Skip to main content

Feedburner Email Subscriber Count and Feed Reader Numbers Dropped too Low? Get them back up by...


by Paula Neal Mooney

Yesterday I checked my Feedburner Email Subscriber count on Watch Free Episodes to see if I'd hit the 1,000 subscribers count yet and was dismayed to see it had dropped to 86.

Oh no! I thought.

Did I accidentally delete a whole bunch of Feedburner email subscribers when I deleted one woman who sent me an email to unsubscribe? (Some people miss that unsubscribe button.)

Thankfully, the newly redesigned Darren Rowse put up a post yesterday that showed lots of people were freaking out over their Feedburner email subscriber counts dropping.

And praise be to the Lord of Hosts above that I checked again today, and my Feedburner email subscriber count had indeed passed 1,000 on my other site, and was close to 500 for this one.

How to Get Your Feedburner Email Subscriber Numbers to Increase
So now that I've teased you with that intriguing blog post title, here are the main ways I've gotten my Feedburner email and feed subscriber counts to increase and how you can, too:

John Chow won't you please turn on your Feedburner email subscriber option?1 - Turn on your Feedburner email subscriber option!
Since Feedburner has yet to make their email subscriber option default to yes, you have to turn it on. Go to Feedburner.com (burn a feed if you haven't for your blog yet) and click on My Feeds, your blog's name, Publicize tab, Email Subscriptions on the left hand side, save it and activate it at the bottom.

As much as I've begged him to spam me, John Chow has yet to turn on his Feedburner email subscriber option.

(Hint, hint, John. Hint hint!)

Don't you wish your Feedburner feed was hot like me?So anyway, once he does, his Feedburner feed will look more like mine to the left.

It will have John Chow's email option showing up like mine, with the Get Paula Neal Mooney delivered by Email option displayed beneath the (Choose Your Reader) drop-down menu for folks who access the feed in any other browser besides Firefox, which annoyingly truncates the feeds.

Once you turn on your Feedburner email option, use the code they provide to...

2 ...drop that Feedburner subscribe box and link everywhere!
Put an email sign-up box in prominent places like we have up top on Fantasy Football Free Advice and Noel Gourdin's sites, or in the top left sidebar on my main site.

Also, incorporate the email link within your blog posts and change up the anchor text to say something different, like "drop your email address here for free daily updates," or something.

3 - Decrease the number of Feedburner unsubscribers...
...by making sure people know what they're getting into. If you're a daily blogger, let them know that before they sign-up.

And try to give them a flavor for the kind of updates they'll be getting in their inbox -- like this site, which gives a mish-mash of blogging related stuff.

Increase Feedburner email subscribers4 - Make that orange button mean something
The standard orange RSS subscribe button means a lot to us techies, but most average Joes that come across your blog still have no idea what it means.

Make it mean something by using an RSS subscribe button with the word "Subscribe" on it like this or, or one of those cute post-it note subscribe images I've seen.

5 - Ask the readers to subscribe -- explain how they can add it to Google, etc. -- and make sure they know it's free!
At the end of most of my posts I'll put a footer that breaks out individually how people can add updates from my blog to their Google, AOL or Yahoo homepage -- if they don't want to get emails from me.

You never know when you have that one chance to grab a search-engine seeker that can become a lifetime reader.

6 - Burn a Feedburner feed for your comments, and give readers the option to email subscribe to them
WordPress' Feedburner plugin makes it easy to burn feeds for your comments (something I still need to seriously do for some of my other sites.)

But Blogger makes the subscribing to comments tasks a bit clunkier. I mean, who the heck knows what that "SUBSCRIBE TO: POST COMMENTS (ATOM)" means?

Make it easier for your readers by right-clicking on the white space on my site, then choose "View Page Source" to see the code starting with "Want to know what people say about this comment and post?" to learn how I drew people's attention to the comments subscribe.

And follow the Blog Bloke's instructions on how to get the comments on Blogger to stand out with a little color.

7 - Put an image next to your Feedburner email subscriber stuff
I noticed that throwing an image next to text I want people to read draws their eye more than 1,000 words. So put a pretty pic next to your pretty prose, and let's hope all our Feedburner email subscriber numbers all look like this soon...Get a higher Feedburner email subscriber count...


Paula Neal MooneyHey! Where ya going? Don't leave without:
  • subscribing for free to my blog by email
  • or add it to your Google Homepage or Reader
  • or add it to your Yahoo homepage
  • or any of your other favorite news readers for updates on how to make money online, get more traffic for your website and more...

  • And check out my other sites:
    WatchFreeEpisodes.com,Find The Answers,Noel Gourdin's Website and 2007 Fantasy Football Free Advice sites.

    Comments

    Sister2brother said…
    Another very good tip for one to help keep abreast of the traffic and subsribers. I dare say that I have had my blog for so long that I have to check now and see if I have that on my own blog!

    Oh the different ways to get subscribers and traffic to one's own site or blog!

    It's a wonder we don't run out of space!
    Blog Bloke said…
    Wow! I can see that you are doing fantastic Paula. Keep up the great work.

    I've been thinking about you and missed your great comments. Thanks btw for the link.

    Cheers!

    ...BB

    Popular posts from this blog

    Paula's List of Blogger Salaries...Are you on the list?

    Update: For those who continue to enjoy this post, check out my website about 50 real online people making more than $50k per year , and my page where I update my online salary . UPDATE: Before you read any further or especially link to this old list, please check out "Paula's New List of Blogger Salaries (and Webmasters, Affiliate Marketers, Content Scrapers, Domainers and any other title you can think of) June 2007" by clicking here! ~ Thanks, PAULA NEAL MOONEY by Paula Neal Mooney One of my favorite features in Parade magazine is the issue where they grab a random sampling of people and report their incomes -- from the millionaires to the working poor. Since I'm fascinated with how much money bloggers and webmasters are making nowadays, I've created a similar list -- a random sampling of people making money on the net. Who's on Paula's List of Blogger and Webmaster Salaries? I spent hours and hours scouring the internet for the last-reporte

    Paula's New List of Blogger Salaries (and Webmasters, Affiliate Marketers, Content Scrapers, Domainers and any other title you can think of) June 2007

    FIND OUT HOW MUCH BLOGGERS REALLY MAKE ONLINE -- CHECK OUT THIS NEW WEBSITE ABOUT MONEY-MAKING ONLINE CALLED 50 OVER $50K... by Paula Neal Mooney The time has come. The time is now. Paula N. Mooney will you please publish that list now?! (Yes, I fancy Dr. Seuss' iambic pentameter.) My WebMaster blest me with a viral post called "Paula's List of Blogger Salaries," and the response was so wonderful, here lies an update. It's bigger and better than ever before with more pics, and double the amount of bloggers, webmasters, domainers, affiliate marketers (or a smidgen of some or all of those titles) and their reported incomes. How Much Do You Make? Money is funny. The abundance of it, the lack of it, the subject of cash in general gets attention. While some invoke their choice not to post their online income nor discuss it at all, I've always been of the Suze Orman mindset ever since I read her first book. Suze encourages people to talk ab

    Digg.com's Autobury Secret Blacklist...Are you still being banned by automatic burying?

    UPDATE: PLEASE CLICK THIS LINK TO DIGG THIS STORY AND TELL DIGG TO PLAY FAIR... by Paula Neal Mooney Many of us know the power of Digg.com, dreamed up by Kevin Rose, who touted it as a "user driven" site that says it allows the general public to determine the stories they want to see make it to the front page by voting for interesting articles they find across the web. The more votes the public gives an article, the better chance it should have to make it to the front page. Theoretically... The power of Digg's front page Digg.com -- according to Alexa -- is now more popular than The New York Times. Getting one of your articles or blog posts to the front page of Digg.com will get your website seen by plenty of eyes. John Chow experienced a one-day traffic record of 55,856 page views when one of his posts hit the front page of Digg. Digg Bans Domains...then Supposedly Unbans Them One day, Digg banned me -- I'm still not clear why. I found out they banned a whole bun