10 Ways to Get More RSS Readers for Your Blog

Starting a blog is exciting. You can express your unique views on topics you care about and make money doing so. Having a popular blog can lead to guest appearances on television and radio shows and even book deals. But how do you get more RSS readers to your blog?

Here are the Best 10 easy ways to get more RSS readers.

1. Find interested readers

Do you write about political issues? Fashion? Celebrities? Whatever it is that you write about there are thousands (at least) of people who are interested. They just don’t know you exist yet. Contact them to let them know. You may be doing them a favor.

2. Ask friends and family

Remember back in grade school when you were selling candy and other things for fundraisers? Who did you ask for help then? These same people would be more than happy to help you if they can. But if they don’t know that they can get an email every time you blog, they’ll be unable to support you.

3. Social networking

For those who already have a MySpace or Facebook account, this is a no-brainer. People who know you should know that you have a blog that you are regularly posting on, especially when it can be part of your regular announcements.

4. Write for another website

Writing sites like Suite101 and The Untrained Housewife allow people make money writing online based on traffic to advertisers. In addition to this you can link relevant articles you write there back to your blog, increasing traffic.

5. Participate in the writing site’s community

Writing sites often have open forums that are exclusively for the authors who contribute there. On these forums writers can learn new things about online writing and can direct people to their blogs for some simple promotion. Through this, some of the writers may like your blog and become RSS readers.

6. Attend a writing convention

Writing conventions are great. People who are serious about writing and helping others promote their work will be there. Even if you feel out of place in a big pond like this you’ll soon lose your feelings of doubt as the other bloggers and site owners will invite you with open arms to discuss your content as well as your plans for the future. Don’t forget to have business cards made.

7. Share PR Juice with another blogger

People who work together find that they can accomplish more than they would have alone. Seek out other bloggers and offer to write about their blog and how great it is (but don’t do this with blogs that you can’t honestly endorse). When you do this, they’ll get some traffic from you and you’ll get some from them. If you did this with 10 other bloggers, they would be happy to get some of your readers, and you will be very happy to have all of theirs.

8. Advertise

Ad campaigns can be expensive, but they don’t have to be. A great way to gain readers is to write about something they care about and get the word out. This can be done by interviewing a local writer, fire chief, class valedictorian, or retiring mayor. When you write about them, they’ll be excited. The result will be them posting about it on their Facebook page as well as sending an email to friends and family members.

9. Sign all email with a link to your blog

This simple method will bring many people to your page out of curiosity. Family members who hadn’t seen it before will if you write them enough email.

10. Invite a guest blogger to post (NPXP is accepting Guest Posters btw)

Just like the person who was interviewed, people who want to be writers will be thrilled to add a post to a blog. Not only will they become very familiar with your site, but they’ll get the word out about it so that people can see their work.

This guest post is contributed by Melissa Tamura.

Melissa Tamura ranked the best online colleges for the Zen College Life Directory of online degrees.