your Blogging Success…Check Out Related Posts:

4 Important Rules When Using WordPress is a post from: MasterMind Blogger

15 Proven Steps To Improve Your Blog

S Ahsan — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:50:46 +0000

15 Steps to Improve Your Blogging

It is very important to keep up with your blog and the truth is that there is always some space for improvement. As a blogger, you need to know what your audience is looking for and you should be willing to implement that in your blog.

You should always scan your blog, find the glitches and fix it before you get dragged into failure. If you love your blog, get prepared to work hard for it.

Check out the following list of tips that I have developed by doing stuffs on my own blog:

1. First, the most important part of your blog is the content. You need to continuously update your blog with fresh and original content so that your readers have a reason to visit your blog frequently. This part is very important and ignoring this can be detrimental to your blog.

2. Scan through your blog once again and analyze it; find any unnecessary plugins and widgets and remove them right away. Keep your sidebar clean and relevant. People don’t want to see piled up junks and adverts all the way. Irrelevant and unnecessary widgets not only slow down your blog’s speed but also divert the focus off your content.

3. Make sure you don’t have any weird and huge flash images or videos that take up huge space and are not at all required or necessary for your blog. From my experience, I realized that readers love clean and straight to the point blogs.

4. Format your content so that it is user friendly and blends smoothly with the blog’s layout

5. A lot of blogs lose their reputation because of bad posts and grammatical errors. Before submitting any posts, make sure you scan through every word and run a spell and grammar check. Ignoring this can mess up your reputation and credibility.

6. Add relevant images wherever you think it is applicable. Do not add huge images or videos that will slow down your blog. The new WordPress 2.9 has the option to edit an image within the platform so make sure you resize it to fit the screen.

7. The font used in your post should be bright and visible (should not hurt the eyes). This is very important and should not be ignored because if your fonts are not user friendly or clear enough then you will lose a massive number of readers.

8. Include an archive section so that your readers can easily navigate and browse your older posts. This will also enable the search engines to index your posts much quicker.

9. Include a related post widget or create a map to make navigation through various posts easier.

10. If you are using or posting other peoples stuff then make sure you add a copyright note and give them credit. If you don’t, there are chances that your will get screwed up and your reputation will go down the drain.

11. Internal linkup can be very helpful in terms of SEO. Add internal links within your posts wherever it is relevant. This helps you promote your older posts and gets your reader’s attention.

12. Create a favicon for your blog. It is obvious that the new bloggers do not know the importance of it at first but remember that a favicon is a great method to differentiate your blog with the rest in the blogosphere. It is very appealing and gives your blog a unique identity. You can easily create a favicon by visiting favicon.cc

13. Design and layout plays an important role for a successful blog. Choose your theme wisely and keep it clean. Themes are very important so make sure you chose the right one that caters to your niche.

14. Contact forms should be simple and easy. Do not add lots of unnecessary fields. The purpose of blogging is to establish a connection and a dialogue with your readers so keep it straight to the point.

15. Last but not the least; use your blog domain email address whenever possible because this will give you much more credibility over the free emails.

To wrap this up, go through all these fifteen points once a while and make sure that your blog is tip top. Scan through your posts regularly and remove any errors if you find any. Keep your blog up to date. And remember, being a blogger takes much more than being an author or writer because in blogging, you not only focus in your writing but also your audience. You are here to create a dialogue with your readers so always do the best to help them out and listen to them. This is the number one rule for me and many bloggers out there.

To your extreme blogging success….Check Out Related Posts:

15 Proven Steps To Improve Your Blog is a post from: MasterMind Blogger

8 Tips To Make You A Professional Blogger

S Ahsan — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:02:11 +0000

Being a professional blogger is not easy if you are not passionate about it. You can’t simply write for money. You make money from blogs when you are dedicated and completely passionate about it. I still don’t consider myself a professional blogger because I am involved with so many things right now that it is sometimes difficult to keep up with my blogs. I own several forums and blogs but, MasterMind Blogger is one of my favorite ones and I do my best to provide the ultimate tips to my readers.

Professional Blogging involves a lot more commitment and planning. I love blogging and helping out people to get success online. I have learnt a lot from my past experiences and mistakes and I will try to bring out all the information to the table so you all can benefit.

So What is this Professional Blogging?

Professional blogging requires complete passion and dedication. You must be committed to it all the time. Your blog should have a dedicated niche and also a targeted audience. Let’s make this easier by giving examples: John Chow talks about how to make money online and that is his niche. He makes money by telling people how to make money online and people who want to make money online are his audience. Same goes for Darren Rowse from Problogger; he writes about how to make a better blog and succeed online which is his niche. In this blog, I write about how to build a successful blog, make money online and making the best use of social media tools and network. Every blog must have a niche and a targeted group.

1. Choose the Best Brand Name for Your Blog

Brand names are very important because it tells a lot about your blog. They give the first impression to a visitor. Problogger clearly tells you that it is related to blogging and definitely professional blogging. Entrepreneurs-Journey would attract any entrepreneurs or people who are interested to set up their own businesses.

There are tons of blogs that have taken all the names you can possibly think of. You can’t get learnblogging dot com or professionalblogger dot com but you can definitely find one similar to these and make use of it. Take this blog as an example. Why did I choose MasterMind Blogger? My main intension is to reach out to people who want to mastermind blogging.

Google several popular blogs and try to find similar names but always get a unique one that stands out.

Related to this, you should also check out popular social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook and find out if your brand name is available with them. This is very important because these social media tools will greatly help your blog grow.

2. Choose the Best Host

There is tons of hosting these days and it is difficult to find out the best one amongst them. I have reviewed several ones and have a blog dedicated to it at KingOfHosting so do check it out.

Hosting is very important because this is where you will save all your blogging details and data. There are some hosts that shut you down for getting massive traffic to your blog and this can be a big loss and annoying. If you are serious about blogging and making money online then you must be prepared to invest some money on the best web hosting.

3. Choose the Best Blogging Platform

WordPress is by far the best blogging platform I have ever seen. All the top and popular bloggers use WordPress without doubt. Although, I won’t say that other platforms such as typepad and bloggers are bad because famous author and founder of Squidoo, Seth Godin uses typepad for his personal blogging; I just prefer WordPress because it is user friendly and simply awesome. Whatever you choose (I know it will be WordPress), choose it wisely.

4. Get the Best Design and Appearance for your Blog

Design and appearance will give your visitors the first impression. If they don’t like it, they will simply leave, PERIOD! All the good blogs have the best designs because they are serious about blogging. If you think you want to be a pro blogger and have the ability to take your blog to the next level then try to work with a good designer. There are tons of freelance designers out there for hire who can provide very decent designs for a good price.

I haven’t worked much with designs because at the moment, my blog is neat; I hope you agree with me. I know some coding plus Photoshop so I try to take care of my blogs. But, there are hundreds of reasons why you should get a pro designer to design your blog.

Most of my blogs run on Thesis which is one of the best themes so far. It is built in such a way that the author/blogger can easily navigate, design, post, change colors with a simple click. If you are a newbie, get Thesis and get started with your blogging right away.

5. Learn the Basic SEO and How to Implement It

SEO which is the short form of Search Engine Optimization plays a vital role for taking your blog to the next level. You might have no knowledge about it but if you Google; you will find a lot to learn about it. If your blog doesn’t get listed on the search engines then you won’t get enough traffic and will lack in revenues. To get noticed and well ranked in the popular search engines such as Google, yahoo, you must know the basic of SEO and implement in on your blog. I would recommend you take some time and check out Matt Cutts blog; you can learn a lot from it.

6. Say NO to Advertising Banners and Affiliate Marketing

If you have noticed, a lot of blogs can’t resist the temptation of putting up banners and filling the pages with affiliate links instead of valuable content. You MUST not do that. If you want to be a professional blogger, you need to build up your reputation first. You must provide value to your blog and show that your content is worth reading. Once you reach a certain level, you can consider putting up some banners and links to attract advertisers. But the main purpose of blogging is to provide valuable information to the public.

7. Write At least 1 Pillar Article a Week

I have mentioned this before in my previous posts that pillar articles are really important especially for the new bloggers. Articles such as How-To and tutorials bring in great traffic and remain popular all the time. Try to write at least one pillar content a week.

8. Keep Up With Your Blog, Write Frequently and Write Quality Content

So now you have setup everything for your blog, all you need to do is keep up with you blog and engage in conversations. To be a professional blogger, you need to post at least five times a week. Always remember, quality and unique content is the main key to blogging success. Never copy and paste articles on your blog, this can piss off the original authors as well as chase off readers. Stick to your niche and be passionate about what you are writing on. Once you reach the level when you can consider yourself a ProBlogger, you can take it easy and come back to this blog and tell me that you finally did it.
I hope you had fun reading this and hope you found this useful. Please feel free to share.

To your Ultimate Pro-Blogging Success………..Check Out Related Posts:

8 Tips To Make You A Professional Blogger is a post from: MasterMind Blogger

10 Useful Tools To Improve Your SERPs

S Ahsan — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 18:28:03 +0000

Serp is short for search engine results page. It is the Web page that a search engine returns with the results of its search made by a user for a specific keyword. Usually the major search engines display three kinds of listings on their SERPs.

Listings that have been indexed by the search engine’s spider
Listings that have been indexed into the search engine’s directory by a human.
Listings that are paid to be listed by the search engine.

The basic fundamental behind Search Engine Optimization is to reach as high up on the list as possible. Everyone wants to get the number one position in the search engine.

Today I decided to put together several useful tools to help you with SEO and achieve a good position in the search engines.

AllNo.1 SERP Checker – A unique and wonderful worldwide SERP checker. This tool allows you to check your keyword position before you try to increase your page rank on serps so you know if you have to change content on your site.

SearchEngineWatch – RSS feed is very important and can help you increase the number of returning visitors to your site. If you want to reach out to your audience to the max, you need to follow Danny Sullivan who provides a guide on how to set up a RSS feed step by step. Keep your visitors updated all the time.

Google Adwords Keyword Sandbox – This is one of the most used tools by webmasters and bloggers around the world today. This gives you the best result if you are using PPC Incentives; you can easily find out how much you are likely to get paid. You can also find out how many searches are made per keyword. This is a great find indeed.

CopyScape – Uniqueness is the key to success. Most search engines penalize copied content and to avoid this, you should use copyscape to check your content against plagiarism. Keep your content unique and also take action against people who copy it!

CheckPageRank – PageRank is one of the methods Google uses to determine a page’s relevance or importance. Pagerank fraud is becoming a serious problem these days. This is a good PR checker and valuator when exchanging or purchasing links.

BacklinkWatch – Search Engine Optimization now revolves around link building. The more quality backlinks your site has, better it stands in the search engine results. Inbound Links make your website stand out prominent in the SERPs. In today’s SEO world, more than 95% of the focus is on building quality backlinks.

WebsiteGrader – A simple website analyzer with some helpful tips for your site

SeoSerp – Free SEO page rank checker to check your SERPs position. You can check your site and how it is ranked in various countries.

SEMRush – This tool was designed by the developers of SeoDigger and SeoQuake to satisfy your needs in advanced SEM and keywords research. They analyze 40 million keywords for 20 million domains. They roughly give you an estimate to the number of searches per keyword or per niche.

DigitalPoint Keyword Tracker – This utility can be used to check search engines for search engine ranking and track those ranking historically which as you probably know are critical when doing Internet marketing for your website. This is one of my favorite; maybe because I am a premium member at DP.

I hope you found this post useful. Feel free to list your find through comments.Check Out Related Posts:

10 Useful Tools To Improve Your SERPs is a post from: MasterMind Blogger

9 Killer Ways to Make Your Blog Popular

S Ahsan — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:33:48 +0000

9 Killer Ways to Make Your Blog Popular

I have been working on my blogs for a while and finally decided to share my personal experience and methods to make your blog popular and stand out in the crowd. I know it is not easy if you are new in the business but if you are hard working, I can guarantee you success.

There are many ways to take your blog to the next level but always make sure you know what you are dealing with. I have seen people spamming and using social bookmarking sites such as digg, reddit and requesting people to vote for their links. Please do not do that. This is considered spam and is detrimental to your blog. I am listing out several killer ways to get your blog popular in the right way.

Customize Your Blog Design

This is very important and that is why I listed it first. Every blog should have a unique design. People are attracted to something that is unique and interesting. When a person visits your blog, the design gives them the first impression and this determines the amount of time they spend browsing your blog. Now to be honest, if your blog has a crappy design, I am not going to visit it. Even if I visit, I might spend a few seconds before I leave.

There are plenty of decent templates you can find online. I am running a customized Thesis which is one if my favorite and it is quite reasonable. It gives you tons of sweet options and you can easily change fonts, color with a click. If you still can’t afford a premium templates then Google for free ones. I am sure you will find many.

Add Your Blog to Blog Communities

Blog communities are really popular for blogs. There are tons of other bloggers and web enthusiasts constantly checking out these communities for blogs and information. There are many communities you can deal with but it’s better to stick with the ones which are popular and have a decent Google PR.

Some good ones would be Blogged, FuelmyBlog, MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, NetworkedBlogs etc. Try to Google and you will find a lot.

When you follow a blog, you are basically increasing your visibility in the community. A lot of people will check you out and also subscribe to your blog if you are good. Always try to participate in a network and engage in conversations.

Write Tutorials and Pillar Articles

Yaro Starak who is one of the top bloggers has always emphasized the importance of pillar articles. Now think about this, if you write an article about what happened on a certain day, the content is meant only for that day and with time it gets old. But, if you write a How-to Article or a tutorial that solves a problem, it stays there forever.

If you write something about “How to get rid of twitter spam or How to get loyal readers to your blog”, you know that you can use these tutorials whenever you want and they won’t get old. Tons of people will share it and bookmark it for future reference. Pillar articles are Killers and you can easily write at least 5-6 a month.

Check out 7 Tips to Avoid getting Unfollowed on Twitter . The post was retweeted more than 190 times in one day. I know it is not a big deal but this is just the starting and if your content is good and useful, it can go up to 1000.

Be a Guest Author on Popular Blogs

Most blogs you will come across these days accept guest posts. Popular blogs like problogger, shoemoney, johnchow just to name a few; they give all the new bloggers some space on their blog to get noticed. Now this is a great opportunity and shouldn’t be missed. You can’t just post anything you like but it should be related to the niche and you have to prove your worth.

Writing guest posts is a truly amazing way to get noticed and drive traffic to your blog. Of course you don’t get paid for it unless you are a big shot but this is a great and a free way to get traffic.

To start with, you are most welcome to make a guest post on this site

Give Something to Download for Free

I love free stuffs and so do you. A good way to gain readers and make your blog popular is to give free stuffs to the public. It can be almost anything; an eBook, a wordpress theme, some popular tools or even free online class.

I have not put up any free stuff on this blog yet but I am working on several valuable items that will be available here pretty soon. Based on the experience from my other blogs, people love free things especially when they are premium and valuable.

Blog Frequently

Fresh content is the key to your blog’s success. Do not just blog once a week and expect people to check in every day. Your readers are hungry for information and they expect to see something valuable and new on your blog frequently. I know sometimes you can be busy and miss out but, if blogging is your passion, you can manage time for a post. The search engines can find out how often you blog and they love fresh content. The more often you post to your blog, the better it gets.

Link Love

One of the best ways to get your blog noticed is to trade links with other bloggers of the same niche. There are multiple ways you can approach a blogger or an author and request for a link love. You can email them (make sure you don’t spam), you can comment on their blog post and request and of course add them on your facebook and talk about it.

Create a Facebook Page and Promote it

Facebook pages are rising in popularity. Check your account right now and tell me how many invitations you got to join a page. I bet it’s a lot. Create a Facebook Page for your Blog and start sharing it with other millions of Facebook users. When requesting to join your page, make sure you don’t spam because it can be really irritating. You can also set up your Blog’s RSS Feed on the Page itself so that people can check out your posts without even visiting your blog.

Some good methods you can use to promote your facebook page is by adding a widget on your blog, writing a blog post on it and also including the page details in your newsletter.

Get a Twitter Account and Tweet your Posts

I am sure everyone of you have a twitter account and use it to broadcast what you eat, when you sleep etc. There is no problem in doing that but to make it more productive, how about tweeting your blog posts to your followers. People follow you because they are interested in sharing things with you. When you tweet, they are most likely willing to check it out. Again, do not spam with your affiliate links.

To learn a little more about twitter, you can check out 4 Reasons Why You Do Not Need to Mass Follow Twitter Users to Gain Followers & 4 Methods To Gain Twitter Followers For Free

Keep following the right thing and you will get a taste of success. I hope you all found this article useful. Please feel free to share your thoughts and methods through commenting.

To your blogging success…Check Out Related Posts:

9 Killer Ways to Make Your Blog Popular is a post from: MasterMind Blogger

7 Tips To Convert One Time Visitors to Subscribers

S Ahsan — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:47:28 +0000

Convert One Time Visitors to Subscribers

Why Subscribers are Important?

A blog with a high number of subscribers and loyal readers are more trusted. If you help people by providing guides and tutorials, they will make you money. A good number of subscribers will also attract advertisers. Subscribers bring extra traffic. SEO can help you get traffic to your blog but with a high number of subscribers you will get more targeted traffic on a regular basis.

A Little About Me and My Blog

I have always believed that a person can learn better from another’s experience rather than reading lots of tutorials and guides. I was around 17 years old when I first started blogging. I had an account with bloggers, blogged about life and tech for a while and then lost interest. I moved on to affiliate marketing and CPA which made me good money.

Couple of years later, I realized that there was something missing. Although I loved making money online through various ways, I realized the power of blogging. I love teaching and providing tutorials to make others life easier in this competitive world.

I wish I had continued blogging because by now, my blog would have reached a certain level beyond imaginable. I finally started my research and gained knowledge on various aspects of blogging. I learnt about monetizing, marketing, seo and much more.

I always had a passion to blog and reach out to my audience. I love helping people leverage their work to make money online, PERIOD! I realized the power of subscribers and loyal readers.

So, here I am, finally decided to start a blog after many years, trying to make it big in the make money niche.

It is not easy to succeed with a blog and especially in the money making niche since it is very competitive.

It is easier to monetize and market your blog but it is much difficult to gain subscribers and take your blog to the next level.

I use Google analytics and webmaster tools to track my pages and sites. At first, my bounce rates were extremely high. Learn more about bounce rates HERE

I did not bother about this in the beginning but then I realized that high bounce rate was not good.

High bounce rate means that most of the visitors are just passing by and not reading your stuffs. If you are a serious blogger then, this will make you sad. If no one reads your stuff, this is just a huge disappointment and wastage of time and effort. It is very obvious that bounce rates are related to subscribers because if the bounce rate is high, it tells you that your visitors are just passing by and not going through your stuffs—which mean they are not subscribing to your blog.

The solution here is to lower your bounce rates to a minimum which will lead to higher rates of subscription.

7 things you can do to Increase readership and turn your visitors into frequent readers and subscribers:

1. Link to Valuable Content (Link Bait)

In other terms, Link baits have proved to be very valuable and effective. It is an untimed strategy that can lead to large number of backlinks pointing back to your site from other authoritative and also from new websites and blogs. A lot of bloggers might not consider this strategy but if you are blogging about a tough niche, you might have to consider.

2. Relevant SEO

Relevant SEO is very important for blog success. Imagine how you would feel when you click on a link that promises you to something but doesn’t deliver. This can be one of the most frustrating experiences a searcher can have. To avoid this, you need to optimize your blog for relevant search terms.

3. Internal Linking

Internal linking is one of the best ways to increase readership and give exposure to other older posts. Make sure you link to relevant blog posts. It can be fun so do not get carried away. Think about it, go through it, and be logical and relevant. Remember, massive linking can scare your readers away.

4. Use Related Posts Plugin

By installing Related Post Plugin in your blog, you can easily lower your bounce rates. Related Posts plugin provides a list of related posts or pages below every blog post. When your visitors go through your blog posts, related post plugin will provide your readers with more of what they were searching for.

Think about it, when you search a video on YouTube, you get a list of other related videos either after the video or on the right hand side of the page.

Download the Related Post Plugin

5. Popular Posts Plugin

Another great way to increase readership is to place a list of Most Popular Posts in your sidebar. It is very easy to install the Popularity plugin and it is very effective. This widget will produce a list of your popular posts based on comments, views and links.

Download the Popularity Plugin

6. WP Greet Box

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. You can also set a default greeting message for new visitors suggesting them to subscribe to your RSS feed. Having these targeted suggestions will help your blog increase exposure, loyal readership, and reader interaction. I love this plugin and recommend it to all the bloggers.

Download WP Greet Box

7. Top Commentators Plugin

Reward your readers with the Top Commentators Plugin. This will encourage them to visit your blog frequently and make a contribution.

Download Top Commentators Plugin

Conclusion

Gaining a massive audience is difficult but it is 100% possible. If I can do it, so can you.

My personal advice—do not write for yourself or the web. Develop a voice and talk to your readers. Help people and they will return the favor. Do not follow or copy others ideas; Instead be a leader and I can guarantee success.Check Out Related Posts:

7 Tips To Convert One Time Visitors to Subscribers is a post from: MasterMind Blogger

10 Free Plugins To Make Your WordPress Blog Super Fast

S Ahsan — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:29:02 +0000

Speed up your WordPress Blog

If you want tons of traffic to your blog, you need to make sure that your blog runs fast. Without saying much about it, I am listing some of the best plugins to make your wordpress zooooooOOoooM!!

WP Super Cache- This is a very fast caching plugin for WordPress. It generates static file of your posts and stores them in the database so lets say that everytime your post is loaded, your server will use the cached file. This makes your blog really fast. If any of your posts get popular and receive tons of traffic then this is your friend.

W3 Total Cache- I recommend this to all the new as well as the pro bloggers. Trusted by many popular blogs, this plugin improves the user experience and server performance, caching every aspect of your site. It also reduces the download time of your themes or posts. You should start using this as soon as you build your first blog. This one is much simpler and has fewer options than WP Super Cache.

AskApache Crazy Cache- This plugin caches every single posts within your wordpress blog at the same time- pretty sweet.

GZIP Output- This plugin automatically compresses CSS, Javascript and HTML output. This allows the codes to travel faster from your blog to a visitor’s web browser. This is a simple change and is necessary; it will not affect what your readers see instead it will load much faster in their browser

WP Widget Cache- A high-performance caching plugin for wordpress, and a plus for WP-Cache or WP Super Cache!

WP Minify- This plugin uses the Minify engine to combine and compress Java Script and CSS files to improve page load time. You should definitely use this in your blog.

Cos-Html-Cache- This one is one of the most efficient WP caching plugins that speeds up your blog performance and increases its responsive rate.

DB Cache Reloaded- This plugin caches every database query with given lifetime. It is compatible with WordPress version 2.8 and above and claims to be better than WP Super Cache.

Free CDN- If you have static files such as images, js, css, your pages might take a longer time to load and will also slow down your blog. A CDN is a content delivery network. Static files are cached on the CDN and pulled from their servers and not yours which means this will allows your server to do less work and serve more and run faster.

Staticize Reloaded- Caches your pages and posts, creates a unique key based on the page variables and if a page is loaded, it will check for identical variables and pull out the info from a static file rather than building the page from the database.

These are the best caching plugins for wordpress and you can use and try any of them. Just remember that using these plugins will speed up your wordpress blog and increase its performance.Check Out Related Posts:

10 Free Plugins To Make Your WordPress Blog Super Fast is a post from: MasterMind Blogger

Top WordPress Optimization Tips

S Ahsan — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:23:54 +0000

Wordpress Optimization

If you have high traffic to your blog then you must optimize WordPress and your server to run as efficiently as possible. This is very important and I have provided a step by step guide on how to do that. Follow and Implement. Let me know how this worked out for you.

SEO

Part 1- SEO

1. Permalinks are important so make sure you set good ones which are visually attractive.

2. Change settings with Robots- Nofollow/noindex wp-admin, login pages, inappropriate categories etc

3. Write better titles. Make use of All in 1 Seo Pack or Platinum Seo Pack Plugins

4. Do not generate meta descriptions automatically. Write them yourself or just leave it blank

5. Create proper pagination- WP-pagenavi might help

6. Disable comments on Pages (About, Advertise, Contact etc)

7. Check out my wordpress optimization guide. Follow and implement every step you find in there.

Speed

Part 2- Speed

1. Install WP Super Cache

2. Move .htaccess directives to your server config ( only if you have the option). Disable .htaccess parsing

3. Combine CSS files into 1 big CSS file

4. Make sure that Java script is loaded in the footer

5. Use CSS Sprites

6. Add a php opcode cache

7. Replace the crappy plugins with the better ones available online

8. Switch to a better hosting. Check out the reviews at King of Hosting- Yes, this is one of my site and you are most welcome to add your reviews.

Maintenance

Part3- Maintenance

1. Use WP-dbmanager to backup your files frequently

2. Optimize and backup your database everyday if possible

3. Check your queries with the debug wordpress plugin

4. Use anti-spam plugin to kill spam in your blog comments

5. Remove any irrelevant and useless widgets

6. Track your uptime. You can use several tools to do that.

7. Check for 404 errors and fix it using redirection. 404 notifier can be helpful

8. Remove unnecessary meta tags, info or details.

Social

Part 4- Social

1. Use good social plugins that will allow your readers to submit the posts they like. Good ones would be sociable, sexy bookmarks, Digg Digg etc

2. WP greet box is awesome. Use one on your blog and greet your visitors

3. Allow visitors to subscribe to your comments with a link or plugin

4. Enable discus or gravatar to allow the readers display their avatars.

5. Add a ReTweet Button to your post

Analytics

Part 5- Tracking/Analytics

1. Google analytics is the best so far. You can use a plugin or insert the code in the footer section

2. Signup with feedburner to track your RSS

3. Use a twitter analytic to track traffic from twitter

4. Use Blog metric plugin and improve yourself everyday

I hope you found this useful. If you think I have missed any which are worth mentioning then feel free to add them in your comments.Check Out Related Posts:

Top WordPress Optimization Tips is a post from: MasterMind Blogger