I end the week with a small tweak to this blogging tips blog. I removed my Feedburner chicklet which is showing 142 at the time I am publishing this post. In my blogging resolutions for 2008, I aim to get more than 300 RSS subscribers at the end of the year but the low subscriber count showing on the chicklet is doing more harm than helping me to achieve my goal.
Don’t Boast RSS Count Too Early
I recommend bloggers to show the RSS chicklet after achieving at least 300 RSS subscribers. Showing off a low subscriber count will only flush out the thoughts of some new readers thinking of whether a subscription is worth. John Chow, in his recent interview with Alvin Phang, was quoted saying:
It is a psychological factor. If a shopping mall is empty, no one would dare to enter it. However, when one people walks in, everyone will follow.
Maki from Dosh Dosh revealed his RSS feed count only after he has more than 10,000 RSS subscribers. The response to that announcement was overwhelming because everyone was so curious about the figure until such a big one popped out.
More blogosphere buzz and blogging tips will be presented to you after the jump.
Win a Blog Contest as Daily Routine
Never ever won a blog contest and thought that you are just a miserable blogger that will not get lucky for even once in your whole life? Think again. Max came up with this interesting article on how you can win blog contests easily.
Many people think that it is impossible to win these contests, but let me assure you that it is much easier than one would ever expect.
I have won a few blog contests but my luck never brought me any big prizes that are worthy of a boast. With the tips provided, you might have the chance of winning the ongoing blog contests held by Jim and Carl which offer incredible prizes and of course, cash that will drown you.
Stop Making Stupid Grammatical Errors
Jody pointed out 10 Flagrant Grammar Mistakes that Make You Look Stupid which I think can be the read for the week for all bloggers.
When we commit a grammatical crime in e-mails, discussion posts, reports, memos, and other professional documents, there’s no going back. We’ve just officially gone on record as being careless or clueless.
It’s not necessary to be an editor or a language whiz or a spelling bee triathlete to spot such mistakes. They have a way of doing a little wiggle dance on the screen and then reaching out to grab the reader by the throat.
For bloggers, having a high level of grammatical mistakes degrades the quality of your writing, indirectly giving negative impact to your blog. I do make grammatical mistakes all the time and proofreading helps to weed some of them out.
Get More Benefits Out of Social Media Success
Ever wonder why more and more bloggers are pursuing social media success? Secondary results of social media success which are listed out by Steven might contain some of the reasons why you see bloggers are starting to write for social media users.
Start to learn tips on how you can utilize social media as a traffic generator for your blogs as it will be the main traffic source for blogs in Web 2.0.
Social media brings in more than traffic. It pulls in nearly everything, as listed by Steven, that will make up a better stats for your blog (positive ones clearly more than the negatives).
Auto-Responding Messages for Your Needs
Tim Ferriss, the author of the 4-Hour Workweek (a great book teaching on productivity), wrote an interesting blog entry, The Best (and Worst?) Autoresponders of 2007 that listed out some interesting contents for your e-mail responders so that the parties sending you e-mails will not go mad if you don’t reply their mails promptly.
The number of mails I received so far from my blogging tips blog readers is still manageable as I only check my e-mail inbox once every day. E-mails are killing your productivity and creativity (vital for bloggers) if you read every one of them every time they reach your inbox.
For those who are receiving tonnes of e-mails from your blog readers, you can take a look at my Contact page. You should notice that there is a short message saying "I ensure a reply in 48 hours!" The message is to cut off readers’ expectations for prompt reply. As a blogger, especially a part-time one, your life is more than just reading and replying e-mails.
Summing Up Your Blogging Week
My blogging week has been quite fun in a way because I am starting to pick up my momentum in blogosphere participation. I also became more active in sourcing out blogs from other niches so that I can learn more on how to build a successful blog in different niches.
How was your blogging week? February is ending and should I be expecting some earning stats from all of you? Anything such as spikes in your blog traffic happened?
Subscribe to Wayne Liew Dot Com RSS Feed for more quick blogging tips leeched from every part of the blogosphere.
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice info do u get here. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for the link Wayne!
Good luck bud. You have enough quality content to reach 300… maybe you need to get a bit of buzz going
Pretty nice post.
Love the auto responder!
I am sure yoou are going to reach your goals of getting 300 subscribers. Best of luck.
How was your blogging week?
Terribly busy, as usual.
February is ending and should I be expecting some earning stats from all of you?
Earning stats? Do you mean earning cold hard moolah?
Anything such as spikes in your blog traffic happened?
Spikes? No spikes so far. Been quite constant recently.
@ Yoko and Steven
You’re welcome.
@ Jason
I am working on something in the background. Good luck with your contest, mate.
@ edgar
The autoresponder is for busy guys like me, not you.
@ Madhur
Thanks. I will work towards it.
@ Deimos
Ya, I always see earnings stats being posted and discussed all over the blogosphere.
@Wayne:
Since I am not making tonnes of moolah at the moment, I’ll keep my earning stats private for now.
Wayne, i too have decided to show the subscribers chicklet after i get 200 subscribers.. Long way for me to go, but your thinking is right and perfect
I haven’t got many subscribers yet (depends on how many is many to you
) and i haven’t planned on showing my sbscriber’s count for now.
I began joining social networks and just to get me started and build my profile, I had to reduce my posting frequency. I hope all will be settled as the month ends and I can reap what I sowed
I would report my earnings if I had any
. Thanks for the info.
I agree with this. I removed mine too. Hopefully it helps.
i thought that is is good if you have more than 100….
maybe for now you could do a fake gif for feedburner stats…i have seen one b4..hehe
@ Chetan
Let’s do this together then…
@ Louis
Remember to track every action that you have decided to do to your blog so that you will know what ways will reap you the best rewards. Cheers!
@ Miracle Blade
Not everyone is making good money from blogging and in fact, most don’t. I didn’t post any earnings as well.
@ kljs
Hopefully, it will be the right way.
@ Rice Blogger
Fake equals cheating.
Anyway, being in this blogging niche means readers are smarter with these kind of tricks.
Thanks for the great tip on the feedburner chicklet. I had my count showing at the start with no subscriber which grew to only a few. But once I removed it I saw a massive jumps thanks to your idea.
Quite a lot of handy tips here. Thanks for the excellent tips Wayne.
And judging by the quality of your articles, I would say you will easily be able to reach your goals well ahead of time if you keep up the great work. Good luck!
I must say i was getting subscribers until i started showing the counter. I might follow your advice and remove it.
quite true also, not revealing the RSS feed until certain amount. Be more mysterious huh hahaha.
@ Jon
I am glad that the idea is helping. Anyway, it will require patience from us to hold ourselves from showing off the chicklet.
@ Fahad
I will try to write and provide great and consistent blogging tips all the time. Thanks for the complements.
@ seo blogger
It is psychology at work. I hope you will get a high amount of subscriers soon.
@ jayhan
Maki shocked the blogosphere when he revealed his chicklet. That is exactly what I am trying to do here.