Written on July 18th, 2008 at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse

21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky

Blog Promotion, Featured Posts 243 comments

Does the traffic coming to your site come in a Yo-Yo like cycle of ups and downs that never really seems to go anywhere in the long run? Glue

Yesterday I wrote about a common problem that many bloggers face – spikes of traffic followed by flat-lines and promised a follow up post today on how to break this cycle by building ’sticky’ sites.

My point yesterday was to encourage readers not to see spikes in traffic as the ultimate goal but as a stepping stone to ongoing growth.

What is a ‘Sticky’ Site?

A sticky website is one where a first time reader arrives and finds it difficult to leave.

Not because the site owner captures them in a ‘RickRoll’ or a series of windows asking them if they REALLY want to leave – but because something about the site motivates them to explore it further – and more importantly to make a decision to (and takes some steps to ensure that they) return again to it.

21 Techniques to Make Your Site Sticky

The following 21 techniques are ways that you can make your blog or website more sticky. They come from my own experience of blogging over the last 5 years. As a result of basing this on personal experience I’m going to show you quite a few examples of what I’ve done (after all i know my own sites best). I’d love you to add your tips and show examples of what you’ve done in comments below to make it a more useful resource for readers.

1. Make Your Invitations to Subscribe to your blog Prominent

One of the most important things to do is to have a prominent call to action for readers coming to your blog to subscribe to it.

In fact I’d recommend having more than one invitation – one prominent one above the fold and prominent in your sidebar or navigation area and then a second one below your post. This means that people are triggered to subscribe whether they have just arrived on your blog or if they’ve just finished reading a post (a ‘pause point‘).

This is what I do on my blogs and my tracking shows that both get a fairly even number of people using the two options.

By the way – if you’re not already subscribed to ProBlogger’s RSS feed – here it is!

2. Educate Readers about Your Subscription Methods

One of the most read posts here on ProBlogger is my ‘what is RSS‘ post which I have below my Subscription link. It’s there simply to educate readers on what RSS is and in doing so sell them a way to connect with my blog. Interestingly enough – quite a few other bloggers around the web now link to the page to educate their readers too.

Similarly – I occasionally will write a post on my blogs that invites new readers to subscribe. Sometimes I think we mistakenly assume that all of our readers have been with us for a long time and all know how to use our site – however many of your newer readers might not know the full story.

Here’s one of these posts that I ran on DPS last year. The day after I did this my RSS subscribers jumped considerably. It was just a matter of educating my newer readers of the blog on how they could connect better with it. You’ll also note that at the end of the post I asked readers to let me know how they follow the blog. This was for two reasons:

Firstly I wanted to involve older readers who already knew all the information in the post. It somehow seemed to make the post more relevant for them as it invited them to participate.

Secondly it was about social proof and showing newer readers how others used the site. I think the comments section reflected some of this.

3. Good Blog Design

I’ve always believed that a good blog design is an important part of helping readers to decide whether they’re going to hang around and track with your site over the long haul.

Readers make judgements about your site within seconds of arriving at it – if they see something cluttered and confusing they’ll be less likely to want to return.

Good design highlights your content, helps people navigate your site well and creates a good impression – and first impressions matter!

Keep your design simple, familiar and obvious and you’ll be on the road to a sticky site.

PS: A common mistake that I see bloggers making is to crowd out their content with too many ads above the fold. If a reader arrives at your site and has to scroll to see the content you’ll increase the numbers of people who simply hit the ‘back’ button on their browser.

4. On Site Branding

Work hard at building a brand that is attractive and draws people in.

First time readers should know what your blog is about at a first glance. Use your blog’s title, it’s design, taglines, post titles, about pages, logo and navigational elements to communicate what your blog is about.

Also – do something to differentiate the brand of your blog. It could be a logo, image, color scheme, blog name….

5. Make Your Blog Personal

One thing that I’ve seen a number of bloggers do really well over the last year or two is brand themselves well on their blog. While it’s not essential to have a blog that is centered around your personal brand I find that when you do add a personal touch to your blog that it can connect with readers in a powerful way.

The fact is that some readers are more interested in connecting with a person than a collection of content.

Adding your photo, writing in a personal tone, using video/audio and including personal details and stories of how you engage with your topic can give your blog personality which will draw some of your readers into a relationship with you.

6. When you get a rush of traffic to one particular post….

When the spikes in traffic come along you need to be ready to act (and act fast – because they can be momentary).

Add invitations to subscribe to your feed within your post. Something along the lines of ‘enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to….’ can work really well.
It can also be worthwhile adding links at the end of your post to ‘further reading’ on posts that are getting lots of reader to them.
Sometimes when you get a spike it can even be worth writing a ‘welcome’ post. For example if I get a mention in a mainstream media publication that sends significant traffic I’ll often do a post that welcomes people but also gives them a ‘tour’ of the site (example).
Another clever move is to quickly write up a followup article to the one that is getting all the traffic. For example – if this post suddenly got a burst of traffic I could quickly write a post ‘10 more ways to make your blog sticky’ and then add a link to that post at the end of this one (update: actually I wrote one called 7 more ways to make your blog sticky). This shows readers that you’ve got more to say on your topic than just one post. Every extra page view is a step closer to them subscribing (if the pages they view are good quality).

These ‘hot posts’ are really important to optimize (learn how to optimize popular posts).

7. Get Interactive

Getting someone to DO something on your blog means that they’ve invested something into your blog and increases the likelihood that they’ll return.

Interactive blogs are often also sticky ones. Interaction could include

Comments
Competitions
Polls
Projects and Memes

As a result it’s worth spending some time Learning how to get readers to comment on your blog – and exploring other ways to make your blog more interactive. Get your readers involved as much as you can!

The other bonus for ‘giveaways’, ’special offers’ and ‘competitions’ is that when you do them regularly some readers will subscribe because they don’t want to miss out on future giveaways. The current competition might not interest them but they sure want to know when you do one in future.

8. Add a ’subscribe to comments’ feature to your blog

This draws those who comment back to continue the conversation and increases the chances of them becoming loyal readers.

You’ll find that only some readers will ever use this – but even if just a few do you’ve had a win.

I have this enabled here at ProBlogger (I don’t have it on by default – those leaving comments have to choose to subscribe because I don’t want to inundate them with comments) and at any given time there are several hundred people subscribed to comments on posts. I use this subscribe to comments plugin to run mine.

PS: just be aware that if you get a lot of unmoderated comment spam it can be a little embarrassing to have this feature – I learned the hard way.

9. Respond to Comments

This is a particularly effective way to draw readers back to your blog – particularly in the early days when you don’t have a lot of readers commenting to follow up.

There are two main ways you can do this:

respond to comments with comments
respond to comments with emails to the comment leaver

Showing those that comment on your blog that you’re interacting with them can make a real impression and will often draw them back time and time again.

10. Offer alternative ways to subscribe

subscription-alternatives Some readers will respond well to your prominent invitation to subscribe via RSS (see #1 above) but others will be more open to connecting in other ways.

I generally offer three subscription methods:

RSS
Daily email updates (RSS to Email)
Weekly newsletter (summary of the blog from the last week plus some exclusive content)

More recently I’ve also been offering readers the ability to track with my blogs via Twitter and send my latest posts to my Twitter account via TweetBurner.

Why so many options? The answer is simply that each reader has their own systems in place to consume content and connect with websites – so offering a variety of methods increases the chances that you’ll be doing something that they are familiar with.

11. Promote social media connecting points

Similarly – some of your readers will respond very well to your invitations to connect on other social media sites.

For example I have some readers on DPS who are Facebook junkies. They refuse to subscribe via RSS or email but religiously read my blog by following my Facebook profile which pulls in my latest posts.

Another small group of readers here at ProBlogger follow this blog through Technorati’s favorites feature. While I prefer to read blogs using an rss reader like Google Reader – their rhythm of reading content revolves around Technorati. As a result I’m happy that I promoted my Technorati profile (you can favorite ProBlogger here).

While you might not see the sense in people following your blog in some of these social media sites others do and at the very least promoting them can potentially reinforce your brand.

12. Highlight Your Best Content

A great way to convince readers to become loyal is to get them reading more than one of your posts (especially if they are your best posts). You can do this by linking to other posts within your content but also suggesting further reading and ‘best of’ posts around your blog.

For example – here at ProBlogger on my front page the ‘best of ProBlogger’ section is one of the most clicked upon parts of my site. This small section of the site sends people deep within the blog to some of my best work – hopefully resulting in quite a few new loyal readers.
Best-Of-Pb
At DPS I have a small section on my sidebar called ‘Digital Photography Tips’ which is a list of ‘sneeze pages‘ (or compilation pages of my best posts in certain categories). Again – these are there simply to draw people deep into the site and get them viewing some of the best the site has to offer (and hopefully to convince them to subscribe).

Best-Of-Dps

13. Create Momentum With Your Content

When you give readers a sense that you’re creating more content that they’ll want to read you give them a reason to subscribe.

For example when a reader reads the first part of a series of posts on a topic that they find useful you can count on them wanting to read the rest.

I wrote about this in a post on creating a sense of anticipation on your blog.

14. Consider Removing Dates on Old Posts

This one could be a little controversial but I find that when old posts are not dated that it doesn’t create a ‘oh this is old’ type reaction in your readers.

I’ve seen this numerous times here on ProBlogger where posts written back in 2005 have attracted comments like ‘this is old’ or ‘out of date tips’ – even when the content has been of a ‘timeless’ or evergreen nature.

Personally I think that you should consider the type of blog you have before doing this. For me it works on DPS where I’ve never had dates on posts – but not here at ProBlogger where I have a topic that is more time specific (I’ll write more on this topic in coming days).

15. Give Incentive to Subscribe

Incentive Over the last few days I’ve had a small competition going on Digital Photography School where I’m giving 3 subscribers to my newsletter there a copy of a great photography book.

1500 new subscribers later (and counting that small incentive is one of the best $50 I’ve ever spent.

Give away a book, free ebook or report, download or some other incentive to those subscribing to your blog’s feed or newsletter and you could give some readers the little extra incentive to connect that they needed.

It need not be anything expensive (or that costs you anything at all) – just make it a small bonus and see what impact that might have.

16. Keep Posting Frequency Up

One thing that I do as a blog reader deciding whether I’ll subscribe to a blog or not is to head to the home page and see how often they’ve updated recently.

There’s nothing more frustrating as a reader than to find some great content and be hungry for more only to find that the blogger hasn’t update in 3 months.

I don’t think you need to update every day – but something in the last week shows that your blog is up to date. You can also highlight this by showing your most recent posts somewhere in your sidebar.

17. Create an Engaging About Page

Another thing that I often do when I go to a new blog is to look at it’s ‘about page‘.

I like to know who is behind a blog, what their goals for it are, how it started and other information about what the blogger is on about.

This is an opportunity to sell your blog to and make a connection with prospective readers who are going out of their way to find out more about you – so use it to tell your story and draw readers in to journey with you.

PS: whatever you do – don’t let your about page be the default about page that comes with your blog.

18. Add a Community Area or Forum

One of the best things that I ever did with my photography site was to add a forum.

I cannot express to you just how sticky that area of DPS is!

While readers come to the blog once a day to read new content – some of them come to the forum ALL DAY – racking up literally hundreds of page views a week.

Forums won’t attract all of your readers (I suspect they attract some personality types and not others) – but they will connect with some and help make your site a lot stickier.

19. Social Proof

Feedburner-Subscription-Conters-2 Does your blog have readers already? If so (and even if it’s just a few) highlight this in any way that you can and you’ll show other first timers that they’re not the only one reading your blog.

People attract people and a site that is obviously being read by others will draw others into it.

This can be difficult in the early days of a blog when you don’t have a lot of activity – but as it builds show it off.

Highlight new comments, show subscriber numbers when you have them, quote readers comments, find a way to slip your stats into a post occassionally etc.

It’s a bit of a snowball effect – once you have readers they’ll bring others in.

One thing that I occassionally do at DPS on my subscribe page (a page dedicated to talking readers through 3 subscription options) is to not only highlight the options but to tell people how many people are using them. In this way those considering subscribing get a sense that they’re actually becoming a part of something that has momentum and thousands of others joining.

20. Target Readers with Specific Messages

Here are a few tools and plugins out there that enable you to present specific messages to certain readers coming to your blog based upon where they’ve arrived from and if they’ve been to your blog before.

LandingSites is a WP plugin that shows readers arriving from search engines related posts on the search term that they’ve searched for.
What Would Seth Godin Do is a plugin that welcomes new readers to your blog with a special message and invitation to subcribe.

Got any other plugins and tools for targeting readers with specific messages? Feel free to share them in comments below.

21. Sticky Content

Lastly (and most importantly in my mind) – the key to sticky sites is sticky content.

You can have the best designed site in the world with lots of the above features – but unless readers who come to it find something that connects and brings them life in some way – you’re unlikely to get them back tomorrow.

Writing engaging content needs to be your number one Priority.

What Have I Missed?

As I wrote this list the ideas just kept coming (I originally set out to write a list of 10 points… then 20…. then I just had to slip in one more) – but I’m sure there is more to say on the topic of sticky sites.

What would you add? What have you done on your site to add stickiness?

Looking forward to hearing your ideas in comments below.

PS: Welcome to StumbleUpon readers

This post has gone crazy on StumbleUpon today. If you’ve surfed in from there thanks for dropping by. If you’ve found this post helpful I’d appreciate you stumbling it. You might also find future posts on ProBlogger helpful – so don’t forget to subscribe (you know I had to do that on a post like this!)

Lastly – this post has led to some great conversation in comments below which has triggered a lot of other ideas for creating sticky blogs in my mind – so I’ve written a followup post – 7 More ways to make your blog sticky.

What next?

243 Responses to “21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky” - Add Yours

Geek's Dream Girl

July 18th, 2008 12:27 am

Wow, this is a totally awesome post. (Tho I have to wonder, it’s dated the 18th and it’s the 17th… did I go back to the future or something?)
Elizabeth

July 18th, 2008 12:27 am

I think the popular post and “sneeze” pages are key.
Thanks for the great post. We are launching a redesign next week and will be using many of these.
Brian

July 18th, 2008 12:28 am

Excellent list and some that I already use and some that I will be taking a closer look at.

I have seen on a site something similar to the Seth Godin message, but the message is actually based on the site that you have arrived from. e.g. it displays the name of the forum that the link was on to get to the site. Does nayone know what this wp plugin is?

One of the best things I did with mine to increase page views was add related post links to the posts – these are currently added manually (though I know there are several plugins for thsi)
pete

July 18th, 2008 12:35 am

I don’t think you could have provided a better roadmap to blogging success. This is a great compilation of proven tips, Darren.

Since the Chitika post and implementing some other tips of yours, I’ve managed to get things in better shape on my site. This post addresses my final question of stickiness (nice term) and will should help me close up the remaining leaks. Thank you!
Alex the Freelance Twin

July 18th, 2008 12:40 am

Great post Darren. I’d say it’s important to check our Analytics or Web stats in the middle of the day to see if there are any big spikes of traffic and from where. That way you can take advantage of that traffic while it still exists, instead of just finding out about the traffic the next day.

Explaining RSS and how to subscribe is a huge one too, since non-tech-savvy people have probably never heard of RSS, let alone know how to use it.
Dan Cole

July 18th, 2008 12:46 am

The fact that sites have a roller coaster for the number of visitors is normal. I took a look at a number of blogs, popular and not so popular, and they all have for the most part a roller coaster of visitors. The only difference between popular sites and not so popular sites is the fact that popular sites have a roller coaster that is higher off the ground so to speak.
boey

July 18th, 2008 12:46 am

Very useful tip for all the blogger.
Thanks a lot!!!
Robin

July 18th, 2008 12:49 am

It’s the 18th already here in Australia :=)

Thanks Darren – there are same new ideas here for me.
Raag Vamdatt

July 18th, 2008 12:54 am

Yes, making the website sticky is very important – the key is to provide quality content, and present it in a tasteful manner.

I always strive to make visitors stay longer on my site. Few of the things that I do are:

1. Provide solid, well-researched content that people are interested in (I write about personal finance and investment planning)

2. Have an easy-to-figure site navigation and layout – no point in confusing readers!

3. I have links within the articles that point to other relevant articles on the site

4. I have a list of related articles at the end of the post.

5. I offer free membership, and downloads that are available only to members. At relevant points in the article, I insert links to the registration page. I also have a dedicated “Benefits of Registration” page.

6. I have a “Most Popular” page on the site, so that readers can find out what others are reading in just one click.

7. I have a list of my latest 6 posts at the top of the page, and a list of 15 top posts on the sidebar (I do not have latest posts on my home page)

8. I interact with my readers through comments and emails.

I guess some of these are among the things listed by Darren….

But his list is long, and I have a long way to go!!
axioblogger

July 18th, 2008 12:55 am

In suggestion 19, I would not want to show my readers widget if I have only 5 readers and my blog is like 1 year old. It means no one wants to read my site.

How about including pictures on your site ? I noticed that you don’t put picture on your site, but today is an exception. You wanted to illustrate something.
AIAM

July 18th, 2008 1:01 am

This sort of confirms a couple of things I am doing right. My stats seem to show it as well
[IMG]http://i279.photobucket.com/albums/kk124/rabiakiva/stats_aiam.jpg[/IMG]
All nice, I got the sticky part, but with 100 visitors on a good day, does this count as doing well?
Jeroen de Miranda

July 18th, 2008 1:04 am

“…. One of the most read posts here on ProBlogger is my ‘what is RSS‘ post which I have below my Subscription link. It’s there simply to educate readers on what RSS is and in doing so sell them a way to connect with my blog. Interestingly enough – quite a few other bloggers around the web now link to the page to educate their readers too….”

just did this on my blog; great tip, thanks!
Dave

July 18th, 2008 1:04 am

I’ve been blogging for years, and I thought this was a very informative post. Great job Darrin!
Mike Nichols

July 18th, 2008 1:05 am

Darren, you’ve outdone yourself!

I’ve experienced the same zigzag pattern of readership with my blog — you could have been writing directly to me.

The niche of my blog — Anxiety Disorder and Panic Attacks — guarantees that some will come one time and leave, never to return. But I have good first-time traffic, so I’ve been puzzling over how to get more visitors to stick around.

There are so many suggestions here, it’ll take me a week to absorb them all. Thanks so much!
John Young | We Have Contact

July 18th, 2008 1:06 am

This is a post that I’m going to have to boomark and come back to with a fine-toothed comb. There’s a ton of good info here for new bloggers (especially) and veterans alike.

As far as the subscriptions, do you find that an icon (vs. just “subscribe here” text) helps out more? I have a “Subscribe” button in the upper-right of all my pages, plus a section to subscribe at the end of each post.

If there is one thing I’d like to increase, it’s my subscrptions – I’d love to hear how others have optimized this area!
Stephanerd

July 18th, 2008 1:13 am

I’m with John Young. I’m going to have to refer back to this post many times. Thanks for all the awesome tips!

I haven’t implemented this on my personal blog, yet, but I also blog for Nerve.com’s Modern Materialist, and we’ve started sticking “related post” links at the bottom of each post, and readership has exploded! It’s definitely a great way to draw readers in further.
Kirk Warren

July 18th, 2008 1:13 am

Great post Darren. I’m already working to implement a few of these points as we speak. The educating of readers on what RSS actually is is something that had never occured to me and makes so much sense, especially considering the topic of my blog does not cater to the tech oriented crowds that probably live and thrive on RSS feeds.

Question on rewarded RSS subscribers. I use Feedburner. How do I tell who is an RSS feeder or awarda prize to someone on it? I tried going through the Feedburner options, but couldn’t find any way I could pick or choose any particular reader if I advertised subscribing as a way to win a prize.
Dan @ vzaar.com

July 18th, 2008 1:14 am

Really useful post: food for thought.

It’s not really a new point but more an emphasis. Using different kind of conetnt is a great way of enhancing a blog. Not only is it more fun but people absorb infor differently, reacting differently to the written word, still images, moving pictures and sound. Most blogs will be written content, mostly, but a mix with vids, pics etc is appealing.

The point you make in your video, too, is a good one. Making sure that individual post pages are as good as your home is vital. It IS these pages that people will find in Google. (If all is going well).
1HappyBlogger

July 18th, 2008 1:18 am

Hi, Darren! Great post! One thing I would like to add: the wp-sticky plugin for wordpress. here is the link: http://lesterchan.net/portfolio/programming/php/#wp-sticky It allows you to make a post an announcement and keep it at the top of your homepage. Keep up the good work!
DJ

July 18th, 2008 1:20 am

Thanks for this, Darren.

As an in-betweener in blog “age” (I’ve been around for 9 months now), I’ve implemented a lot of these, but reminders are great.

I found #12 and #19 especially salient to people in my “age” range.

Thanks!
Patrick

July 18th, 2008 1:23 am

Awesome post, Darren.
Brian

July 18th, 2008 1:28 am

@Kirk

For feedburner subscribers there is a plugin (can’t remember the name) that allows you to add a section at the end of the RSS feed – here you could put a link to say a free pdf or something similar – this link would only be visible to the RSS subscribers – therefore its like a incentive (although someone on your RSS list could then forward that link to others) – but you could make it for a limited time period

If you have a newletter list then you could pick a winner from that list
Adam Singer

July 18th, 2008 1:30 am

Wow – this is one of the most useful posts I’ve seen from your site Darren. I’ve bookmarked this and plan to go back through this content with a checklist.

Thanks!
pete

July 18th, 2008 1:30 am

@John Young: You can get source graphics files for “standard” RSS icons at http://www.feedicons.com/. Many colors to fit your particular blog style. You’ve got a great blog, btw. :)
SystemsThinker

July 18th, 2008 1:36 am

I think this is one of your best posts yet Darren. Stickiness is really a great topic in that it kind of sums up what we’re all in this for. Stickiness involves great content, great design, great strategy – everything. In a way, if you can make your blog sticky while writing about something you care about, the rest will emerge naturally from there.

I think I’ll be returning to this post again and again.
FitMom

July 18th, 2008 1:37 am

So much to learn.

Personally, since I am not technically savvy, I find the hardest part about blogging is the behind the scenes plugin stuff.
Frugal Dad

July 18th, 2008 1:41 am

Awesome advice, as usual! I’ve been working on this over the last couple months (by adding forums, a free eBook giveaway to subscribers, etc.) and I have seen both my pageviews and subscriber count increase dramatically. I got most of the ideas here at ProBlogger, and it is nice to have them consolidated here in one single post. Thanks for putting this one together.
Remkus

July 18th, 2008 1:44 am

Awesome indeed. I shall implement them as much as I can for a new to be released personal blog. Thanks for taking the time to compile this great list.

Cheers!
TalkBinary

July 18th, 2008 1:46 am

Very great read! Was looking forward to it when I saw it on Plurk and wasn’t dissapointed!

Keep up the good work! I’ll be using some of your sticky tactics to get more readers!
Amanda

July 18th, 2008 1:46 am

Wow! What an incredibly comprehensive post. I deal with spikes-and-troughs traffic a lot because my organization’s monthly bulletin goes out to an extensive list of subscribers, and I’ve been wondering about the best ways to keep more of them coming back. Fabulous as usual, Darren!
Stella

July 18th, 2008 1:46 am

Thanks Darren. Very nice compilation of those sticky tips.

From my own experience, I notice that when you add too much information on your sidebar, it seems to annoy readers: puting what is needed and directly linked with your content brings more clicks and interests to them.

The last point that surprised me is the slideshow on my homepage: certain readers emailed me by saying that they’ll comme back just for seeing that ‘Most Popular’ posts scrolling…

Ok! I’m going to apply the tip 19 now… It’s a relevant fact you underlined here, Darren. Cheers!
LiviuX

July 18th, 2008 1:58 am

Great post. I will read it all when i’ll have the time.
asswass

July 18th, 2008 2:01 am

Hey Darren, have anyone told you that you look exactly like Phil Collins? In the First Impressions video you also showed some of his moves.
Todd Mintz

July 18th, 2008 2:23 am

This is very much a “sticky” post with excellent information that will definitely give value to those who read it far into the future.
Wandering Chopsticks

July 18th, 2008 2:24 am

I compiled an extensive archive that I separated by major categories then subdivided. For example, I created pages for recipes and restaurants, then subdivided that into recipes by cuisine, recipes by category, and then by demand, Vietnamese recipes by category. Restaurants were subdivided into restaurants by city, restaurants by county, restaurants by cuisine. There’s a navigation guide so they can click on whichever one interests them, but I’ve found that people go to the list, check out a post, click back to the list, check out another post, back to the list again, etc. The initial page needs to be interesting enough for people to want to look around, and providing those archives in a plain and easy way allows them to click around more easily.

I also separated recipes with various components into separate blog posts. For instance, a Vietnamese banh mi (sandwich) recipe will have separate pages for the meat recipes, the pickles, etc. At the bottom of the post, I include links to previous sandwich recipes.

It’s a less obvious way to get people to stay and click around. If the topic is of interest to them, then they look around on their own. The content is there, it was just a matter of making it easy to find.
Despairing

July 18th, 2008 2:25 am

Thanks for all the tips, some of which I hadn’t thought about. My blog is one year old tomorrow (today??!) and I’ve been reviewing what else I can do to increase the subscriber count. You’ve proved to be a goldmine!
Mike - BANS Today

July 18th, 2008 2:27 am

Great post Darren. It’s given me plenty of things to do and I’d love a post on how to remove dates from older posts – good call.
Louise Barnes-Johnston

July 18th, 2008 2:44 am

What a great list! This is a useful checklist for new and seasoned bloggers alike. I particularly like #5 – making it personal. Isn’t this what blogs are all about? If I can’t find a photo and bio, I don’t hang around.

Thanks for sharing your wisdom.
Bsigirho

July 18th, 2008 2:49 am

This was a very helpful article. Considering I am new to this I will be referring to this often for reminders.

Thanks
Slevi

July 18th, 2008 2:50 am

Great post, really summed up a lot of things nicely together. You make it all sounds so easy, hehe.
Jayaprakash

July 18th, 2008 2:50 am

Hello Darren Rowse,

You missed one important thing I feel. The specific content. The content of the blog must be specific. This will attract a regular stream of visitors, interested in that particular subject. Am I near to the truth? If yes please let me know.

Actually, I came incidentally to your blog, but found myself sticking. Thanks for good article. I enjoyed it.
But I have one specific problem with my blog. I blog with blogger.com. My blog after changing the template is not showing the ‘Comments’ on the main page. Visitors has to click the header of the post in order to comment.

I was in search of a solution to that problem. Can you advise me, if you know, how to do that? Please visit my blog and give some idea.
B. Durant

July 18th, 2008 3:09 am

I’m curious if you believe it to be more beneficial to have 10 people visit your site who are highly targeted or 1,000 people who come via way of social networking sites and the like? I’ve always maintained that it’s better to have the highly targeted. What’s your opinion?

I ask because it seems to me if you target your traffic then your website or blog will naturally be more sticky for them. And they’re more likely to spend some time and possibly money than others who just find it interesting enough to bookmark.
Paul Singh

July 18th, 2008 3:16 am

Great tips – I installed the Comment Subscriptions feature to my own blog and was surprised by the uptake from my readers already!

On the social proof tip – do you have any thoughts on when the “right time” is? Specifically, should you be displaying RSS subscribers when it hits 100, 1000, 10000? What has your experience been?
Stephanerd

July 18th, 2008 3:27 am

Quick question smart-tech-people (sigh…I’m just a writer): I downloaded the “subscribe to comments” plugin, unzipped it, uploaded it into the wordpress plugins folder with cute ftp, and then activated the plugin in the plugin tab. For some reason, though, that little box isn’t showing up on my pages. What am I missing??? Thanks in advance. You’re all way more tech-savvy than I am.
Paul Del Vecchio

July 18th, 2008 3:28 am

This is an awesome post. I should implement some of this stuff. Maybe have a welcome or something. Maybe utilize video as well!
Alli ~Mrs. Fussypants

July 18th, 2008 3:31 am

Darren,
One of your best posts ever! Most excellent. Great job.
James Joyner

July 18th, 2008 3:35 am

Darren: I like your “Best of ProBlogger” widget. Is this a tool that’s available for our blogs? And how do you populate it? By simple self-nomination? Or is it automated.

I’ve done various Similar Posts and Popular Posts plugins but all I’ve tried are simply godawful.
Joan Kremer

July 18th, 2008 4:03 am

Wow, Darrin, you’ve outdone yourself! I can’t remember a blog post or Internet articles that has contained so many immediately useful techniques for me. Excellent tips! Thanks so much!
Joan Kremer

July 18th, 2008 4:04 am

Wow, Darrin, you’ve outdone yourself! I can’t remember a blog post or Internet article that has contained so many immediately useful techniques for me. Excellent tips! Thanks so much!
James-DigitalKeyToInfo

July 18th, 2008 4:31 am

I think 16 maybe the cornerstone of the whole thing.
If you fail to keep posting, it won’t matter too much if anyone subscribes or not. They have nothing to return to see. This is. of course, my biggest failing. I tend to let too much time go between posts and then have a bunch of posts all at once.
Make Money Talks

July 18th, 2008 5:08 am

Great tips like always Darren!
Now i need to tweak my blog a little bit more!
T.C.

July 18th, 2008 5:55 am

Great post Darren! I’ve used a lot of these techniques on my blog, and they definitely work. I’ve got the subscribe option and related post links below my posts, a popular post section in the sidebar, we’ve done series, have a pretty solid about page, etc. Because of the nature of our blog and our posts we have been a victim of the traffic spikes too, but those spikes have certainly helped us in the long run, as it gains our site much needed exposure. I think viewing those traffic spikes and irregular traffic patterns isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Search Engine Optimization Journal

July 18th, 2008 6:16 am

Great article… you know quality is always better than quantity… who wants a bunch of one time visitors?
John D'Alessandro

July 18th, 2008 6:18 am

Thanks for the tips, we plan on implementing some of the tactics that you suggested. We just started a blog, and we plan to launch on Monday (start advertising). I was wondering if anyone would be interested in taking a look at it and giving us some feedback on the layout/design and interface, and if you want, the content. It is a political blog, and we are two UNC – Chapel Hill seniors. THanks in advance for the feedback, and thanks a lot for problogger. You guys are making it easy on us new guys
Ryan McLean

July 18th, 2008 6:42 am

This post is awesome. I have found previously on my website my shoddy content was the thing holding me back from my site becoming sticky. I had a lot of post which were not my own and this didn’t entice readers one bit. I am now trying to write my own original content because I feel readers respond to this better and want to come back for more
Rich Page

July 18th, 2008 6:43 am

I agree with James. Darren – What is the best way of doing your ‘best of’ widget looking thing? I really want to have that on my website!

Rich Page (web analytics fantatic)
http://www.rich-page.com
Androo (revenuerobot)

July 18th, 2008 7:27 am

Great post…! I’m going to implement the subscribe to comments feature on my blog
Stephen Page

July 18th, 2008 8:17 am

(Am I falling into my own trap by leaving this comment?, probably, LOL)

What I am tired of is hot air. You said:

“Over the last few days I’ve had a small competition going on Digital Photography School where I’m giving 3 subscribers to my newsletter there a copy of a great photography book.

1500 new subscribers later (and counting that small incentive is one of the best $50 I’ve ever spent.”

OK, Lets say tomorrow I am going to give away a car, yes a brand new car on my blog (i’m not, dont get excited!) now at first glances, yeah, sure people are going to rush at that competition. Probably get 3,000 new readers…..erm, no.

Why not? Well I could give away a solid gold elephant with ruby eyes but if no one knows about the competition or I am selling that competition to the people that already subscribe what is the point?

What I really need to now is, I have a great competition, how can I convert that into new readers?

That is the problem I have.

I found the ONLY way I got new readers and with a 90% fail ration was to use Google Ads and that cost me a fortune.

Is there a better way? HOW?!
Stephanerd

July 18th, 2008 8:19 am

@James: I had a similar problem (infrequent posting) with an older blog of mine that I eventually decided to retire. Now that I’ve recently launched a more targeted blog, I’ve found that it helps to draw up an “editorial calendar.”

Now, I have a schedule I adhere to that guarantees one post a day, Monday through Friday, with how-tos on Mondays and Wednesdays, product reviews on Tuesdays, book reviews on Thursdays, and group discussions on Fridays. It’s something to hold myself accountable to…
Claudine

July 18th, 2008 9:21 am

Sequels which are related to your topic, but cover a hot topic could be a way to make your site sticky. New and fresh videos, created by you, that illustrate how to do something, also works well.
Darren Rowse

July 18th, 2008 9:57 am

Geek’s Dream Girl – I’m in Australia and we’re always ahead of the rest of the world :-)

Elizabeth – yes, sneeze pages rock. They really are very very powerful

Brian – interesting, not sure what plugin runs that one but hopefully someone else will have an answer.

Pete – so glad that this helped and that you’re finding Chitika useful.

Alex – great tip – will add that to my followup post

Raag – some excellent points there and I’ll include one in my followup post

AIAM – nice stats there! 100 a day might not be massive but you’ve been trending up for a year now and if you keep that rate of growth up you’ll be seeing some fantastic numbers if you stick at it (read this post on exponential growth).

Jeroen – thanks for linking up – glad you found the what is RSS link helpful.

Mike – just try to implement one or two at a time.

John Young – I think having icons and text can work well. I try to have a variety of different ’signals’ for people to subscribe on a page – some icons, some text etc

Kirk – can I direct you over to Chris Garrett at chrisg.com – he offers his subscribers a free download – not quite sure how he did it but I’m sure he’d answer that question for you.

1HappyBlogger – thanks for that – will check it out

Jayaprakash – good point – I think you’re right.

B. Durant – Yes targeted readers are very good to have and what you’re really after – however a big rush of traffic from social media can be good too as it will also bring some targeted readers. I’d go for both.

Paul – tough one. I think I waited til I hit 300-400 on DPS (can’t really remember). I’d probably not show it if you have only a handful of readers but even at low numbers you’re showing that some are subscribing which for ‘normal’ web users will mean something. It’s probably only real web savvy people that will look at lower numbers and have a snobbish reaction.

Stephanerd – hope someone can answer that for you – I’m not the most smart tech person either :-)

James and Rich – the best of section is populated largely by a plugin called Popularity Contest by Alex King. I had my blog designer Ben Bleikamp hack it a bit though to add my own hand picked selections and to present it in that style.

Stephen – yes you’re right – a competition isn’t much good unless you have new people arriving at your site from somewhere. For me at DPS I have a lot of search engine traffic (almost completely first time readers) so a competition on my front page works really well. But for bloggers not getting new readers a competition will only really work if you’re going to promote it off your blog somewhere (advertising, getting links from other bloggers, guest posts etc). In terms of finding NEW readers for a blog – I wrote a 5 part series of posts on what I’d do to promote a blog if I were starting out again that I hope you’ll find useful.
Curtis

July 18th, 2008 10:08 am

All great tips to sticky my blog up.
gotgamedotcom

July 18th, 2008 10:53 am

props on this post man. You really are a pro blogger….
Liz

July 18th, 2008 11:02 am

Great tips! Getting people to stick around is the hardest part, as I’ve learned many times…I’ll be revisiting this post often.
greven

July 18th, 2008 11:08 am

Good article Darren.

I’ve set up my blog almost 3 months ago. I’ve always been interested in blogging but never decided to start it serious until now. Well, I wouldn’t call it serious, it’s just a personal blog where I stream all the stuff I like: Internet, Blogging, Webdesign, Digital Art and Cinema, in common they have the love for ART and Information.

At the beginning was rough. Few visitors, I hadn’t tweaked my design yet… But as soon as I started to write some key posts a great flow of traffic arrived at my Blog. Most of this traffic comes from Social Networks, specially StumbleUpon an Digg Like Sites. I’ve been reading Blogging techniques for quite some time now and So when this traffic arrived I tried to “grab” it and spread it all over the website. On good days of “Spikes” I can get around 7 – 10K Pageviews per day, on “Normal” days I can now sustain around 2K Pageviews per day, What isn’t bad considering the time my Blog has.

I think another key part of bringing more people to your website is writting content like you say, and the more content you have the more chance you also have from people to arrive at your blog, be it from Social Networks or from Google Indexation.

Some of the things you’ve mentioned I’m doing it allready. Some were nice points that I will try to add to my website. Specially a good About Page and a What is RSS Page, I will probably take some inspiration from yours if that is ok. :)

Oh, and that plugins seem very good, I will try them out.

Thank you. Nuno – Lisbon, Portugal.
e t a v i t o m

July 18th, 2008 11:19 am

Thanks for the great tips, once again!! My blogging experience has improved dramatically since discovering your site. All the best, B
Justin Levy

July 18th, 2008 11:46 am

Great post!

I find this particularly useful since I just launched my blog last week even though I’ve been an avid blog reader for a few years. I have been devoting a lot of time to scouring for tips and tricks to help make the blog better and I continue to try to improve it since its launch.

I will definitely be using some of these suggestions as the blog continues to mature.

Thanks!
Justin
Netvalar

July 18th, 2008 11:51 am

I always enjoy reading your tips reading the forum one though I got an idea myself. Not sure how to implement it right now other then doing a post that you keep updated.

The idea is to put together a list of the best forums in your niche. As some of your regular readers join these they may mention some of your own posts thus the potential of bringing in new readers from these forums.

Sort of expanding your ability to participate in forums.
Netvalar

July 18th, 2008 11:56 am

Just took a look at Chrisg’s blog. I figured out how the free download works. In Feedburner you can customize your feed and E-Mail forms look. All he did is place a download link within this customization process. Actually let me say I believe this is what he did just in case he did it a different way.
Jess

July 18th, 2008 12:34 pm

thanks Darren,
I’m going to take some of your points and use them. I did try a competition, and embarrassingly I’ve only had 3 people enter! How depressing…My disillusionment grows bigger each day – I am almost ready to give it up, but each day I come back to problogger and I get that little bit of hope…that little bit of motivation to just keep going….I know I probably sound pathetic , but thanks for the help…
jess
Zac Martin

July 18th, 2008 12:49 pm

I remember reading a while back that bloggers should not display their subscriber number unless it was over one thousand. However, I have to agree with you and I think sometimes it works better being a small number.
Kelvin Kao

July 18th, 2008 1:08 pm

“… but not here at ProBlogger where I have a topic that is more time specific (I’ll write more on this topic in coming days).”

Ah, that’s a very good example of your own #13: Create momentum with your content.

As for the about page, I tend to always read them on the first visit. I like to know who’s behind each blog. In fact, in my RSS reader I like to file feeds under the author’s name instead of the blog’s name.
Jillian

July 18th, 2008 1:29 pm

Interesting and spot-on thoughts, Darren.

I’ve been using twitterfeed to update my Twitter account every time I post, and I also make sure to advertise my writing to my Facebook-junkie friends as well.

After writing one semi-controversial post, I was (pleasantly) surprised to see how many hits I got from a link I had posted on a forum I frequent. The day after said semi-controversial post, I wrote a little “welcome” to all the people who had popped over from the forum. I’m glad to hear I did something right! (And it seems as though those readers have continued to visit ever since! Woo!)
Valuegurubooks

July 18th, 2008 2:52 pm

Great article, thanks a lot!
Artur | Phoenix Real Estate

July 18th, 2008 3:05 pm

I’m certainly sticking to this post. There are so many techniques to implement. The book is very helpful as well.
Jon

July 18th, 2008 3:37 pm

Awesome post as usual Darren, going to employ some of these ideas to see if I can get my spikes to be sticky lol… and Jess dont give up! Cheers!
Ravi

July 18th, 2008 5:04 pm

Every blogger should read this post to improve there blog.
Thorsten Bonn

July 18th, 2008 5:12 pm

Darren, thank you ! What a fantastic post.

For relative beginners like me this is one post to print out and put on the wall for reference for a very long time.
Ari Herzog

July 18th, 2008 5:31 pm

Darren, I wanted to add my thoughts to the collective bandwagon that you rock.

Let me write that again:

Y O U R O C K !!!!

I’d been looking for a reason to change my blog design and you planted that seed in my head. I switched to a completely new template, and of course linked to this post in my subsequent post about it. I used to have a deep blue background and now it’s white. More reader-friendly. And I owe it to you.

So, thanks, man.
Funny Man

July 18th, 2008 6:43 pm

Great Post,

I have found out that the best thing to make my site sticky is————–Great Content and You Get Great Content by loving what you do.

If you do not like food then don’t blog about it.
If you don’t have the slightest clue about SEO leave it to the pros or learn it well then teach it!
Bottom line if you are blogging about something just to blog-remember garbage in-garbage out.

I love comedy and thats what I present to my visitors-Damn Good Comedy, Funny Pictures,Videos yada yada.

Now I know everybody doesn’t have the same sense of humor so I diversify and try to have something for everyone.

I don’t laugh easy,so thats good because when something makes me laugh then I know some people are definitely going to enjoy it and share with friends.

Who would have thought comedy would be hard work, it is but I love it and we need it in our lives (takes you away from the craziness and bad times of this world).

Good Content = Good Sticky

The Funny Man from

http://thecomedynet.com
Sam

July 18th, 2008 7:11 pm

Thanks Darren this is worth being absent from work today!

Cheers!
GettyCash

July 18th, 2008 8:28 pm

Thank you for this post Darren,

There’re so many questions in my mind about how to gain traffic to my blogs.
The Red Rocket

July 18th, 2008 9:51 pm

Good entry.

Another one, which you’ve proved yourself, is to compile lists. People love to discuss them and produce their own additions.

Looking at the number of comments here, you’ve proved just that.

The Red Rocket
http://www.theredrocket.co.uk
Pay Per Click

July 18th, 2008 10:12 pm

Ive seen that having useful scripts, tools, or simple games, related to your niche can also keep your site nice and sticky…. the better the tool the more your readers will come back to use it :)
Shafar

July 18th, 2008 11:16 pm

Absolutely stunning, fantastic, splendid post…!
Thanks a lot Darren. Now i realised that there is lots more to learn in this arena..
Mikael

July 18th, 2008 11:44 pm

Darren follows his own advice. He produces really great content, and that is why I come back here nearly every day.
Everyday Finance

July 18th, 2008 11:50 pm

Wow, awesome post.

I happen to be undergoing a 3X spike in traffic right now due to a multi-level marketing company I criticized threatening me with cease and desist emails and threatening legal action.

While I posted on the saga and outcry from the web is spreading, I haven’t been able to capitalize on the spike via monetization or subscriber increases. Your article here provided some great ideas.

And by the way, anyone looking to thwart this silencing effort on the part of litigious companies with something to hide; track this saga as it unfolds!
Tim

July 19th, 2008 12:27 am

Darren,
Fantastic post … the best yet. Thanks for many great tips. It looks like I have a little work to do today improving my site.
Craig Farrall

July 19th, 2008 12:39 am

Great post, this post has really helped me, it has given me plenty of ideas to be getting on with to improve my blog, because it is at the early stages, and haven’t really had many visitors, so this really helps.

Can I ask? you said adding a number of subscribers to your blog would be a good idea, but when your at an early stage, wouldn’t this put people off? seeing that barely anyone has subscribed?
Internet Marketing Joy

July 19th, 2008 1:32 am

These are very helpful tips on how to get your visitors’ attention…just like what they always say that traffic gives life to your blog but not only ordinary traffic..what’s more important is having a recurring and targeted traffic.
ITrush

July 19th, 2008 1:48 am

Nice post, thanks a lot for sharing those very helpful and interesting tips.
madsow -Engineer a debt free life

July 19th, 2008 3:38 am

As always, great post.

BTW, I picked up a copy of your book… LOVED IT.

Thank you for all the inspiration and guidance.
James Joyner

July 19th, 2008 4:46 am

Darren: Interesting on Popularity Contest. I’ll have to give it another whirl. I tried it on my celebrity gossip blog, Gone Hollywood and got absurd results, so gave up on it.
Leon

July 19th, 2008 4:50 am

Great post as always Darren. I’ll have to implement some of those tips, like educating my readers on RSS.
AK

July 19th, 2008 5:31 am

Thanks to ProBlogger, I took the time to implement a creative layout to present my latest post with.

I blog at a very popular South African site and the template is default for everyone who blogs there. So, I added other features necessary for developing a readership!

:)

Thank you once again, brilliant post!
Bill K.

July 19th, 2008 5:47 am

Wow, your timing’s great on posting this.

My blog’s only four weeks old. Yesterday, I got bookmarked in StumbledUpon and had views that were an order of magnitude higher than my average views. Then today a new post got picked up by one of the source’s I linked to and volume is double what it was yesterday.

Two good days with two very different audiences. If only my site were already sticky! Thank you for showing how to get it done.
dinu

July 19th, 2008 6:03 am

Book marked and doing one by one ;)

added feed links on side bar and single.php .. have a look and tell me if its good :D
Bugsy

July 19th, 2008 7:29 am

Darren,

I like the Analog shirt! Makes a great first impression. Do you snowboard? Surf?
Ronald H.

July 19th, 2008 8:59 am

This has been 100% helpful to me so I thank you. I personal bookmarked this page for the near future because a know I’ll been it. Thanks again. Ronald H. at http://www.revenueherald.com
Irishpolyglot

July 19th, 2008 9:15 am

Thanks for the tips Darren! I’ve been subscribed to your site for several months now but this is the most relevant post for me for really implementing features to keep readers interested; as I’m as prone to those quickly disappearing spikes as anyone else! I’ll invest time in a few of your ideas and definitely be writing an RSS how-to (my advantage is that my blog is in some uncommon languages so I may even write the first ever RSS how-to in those languages :P ) and working on changing the site design etc, since admittedly it’s quite pathetic right now even the content is coming along nicely!
Great post!! Stumble thumbed up!!! :)
EPORIA

July 19th, 2008 10:05 am

Excellent tips for any blogger to make their blog better. Also read your book and highly recommend it to anyone serious about blogging!
Hodja Jokes

July 19th, 2008 10:11 am

Trafic….trafic and more trafic, god tips darren
Verda Vivo

July 19th, 2008 11:36 am

An older post of mine made it to the front page of reddit today, making my stats jump. This post was so incredibly timely. I quickly modified the post, per your post, to include subscription information to capitalize on this small bit of good fortune. Bar none, you have the best advice on blogging. ~ Daryl
Honest Riches Fan

July 19th, 2008 3:27 pm

very informative, I hope I find time to improve my blog.
Lenin Nair

July 19th, 2008 6:36 pm

Claps! Darren. I agree with you in almost all aspects, and I have personally implemented all of them within my blog:

For instance, the theme redesign I have done, plus some of my own modifications is a great sticky thing, since when I got the new design ready, my visitors tend to spend triple time on the site than previously.

I got my Blogger site validated almost! But there are certain errors, which cannot be removed without Blogger help. And this has made the blog’s loading lightning fast.

About “To do next” I have added Addthis social bookmarking button default in every post with the recommendation to subscribe. I have put the request to bookmark also in the feed.

Subscription to comments is offered, and I promptly reply all the comments at the commenter’s site itself.

What I disagree, however, is the advice to make the site personal. I believe that probloggers can do that quite easily. You sometimes post some of your personal experiences, so does Seth, and that can well interest readers, since you are well-known. Such is not the case with ordinary bloggers. They should first build the brand and then the name. I suggest posting only useful articles and no personal material until you are quite famous!!

Thanks Darren

Lenin
Lenin Nair

July 19th, 2008 6:39 pm

Here are one or two things I missed. About the RSS education, I haven’t implemented it. But I have given an incentive to the commenters, by making the site Dofollow. Do you think, this is a good move? I have given quite an elaborate Dofollow guide as well that will tell readers how exactly to comment.

Also, there are icons for social media sites to directly connect with me. Still, what I yet don’t have is an about page. I put up an about blog page instead “About CuteWriting”

Lenin
Noobpreneur

July 19th, 2008 7:38 pm

Darren,

Another fine tips – I have something in mind though, on #19 – social proof.

I happen to chickletize my blog with that of Feedburner. But it showed 11 readers – and I think it’s not working like a magnet, but instead like a repellent!

My conclusion is that nobody want to ‘mingle’ with an 11 rss readers’ blog…

So, what would you suggest regarding the ‘about right’ rss subscriber size to put the chicklet on? Or, are you suggesting to put the social proof as early as possible?

Cheers for the great post!
Pushkar

July 19th, 2008 8:10 pm

Darren, if you ever run for the President of the US or atleast the President of the Blogging community, you got my vote :)
Olivia Bell

July 19th, 2008 10:24 pm

A wonderful post as always, Darren. It makes me want to kick start and do everything you’ve mentioned – but I know it all takes time.

Great tips as always and thank you for sharing :)
Rob

July 20th, 2008 1:20 am

Excellent tips and excellent work putting all of this together!
Cindy Sue Causey

July 20th, 2008 1:43 am

I *LOVE* being able to toggle on the “future comments” option on those seemingly relatively few blogs that (have the the ability to) offer it.. Always nice to see, hear what others out there are thinking.. Too… Keeps the Gray Matter motivated.. :)

Off to toggle “Notify Me” (again).. :)

Cyber hugs from North Georgia..
brainpicker

July 20th, 2008 6:58 am

Darren, another great post. Quick question: do you know of a good WP plugin for “top posts” or one that lets you manually add a list of select posts in the sidebar navigation, displayed in a similar format to the standard archive and category links?

I looked around on here for a while, as I’m sure you must’ve mentioned a plugin like that at some point in a post, but couldn’t find anything. Any help is, as usual, much appreciated.
Stephanerd

July 20th, 2008 7:26 am

@brainpicker: I don’t know about manually inputting posts but, after reading this, I found this plugin:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpresscom-popular-posts/installation/

which works in tandem with this one:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/stats/

There’s more information here…

http://polpoinodroidi.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpresscom-popular-posts/

but, in a nutshell, the stats plugin tracks your most popular posts, while the popular posts plugin allows you to add a customizable widget to your sidebar, displaying said posts. Hope this helps!
Taryn Merrick

July 20th, 2008 11:53 am

Excellent data. I am beginning a major re-launch of my blog and the content that goes inside of it. Making it “sticky” is a huge goal of mine. As a Virtual Assistant, my goal is to attract stable and loyal entrepreneur viewers to my site, and provide them with tips, viewpoints and reviews.
Vinayak

July 20th, 2008 2:42 pm

This is a very helpful post.
In my case I found removing the time stamp ( point 14) quite effective.

For people using blogspot platform, here’s a post on how to remove time stamps from posts:

http://8ate.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-rid-of-timestamp-in-blogger.html
AZ

July 20th, 2008 4:19 pm

Darren only one word to describe your tips “AMAZING”. I am reading your blog frow last 6 months and by reading your post i get inspired and yesterday i started my own blog. This post is indeed a very helpful for all bloggers. Keep it up man. And plz give your precious comments on my blog.

azgamez.com
Timothy Carter

July 20th, 2008 4:22 pm

Wow Darren…there are so many great tips that I need to think about regarding my blog. I’ve really enjoyed learning from you Darren. I will continue to be an avid reader.
Santosh Puthran

July 20th, 2008 9:48 pm

Darren your tips are amazing.

I have removed the date from You may like to read on the blog on the tips you provided. I had seen that BBC and Financial Times give dates of the earlier article. Now I see your point from blog point of view.

Cheers,

Santosh Puthran
Management Accountant Blog
http://managementaccountant.blogspot.com
Fanatika

July 20th, 2008 10:15 pm

The making subscription link prominent didn’t work that well. Ultimately it is content that matters. :)
Dominique

July 21st, 2008 1:15 am

have tried some of the tips you mentioned like making the RSS & subscribing buttons very visible on my site but it hasn’t done anything to increase the RSS/E-mail or newsletter subscription. Maybe need to work much more on the content.
Sarcastic Mom

July 21st, 2008 2:06 am

I haven’t had time to read through all the comments on this post yet, so I’m not sure if someone already mentioned it, but there a nice plugin that helps with responding to reader comments (which I think is a really important part of building your community via good relationships with your readers). I was turned on to it by the author of playgroupsarenoplaceforchildren.com It can be found here: http://www.u-g-h.com/wordpress-plugins/wordpress-plugin-comment-email-responder/

It allows you to respond to a particular comment in your comments section, but then it also emails that comment to the reader who it is directed at. Great for responding right to a person, while still giving all your other readers your answer, in case they’d like to know it as well.

Great post, by the way. I’m loving it!
melancholiac

July 21st, 2008 2:56 am

hey, thanks for the tips, really good ones for beginners like me. congrats on a very sticky site, and hope to see more tips soon :)
Dean Saliba

July 21st, 2008 4:16 am

Great tips, I’m going to use a lot of these. :)
Paul Singh

July 21st, 2008 4:43 am

For those of you in the process of redesigning your blogs, I’d recommend signing up for a free account at Crazy Egg (www.crazyegg.com) and setting up some brief tests on various pages on your blog.

I did this extensively while redesigning my blog last month – it’s results in nearly 600% increase in stickiness in almost every aspect you can imagine: time on site, number of pages visited, new vs. returning visitors, # of comments, etc.
Team Nirvana

July 21st, 2008 2:39 pm

No matter how much information we think is quite apt to make it all up and running, we are left in awe by another post of yours Darren.

Thanks for sharing awesome list.
diabetes

July 21st, 2008 3:51 pm

great 21 ways to make popular blog/web…..I already active in comment willbe great with combine the other
List of 195 Keyword Suggestion - Go Find a Niche!

July 21st, 2008 7:23 pm

There is a great plug-in for WP that is called Featurific, it is a graphic that highlights your “BEST POSTS”, you can add however many posts you want and it flashes them on your front page with a cool graphic, 10 different designs to choose from.

I use it on my blog and I really like it!

Here is the link: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/featurific-for-wordpress/installation/
daniel

July 21st, 2008 8:30 pm

what can i say.it’s a great post and will put some of the pointers to use in my blog.thanks!
daniel
http;//articlesonthego.blogspot.com
Debt Free Hispanic

July 22nd, 2008 1:26 am

Darren, great post. Becoming an article expert is also a good way to show your writing skills.
my

July 22nd, 2008 2:31 am

Congratulations. You have got a great blog site. I happened to come here on several occasions and can’t help noting that you handle your topics well, very well indeed. You consistently present your information in a comprehensive manner. Keep up the good work.
heisan

July 22nd, 2008 4:10 am

Interesting post here. Some of the tips you mentioned I have already applied in my blog but there are other tips that I found in your post quite interesting to use to help my blog become a lot better. You’re indeed a Problogger.
Lindsay

July 22nd, 2008 10:07 am

An awesome post, Darren. Thank you.

I’ll be redesigning a couple of my blogs soon, and I have bookmarked this page to refer back to. I’ll probably show it to whoever I find to design the sites to and say, “Here, let’s make it do all this” :P

Thanks!
Nicole

July 22nd, 2008 11:53 am

I am all for the whole “Social Proof” (number 19 in your post) things, but I also read somewhere in the blogosphere that bloggers should have at least 50 subscribers before showing their feedburner (or other programs that help to promote their blog) stats anywhere on their blog.

It appears that since you mentioned it here and included most bloggers, it may be helpful for a blogger to post a graphic showing how many subscribers/loyal readers are already signed up to get his or her latest blog content, even if that number is low.

In the image for your post, there is an 8 count and 11 count feedburner block that says to me you would be ok with displaying that on your blog no matter what the subscriber count is. Now, I have to figure out if I should re-consider what was written on another blog and go with your siggestion here. I haven’t put up subscriber counts on my blog because I had the impression that it wouldn’t send a good message to visitors because it was low. While I have more than 8, there are not even 100 subscribers yet.

However, I may change things around since I have found that your suggestions are always helpful.

Thanks for writing another good post!
amirulcyber

July 22nd, 2008 12:05 pm

thanks darren for this useful info.i will apply it on my blog.
wanadamsyah

July 22nd, 2008 12:16 pm

good post, darren. i’d like to add some :

“Make a do follow for the comment, it’s a small and simple gift for visitor loyalti to your site.”

thnks
adam.cikal.net
Francisco

July 22nd, 2008 2:01 pm

Wow this is great, Iam so grateful I found this site :) I learned so much already in only one day, looking forward to get the book here in malaysia, thanks for everything keep the great work up

greetings francisco
Traffic2MyPage.com

July 22nd, 2008 2:06 pm

thanks darren… i will go to work on adding those features to my site

i have a hot tips section.. its simple reading and is just a list of the top 10 things in a category… its been a great addition to my site!
Avior Byron

July 22nd, 2008 2:32 pm

Amazing post Darren! I never saw such a professional site as your with regards to content.

By the way, please note that you right side bar had jumped down in my browser (explorer). Perhaps your content in this post is too wide.
Youtemplates

July 22nd, 2008 8:22 pm

nice article :)
by the way, keep writing on dude.. I’ll follow you via Rss reader.

Regards
Crazy Bloggers
Jean Boucher

July 23rd, 2008 5:33 am

I agree with Jayaprakash & B. Durant

The content of the blog must be ULTRA specific & have targeted readers.
Love your book, love your Blog
Graham

July 23rd, 2008 5:51 am

This is a great post, I’ve added more education on RSS and invitations to my blog and I’ll be checking back to this post to see what I can continue to do. Thank you so much.
Reginald

July 23rd, 2008 8:09 am

Not wanting to sound to redundant, I really enjoyed this post. The content is practical.

Thank you for taking the time to provide this information.
StocksHaven dot com

July 23rd, 2008 2:14 pm

Always an enjoyable read Darren, I wonder how you find time to spend with the wife & kids AND manage all this research and development of your blog. Trully speaks volumes of your abilities to manage your time!
promotional card printing

July 23rd, 2008 4:45 pm

Excellent post Darrent. You are great. All the tips are highly practical and depicts your knowledge, understanding and skills. thanks.
Omar

July 23rd, 2008 9:38 pm

As always: thanks for the tips. Many are easy to follow, but some are hard. One of the hardest things for me to do, is to post regularly.
3dsmax-stuff.blogspot.com

July 23rd, 2008 11:07 pm

Great Article!
You can visit my Blog, 3dsmax – logo – design:http://3dsmax-stuff.blogspot.com
Thanks so much for many great tips!
Michael Aulia

July 24th, 2008 12:41 am

Great tips as always, Darren! I’ll probably need to be more pro-active in increasing my feed readers :)
Susan

July 24th, 2008 1:41 am

Excellent tips! I really like how you highlighted the points with bigger fonts and different colors. I know it’s probably in the CSS, but it makes a huge difference from a reader’s perspective.
tiffanie

July 24th, 2008 2:22 am

wow…i came here from the weekly newsletter thing and planned to skim the article, but read every word! quite sticky. you win. i also implemented a few of the features, mainly feedburner which i didn’t realize had so many built in features in and of itself! :) thanks.
Kathy

July 24th, 2008 7:49 am

What an amazing post — full of so much useful information. Not quite sure where to start with your ideas; one step at a time.
Maldivian

July 24th, 2008 8:01 am

i am a regular visitor to problogger. got great info from this article..thanks

Latest Maldivian News
Lionel Oliva

July 24th, 2008 10:33 am

Hi Darren,

I’m going through my notes on your book with a fine-toothed comb, but this is an excellent addition to what you said. Thanks so much for all the help you’ve provided; now I just need some time to get it together.
egbsystems123

July 24th, 2008 11:51 am

Awesome post Darren!!!!!!!!!1. keep it flowing
John Smith

July 24th, 2008 1:41 pm

Hey this was a great post Darren… I truly learned a lot from it.
Sean D'Souza

July 24th, 2008 3:24 pm

You missed a level of entertainment. I started blogging almost back in 2004, and then gave up. And recently started again–about four weeks ago. And yet in a matter of weeks, without any promotion the traffic is starting to build up. Even Google Optimizer Blog put a link to our site.

So what caused good ol’ Google Blogs to get interested in us?

The factor of entertainment.

It’s what drives the viral factor that causes a You Tube Video to go ballistic. It’s what causes PR in newspapers and magazines too. People love entertainment. And they love education. And what really hits the sweet spot, is if you have edutainment.

So when you look at this factor of edutainment, a rookie blog like ours, can step up to the plate, and get Google (and others to take a look)–purely on the basis of entertainment.

Sure I’ve got a skill (cartoons) that is different from a lot of people, but there are lots of people who have different hidden skills that can quite easily be highlighted in a blog. For instance, David Pogue plays the piano and sings funny songs about technology. Well, maybe someone’s really good at origami. Another person may be really wonderful at sticking popcorn together.

The point is entertainment.
And education.

Both together are dynamite.
To see how Google got to our rookie website, go to:
http://www.psychotactics.com/blog/website-testing-made-easy/

And of course, you can have fun looking at the rest of the posts as well. :)

Sean
Tech Blog

July 24th, 2008 10:32 pm

Its really amazing and very Useful way and surely they will help many bloggers around who are trying,
Thanks Darren.
oMan

July 25th, 2008 4:24 am

Darren, thx for the excellent post
Passive Income

July 25th, 2008 8:38 am

how about one more way:

Avoid the Google Slap

I have a movie review site that has the ebb and flow from organic traffic. In fact our daily 300 just dropped to less than 50 (SERP traffic only). We still have no idea why this occasionally happens, but as far as we can tell ‘G’ is unhappy about something…and be damned if they have concise documentation ;)
Trevor White

July 25th, 2008 1:13 pm

Hi and thanks for the new tips. I was referred by Codrut.

I think between the two of you I can learn a great deal about blogging and internet marketing in general.

With all the info, I still have a hard time focusing on what to do.

There is just so much info. and strategies out there to choose from. Trail and error I guess.

Thanks

Trevor White
Leah Marie

July 25th, 2008 1:22 pm

Wow, Awesome tips. Thanks for sharing this wonderful tips.This would help bloggers like me. Thanks and keep it up.
Ling

July 25th, 2008 1:34 pm

Yet another excellent post! Tks Darren and folks who have commented, your information is simply beneficial.

Does anyone know which plugin supports the “What Next” feature in this blog?

I was goggling about this feature and found some info here but it was kind of too technical for me
http://www.eblogtemplates.com/how-to-create-a-whats-next-post-footer-section/

When I apply it, my blog alignment esp. sidebar went off :(

I’m sure there is a plugin? But I dont know how to look for it.

Cheers!
SEO-aStore

July 25th, 2008 1:44 pm

What kind of glue to use for visitor sticky in blog, Wanna bought it ^_^
Cheers To Life

July 25th, 2008 1:49 pm

Great post Darren. I’ll try to my blog soon
Blackhatseo

July 25th, 2008 9:02 pm

Added. Nice work on this one. Btw, my blog is dofollow, stop by and grab a link. Bompa
home

July 25th, 2008 9:12 pm

Nice one..It will help me …..
ChiQ Montes

July 25th, 2008 9:35 pm

just awesooooooooooomeeee!!!
Kevin W

July 26th, 2008 2:15 am

I am working on getting more traffic. I have to do some good SEOing. Thanks for the tips.
website creation guides

July 26th, 2008 2:41 am

A very good post Darren. Building traffic is very important for any website or blog. I say building and not generating for the same reasons you highlighted early in your post. Traffic builds slowly by steadily following some basic rules and seeing the whole thing to completion. One has to be patient. This cannot happen overnight.
Another very important aspect of traffic building is SEO. With search engine optimization you can rely on search engines delivering visitors. This is hard work as well but everybody should do even some basic SEO on their site/blog
Music Review zone

July 26th, 2008 3:37 am

Forums can make tumble weed look busy when you are starting out.

Although I have some decent traffic – I am holding off on the forum until I have more readers and subscribers.

Thanks for the tips though!
Katherine

July 26th, 2008 6:05 am

Wow – this is such a powerful checklist. I know I’ll be spending a lot of time working on this. In my mind I consider the terms “sticky” and “building community” to be synonymous. A lot of these suggestions seem to do with making the reader feel welcomed.
Terra

July 26th, 2008 9:27 am

WOW. Yes, I shouted, but I am happy to find all these tips, and I will return.
This is my first visit to blogher.com after registering my blog and now you have talked me into adding an rss feed.
My brand new first book has its own blog (scrapbookofchristmasfirsts.blogspot.com), plus my own garden/book review blog so I have two blogs.
Thanks for all this solid info.
Import from China

July 26th, 2008 10:53 pm

I came across this blog the other day and you got some great info here – thanks.
Swastik

July 27th, 2008 12:11 am

True tips. Loved them.

As said “First Impression is the last impression”. If you’ve build up a great blog with good and consistent design as well as helpful content, your visitors are more likely to stay and convert into readers.
Tage

July 27th, 2008 6:55 am

I am going to have to start following a lot of these. Like linking to my RSS feed after a post. Thanks, this must have taken awhile!
Ebony Jones

July 27th, 2008 12:04 pm

Great tips.

I will start to work in a subscribe to our rss link into posts that catch fire…excellent tip!

That’s our problem, we have good traffic now. People regularly read and comment…but hardly any takers on our rss.

Maybe your tip will help.

http://www.urbanswirl.com
Technochakra

July 27th, 2008 4:40 pm

Nice article Darren. I really liked your use of images throughout the post. That made the article even more interesting to read.
Onemargaret

July 27th, 2008 7:38 pm

I can use all the help I can get. I have been everywhere and I still don’t get the amount of traffic I want. I have Google ad that no one clicks on. I think I have some good content but I need a real web site like yours. Have great weekend!
don

July 27th, 2008 9:19 pm

Great Post, I have pretty much implemented 99 percentile of what you have stated here. I shall go back and look at other components.
Sarah Bell

July 27th, 2008 10:04 pm

Dear Darren,

Heard you talk at Underground 2007 – a great talk and you have a great website. What is so interesting is how one can use your information with a subject so unrelated – ie natural horsecare……! Thank you so much. You have also really helped my two daughters (14years and 17years) with their graphic website – again a very different subject yet the foundations of communication are similar if not the same.

Best wishes,

Sarah Bell (UK)
The Health Blogger

July 28th, 2008 1:26 am

Thank you, these points are simple and obvious, though sometimes we tend to forget the simple and obvious.

Thanks again Darren.
Random Blog Tips

July 28th, 2008 2:38 am

I would say to all of these ideas that they are good ones. One thing I have found with my other two blogs that have reached over 20,000 subscribers each is that people seem to like everything simple. They really don’t wanna feel like you are trying to make them do something they don’t want to. A simple layout like this blog is perfect for allowing people to be comfortable while reading and commenting.
malapu

July 28th, 2008 6:40 am

Great post, really summed up a lot of things nicely together. You make it all sounds so easy,. NIce…
Jeff Kershner

July 28th, 2008 9:56 am

I really like tip #14 “Consider Removing Dates on Old Posts”. I run a niche blog for Internet marketing and sales for automotive dealerships. I sometimes will go back into the archives of 3 years and comment on my older postings so that it shows on the front page under “Recent Comments”. This sometimes will spike additional comments for an older post, bringing it back to life. Removing the dates would be an added benefit when doing this.
Marc Eilbeck

July 28th, 2008 10:59 am

wow thanks for the great advice darren. Big post but full of great info
garry

July 28th, 2008 11:36 am

Some great and helpful advice which will help me to take my new blog on to a higher level much quicker than I could have done by myself.
abdul

July 28th, 2008 3:32 pm

Very nice post darran… points 13,14,17,18 are really good.
Thanks a lot.
Regards,
http://www.elechub.com
niko

July 28th, 2008 6:01 pm

really great tips darren. after going trough your last years “31 Days to Building a Better Blog” I find this your blog a really great place and one for small blogger to start when they do not know how to change their blog to make it better. I started to use some of the tips and hopefully they will work but at least I feel that the blog feels better thanks to the changes I made according to the advice at problogger.com after implementing some of the tips :-) good luck
Mano Rame

July 28th, 2008 6:21 pm

I learned this technique from Josh Anderson it is to split the content in to two parts and post part 1 and save part 2 for a later date this might increase the stickiness of a blog.
Sunil Jadhav

July 28th, 2008 6:42 pm

It’s really good information for me to handle my blog.
Thanks
wheelsontrack

July 28th, 2008 8:33 pm

Idea given above are really great and answers some of my real worries. I will defenitely try to work upon the suggestions and methods and hope that it will work for me as it does for you.
http://www.wheelsontrack.com
Miss UNIVERSE

July 28th, 2008 9:20 pm

We made our blog a little ‘too sticky’ (if you catch our drift)

so we had to tone it down ;-)

Guess for some blogs, sticky means something entirely different :-D
Alex Roe

July 28th, 2008 11:52 pm

Some useful ideas. Indeed, raising stickiness or lowering bounce rate is not at all easy.

Good content helps it seems, but then does good design. Actually, after I re-designed my blog, bounce rates fell, or rather stickiness increased – and this was something I wanted to achieve.

I’m also using Google and YouTube video’s to keep people on-site, although the results are unclear.

One thing you need to know is just what happens when people click on categories and comments links. Just what will they see? Will your video or other sticky content be missed.

Understanding how people interact with your site can make it more attractive.

My new design is a result of listening to my readers, who wanted both full posts and snippets, although I’ve been using the read more system to encourage people to dig deeper.

I’ve also reduced ad clutter a bit on the home page, and my posts don’t have ads on them until they are several days old, thanks to a good WP plugin called Smart Ads – http://simply-basic.com/smart-ads-plugin

Looking at the stickiness of individual posts can help you understand what goes down well, and what does not. The related posts feature should link to sticky posts from the past on the same subject, if possible, although setting this up can be complex.

Like everything else, making your blog as effective as super glue is not easy – and blogs are often read and forgotten, I feel, unless you have something that engages the reader.

I’m going to continue to experiment, until I achieve the holy grail of an overall bounce rate of 40 percent. Still, the road towards this is tough, and bouncy!

And I’m going to think about removing dates from posts too – good idea indeed.

Great post, great discussion.

Alex
NaldzGraphics

July 29th, 2008 12:47 am

Wow darren.tnx for this post of yours.i,we really learn a lot
Sheila Sultani

July 29th, 2008 1:56 am

This is so a perfect post right now – thanks so much for putting this together.
paige

July 29th, 2008 2:57 am

thanks for the tips!

i will try to make it work for me…

visit my page..

http://lightedpen.blogspot.com/
Winning Startups

July 29th, 2008 8:47 am

Thank you for the awesome tips. I visit your site often and think this is one of your best posts. I will use this to help me with my blog
Doug C.

July 29th, 2008 11:12 am

Great post, but it would have been helpful to include information or a link to places that explain how to do these things. Like putting a subscribe link at the bottom of each of your posts, for instance.
absorbation

July 29th, 2008 6:04 pm

Love this post Darren, I’ve already started implementing these systems into my blog, but mine is my own coded system, so I can customise it exactly to my specification.
Ankit Garg

July 29th, 2008 7:21 pm

Great post Darren. Never seen a more comprehensive post than this one in recent times.
Alex

July 29th, 2008 8:17 pm

Very interesting tips.
I think one of the most effective points are the sneeze pages. Did you do this manuell or is there a plugin für this?
Thanks, and sorry for my bad english
Financial Planner

July 30th, 2008 1:52 am

I think adding your facebook page is a great idea. Thanks for the thoughts… I always enjoy this blog.
Michelle

July 30th, 2008 4:08 am

Great ideas, sometimes even simple, but good to have these ideas all in just one place.
Home Business Online-Steven Fu

July 30th, 2008 2:54 pm

I got a light-bulb moment reading this post. Thanks Darren…
Daria

July 30th, 2008 8:51 pm

I’ve really liked the way you invite your readers to subscribe to your blog at the end of every post. I’ve noticed that, when I was reading the DPS blog. It looks so natural and it does make a reader want to subscribe.
I haven’t noticed that you are using a What Would Seth Godin Do plug in, though. I’m thinking of implementing one on my blog. Do you really think it’s worth it? Wouldn’t readers get annoyed?
Another thing that I believe you did not mention is a blog roll. It’s a great way to show your readers that you are reading other related blogs.
And one more thing. Do you really think that it is effective to show that a blog has only 12 readers? It seems like numbers like this can scare people off.
Jonah Lisa

July 31st, 2008 3:03 am

Wow, Darren. I implemented a few of you suggestions here about prominence of the subscription area, offering different ways to subscribe and doing an explanatory post (with a link to your great What is RSS? article) and my subscribers went from 6 to 40 in 2 days…and counting.

I have a mommy blog that’s under a year old with only about 150 regular readers at this point. So 6 to 40 is big news for me.

I’ve also done some optimization on my popular posts that get search engine hit and can’t wait to see what dividends I get from that.

Still have a bit more deign work to do. Thanks for all the great tips.
Leo

August 1st, 2008 8:17 pm

Sounds like hard work to me.
Andre Thomas

August 4th, 2008 1:06 pm

Whoa man… This is mind blowing stuff! I’m gonna go implement these.
Doug C.

August 6th, 2008 12:44 pm

Darren, thanks to your great tips I did a little redesign of the subscription elements on my site and even created a nifty subscribe box for my sidebar. If you get a chance drop by dcblog.net and check it out and let me know what you think.

Thanks again for a great article.
Osama Fouad

August 7th, 2008 12:06 am

Great Post! very usefull I will read it again thoroughly!
Thanks.
dinu

August 13th, 2008 12:06 am

Thanks a lot for this great article !! even though I had only 22 rss readers, I was able to double it. :) I have this article added to my bookmarks toolbar and I am trying to do all of them, one at a time ..
excelBlogger

August 13th, 2008 9:04 pm

Reading the tips is easy but Implementing and maintaining these kind of tis needs some care.

And these are the awesome ways to make our blog sticky.

Credit for you….
Roschelle

August 16th, 2008 6:21 pm

These were absolutely priceless tips. Thanks for sharing. Well, I’ve gotta run….got lots of work to DO
Aspiring Wordpress Theme Developer

August 17th, 2008 2:05 am

Really great tips here Darren! I’ll be sure to implement most of them. Thanks
SnowRat

August 19th, 2008 11:08 am

Great post. I subscribed 2 minutes ago so the tips do work.
Thanks!
Andrew

August 27th, 2008 1:40 pm

I should read this post earlier, as I really got spikes of traffic during these days. I post some photos about olympics, and get over 1000 views per day from google, this has been last for a week. I know this traffic will not last very long, but I don’t know what I should do.

Thanks Darren, and I’ve subscribed this blog.
Tyler

September 10th, 2008 12:27 pm

When I go to http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/subscribe-to-digital-photography-school/ and look for your newsletter subscription, I cannot figure out how to subscribe! ARrrrrgh I think it’s broken.
abby

September 19th, 2008 5:02 pm

I purchased your book on a whim before I knew anything about you (so obviously I thought you had great content). After much boredom and dissatisfaction with my current gig set in, I began looking for ideas for new streams of income and I came across your book. I have your blog bookmarked on my phone and laptop. You’ll be my blog bible for awhile.
I just started blogging again and hope to someday be a success in my niche as you are.
Thanks for your info!
-abby
Domain Name Registration

October 3rd, 2008 3:39 am

Darren

#18 is a proven method and a great addition to your list. As long as you have an expertise and can provide them with information that they want a forum is a great method of making a website sticky.

Best regards,
David L.
Edward

November 14th, 2008 5:22 am

Did you discuss using video? It’s very very sticky in my opinion. People just see the little square and can’t help but click on the triangle PLAY. But don’t make it play automatically, that’s no fun at all for the user.
Debbie Summers

November 19th, 2008 2:13 pm

Darren – I’ve been reading for months and this is my first comment, I couldn’t help myself… I’m going to be stuck to this blog for a couple of days not only is it packed full of useful information, the links lead me to so much more. This is the first comment, but not the last!
westpenninewoman

December 1st, 2008 6:24 am

There’s some really good info here. As a new blogger I didn’t think about subscribe to comments box I shall have to look into that.

Re branding I hate Perez! He may be successful but he’s a nasty piece of works. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to read his poison.
Wisdom Talks

December 8th, 2008 1:50 am

Really Awesome. I just have started blogging. And i believe this post will really add lot of values. You really have sticky contents Rowse. I will come back and back to this blog.

http://www.wisdomtalks.com
rhuah

December 8th, 2008 10:57 am

WOW!! these tips are going to help me a lot!!
I never did blogging before and just started one as a class assignment…..and I’m really lost…..especially in the whole community thing. I’ll be grateful if you could visit my site sometime and give tips heehee
OfficeSupplyGeek

December 31st, 2008 6:53 am

Very helpful tips, thanks for sharing these. Some seem so obvious, yet here I am still not doing them. :)
Make money online with a 17 year old kid

January 2nd, 2009 1:21 am

Hi Darren,
I liked the 1st, 7th, 11th, and 19th ones the most as they are the ones where I was lacking behind.
Whenever I read your posts about blogging I think that the tips told by you are already known by me or are so much depndent on common sense than why didn’t I use them. LOL

Well, as far as problogger is alive I don’t need to worry about my professionalism in my blogging because problogger always comes up with great guidance.
Thx for this helpful post (and blog of course,)

Regards
Laksh
http://makemoneyonline-withme.blogspot.com/
Bryan

January 8th, 2009 1:24 am

I have read several of your blog articles now and very pleased with the information. These are great suggestions and one that I had never thought about is using Social Bookmarking like Twitter to get people to “follow” me.

Excellent Information!
Ishan

February 21st, 2009 8:06 pm

Very interesting post. This is something I had been experiencing since a long time, and had a high bounce rate. Then I realized that I was trying to clutter my website with ads. Then I started cleaning it up a bit, and getting much higher traffic now. Now, I am trying to make them stick, using many of the points mentioned in this post, and other posts.

Ishan
http://savefewbucks.blogspot.com/
EarlMobile

February 23rd, 2009 12:52 am

Two months ago I started an arts related blog in German. In one of my posts I reviewed an exhibition in a famous British gallery and since then many visitors reached my blog through this post, referred by a huge traffic monster. Because none of these visitors speak German I decided to translate this particular article to English and added a link at the very beginning of the landing page.
I can only advise every non-english writer to try this – it will be a success.
Simona Rich @ Personal Development Coach

February 25th, 2009 5:23 am

My site is very personal because I want my readers know who is behind this website, but the articles are not about me. I think I got this point right.

I guess I will need to make my subscription options more prominent, because they are moderate to spot.
Monica McPherrin

February 26th, 2009 1:17 am

Just found this post and all I can say is WOW!
What great ideas, some I hadn’t thought of and others I’m glad you reminded me of. I love your blog posts. You consistantly give great content and I really appreciate it. Keep up the great work.
Make Money Online Tips

February 26th, 2009 4:24 am

WP Greet Box is another fantastic plugin which helps in greeting visitors to your blog.
skipratt

March 11th, 2009 2:19 am

I have adopted the personal touch to my blog not only to connect to my readers but I think it’s the best way to establish my blog and branding in a niche that is dominated by up to date news. Something that I have not been able to achieve.
Cindy Sue Causey

March 13th, 2009 4:57 am

Hey, Darren..

Speaking of sticky.. :grin:

Keep getting occasional emails announcing the latest comments here.. Finally got curious and followed the link offered at the bottom of those emails, the one about updating one’s status in receiving these very comments..

Here now simply to say *thanks* from this user’s view point.. Cognitively offers a super simple interface.. Berry, berry nice change of pace from the overkill that abounds across the Net..

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock.. :)
Watch Gossip Girl

March 17th, 2009 7:50 pm

I love to put a large image on the front page of my blog which gives the reader an idea about what the content on my blog is about.
Jes

March 27th, 2009 4:21 am

Great post! I will try to incorporate all of these into my site. These are all very good tips!

- Jes
Technology Blog

March 30th, 2009 12:23 am

What should i do to engage visitors and to make them stay for long if my blog is new?
Matthias

April 1st, 2009 1:57 am

A good post like this will never be outdated. Thanks for sharing
Online Business

April 14th, 2009 10:59 pm

g8 post…really making the readers to sticky ;-) i will try to write g8 posts like this…..
Escoofield

April 28th, 2009 9:24 pm

Thanks for this, Darren.

I guess I will need to make my subscription options more prominent, because they are moderate to spot.
I have read several of your blog articles now and very pleased with the information. These are great suggestions and one that I had never thought about is using Social Bookmarking like Twitter to get people to “follow” me.

Reading the tips is easy but Implementing and maintaining these kind of tis needs some care.

And these are the awesome ways to make our blog sticky.

Thank you very much for sharing this to us!
Dofus Kamas

April 29th, 2009 2:21 pm

Darren, another great post. Quick question: do you know of a good WP plugin for “top posts” or one that lets you manually add a list of select posts in the sidebar navigation, displayed in a similar format to the standard archive and category links?
Stickiness makes or breaks a site really and i am glad that is being discussed. Having Many of my own domains and having dealt with many webmasters i can tell you that sometimes a programmer or designer worries to much about how the site looks or functions that they forget that A.
Logo Designer

May 14th, 2009 6:20 am

Thanks for all the great information. I’ve always wanted to do something different with some blogs but didn’t want to pay for anything. I’ll have to just push my way through the learning curve and design my own blog.
vijay

May 14th, 2009 8:41 pm

Thanks for all the great information. I’ve always wanted to do something different with some blogs but didn’t want to pay for anything. I’ll have to just push my way through the learning curve and design my own blog.
@Web Marketing Blog

May 25th, 2009 10:32 pm

It is no doubt that it is the dreams of every blogger that none will wish to leave his site and don’t leave without subscription. “Sticky” site, is the most desired element which every webmaster or blogger wants. It is no doubt that problogger has got this element :)

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Written on July 18th, 2008 at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse

21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky

What is a ‘Sticky’ Site?

21 Techniques to Make Your Site Sticky

1. Make Your Invitations to Subscribe to your blog Prominent