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In the never-ending struggle to increase your blog readership, generating traffic to your blog is only half the battle. The other half involves retention of traffic, or better yet, to get these visitors to subscribe to your blog. I was inspired after reading Moshin’s article to write a post on what makes me, as a reader, subscribe to a particular blog. In the style of Work n Play, I have given this topic a personal spin by providing five requirements that would make ME subscribe to YOUR blog.

1. Eye Candy

Everyone (males and females) like eye candy. Whether it’s Jessica Alba’s beautiful smile, Brad Pitt’s handsome mug, or a well designed webpage, we all enjoy looking at nice things. Simplicity, well coordinated color schemes, innovative designs, elegant font types . . . they all come together to present a powerful first impression to a new visitor. If your site has great content, but doesn’t appeal to the eye, you have already lost the battle! Here are two examples of nicely designed sites (besides the one that you are currently looking at)

Smashing Magazine
psdtuts

For you new bloggers, I know it can be difficult to find an excellent Wordpress theme for free, but there are certainly some decent themes out there. The only problem is that those themes are probably being used by other bloggers as well. But you always have the ability to customize your theme and fiddle with the CSS to differentiate yourself. And if you become somewhat successful, you can ask John to help design your Wordpress theme.

2. Advertisements

The bane of all blogs and websites (if not done in good taste). I refuse to subscribe to any blog that does an egregious job incorporating their ads. If you have ads, it’s a good idea to place them onto your blog strategically so as to not interfere with the visitor’s viewing experience. Contrary to popular advertising opinion, I think a good ad is one that is NOT noticed by the reader. Let’s face it, no one really likes to look at ads, but it’s a necessary evil. So if you’re going to have them on your blog, at least put them in tastefully. Here are some good examples of websites incorporating ads into their website smartly,

Pixel2life
Freelance Switch (bears a striking resemblance to a certain blog)

3. Content

Eye candy is great, but most readers are sophisticated enough to look underneath the glamour. When I visit a blog for the first time, I like to explore the recent posts and the popular posts to see if I’m interested in what the blog has to offer. If these posts are located on the sidebar, that just makes my job as a reader that much easier. Catchy titles, informative posts, and up to date news are three things I look for. But most importantly, regular updates are essential! [Read more →]

Tags: Blogging, RSS Feed by turtie - 8 Comments »

This is something that I found to be extremely useful. Most of the blogs offer you an email subscription so you can get the feeds right to your inbox ( like the one I have on the sidebar, go ahead, subscribe, but not every blog has this feature and not every blogger realizes that they can add this feature.

Rmail, an email feed subscription service takes care of that. If you find a blog that you want to subscribe using your email address and cant see an option on the blog itself, go ahead and give this service a try. The service is free, all you have to do is enter the feed address and the email address that you want to use to subscribe the feeds.

Also, if your blogging software or platform has an email gateway this service can be used to post entries to one’s blog through their email as well.

Tags: RSS Feed by Ritu - 2 Comments »

Personally, this service is one of the best service there could be for bloggers. We as bloggers and blog readers dont always find time to sit infront of the computer and read articles from our favorite blogs. Well, there is a solution to that.

Odiogo is a free service that lets you convert your RSS feeds into high quality audio format which can either be embedded into your website or downloaded into your ipod or MP3 player. This sure makes life easier on the run as you can let your busy readers listen to your posts instead of sitting infront of the computer. Great service and its free. You can check this site out at http://www.odiogo.com/

Tags: RSS Feed, Reviews, Tools by Ritu - 2 Comments »

Users of FeedBurners will now have access to two services that were previously reserved as paid services. FeedBurner Stats Pro provides the number of people who have clicked or viewed individual content items in a feed. Also users will have access to the MyBrand service that will allow for the consistency of a feed address with a hosted website’s domain.

Tags: Internet, News, RSS Feed by Ritu - No Comments »