Increase your RSS subscribers
A big emphasis on how well your blog is doing is by tracking your RSS subscription numbers. Are they high or are they low? Either way, you’ll never have too many. Increasing RSS subscribers is something every blogger is always trying to do and it isn’t as easy as it sounds.
A big mistake that a lot of new bloggers make is not being upfront with their want of RSS subscribers. I see little RSS subscription buttons on blogs, way in some distant corner. Don’t be ashamed of your RSS button. It is your friend. Do something like me. I smacked a big ass banner on the top of every single post page and the main page. If that doesn’t get people’s attention, then I don’t know what will. Don’t be afraid to ask your readers to subscribe, either. I’m sure a lot of them come to your site daily anyways but have never gone through the trouble of subscribing.
As your RSS subscription rates increase, so will your traffic and revenue. That’s what we’re aiming for, right?
Some quick statistics about why I believe this will work(don’t take it personally guys, just needed examples 
):
http://www.imbloggingthat.com/ has been around since the genesis of January 2006 and has 26 RSS subscribers. This is due to the fact that Katy has her subscription buttons on the bottom of her page. They’re hard for me to find and probably are hard to find for other readers.
http://theblogscape.com/ has been around since August 2007 and has 16(let me know if this is wrong Ben, I got it off your about page) RSS subscribers. I think that Ben could easily increase his numbers by putting his RSS link at the top of his post instead of at the bottom so that it is more noticeable.
Both of these are good blogs. They are both well written and informative. However, due to some bad placing, they’re not maximizing their amount of RSS subscriptions.
And now for my stats.
I’ve been open for a little over 5 days and already have 21 RSS subscribers and seem to climb everyday. At the moment, I should hit my 100 goal easily. Why? Big ass banner.
January 2nd, 2008 at 11:34 am
Appreciate the link.
While your points are great, I think RSS subscribers have a lot to do with the overall theme of a blog. For example, I’m Blogging That only just recently came out from the shadows as not being a personal blog. For quite some time all I wrote about was me… LOL Not a as many people are interested in personal blogs as they are other things.
As far as placement and location, you’re absolutely correct. In my new (soon to debut) design for I’m Blogging That, I have moved the placement of my RSS buttons and will mention it much more in hopes of gaining new subscribers.
My issue is that with Feedburner, the amount of subscribers I have changes so huge every day. For example, today I’m sitting at 32 subscribers. What gives? :o)
January 2nd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Honestly, I don’t care where someone sticks their RSS button/link, because with FF, I’ve got it right in my URL bar, and it automatically takes me to my RSS reader, to subscribe. Easy as pie for me. I think I’ve used the actual link on a blog once or twice in 2 years.
Me, I don’t think I have many, if any, subscribers. I don’t even pay attention to it. I do know that I have a few that follow me through LiveJournal, through the RSS reader/journal maker thing that they’ve got. Other than that, I have no clue, and it doesn’t really bother me (then again, personal journal, with fits and spurts of semi-important information).
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Do you have a toolbar or something that takes you to the subscription? I haven’t heard about it, what is the link to get to it?
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Lol, yeah, I hear it’s tough to get people reading personal blogs.
January 2nd, 2008 at 2:51 pm
It’s just the normal orange RSS button looking thing:
It might be Beatnik, but I’m not 100% sure: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4979
It’s the only add-on I have that’s related to RSS feeding
January 2nd, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Thanks for the link.
January 2nd, 2008 at 5:11 pm
[...] my thoughts were reconfirmed with a post about the importance of the location of your RSS feed subscription link. And I realized I’m Blogging That doesn’t really have the [...]
January 2nd, 2008 at 11:44 pm
What you’re saying really makes sense.
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:40 am
Glad you got something out of it