A guest post from Glen ViperChill.
I’ve read a lot of blogging success stories in my four-year blogging history. Sadly, they’ve always been about other people, rather than me. And, when I do see them, although they are real, I get a sense that the owner didn’t have to work as hard as I have. I see people getting big on Digg yet my domain is banned for no reason or linked to by Seth Godin and getting ‘famous’ overnight. I don’t want to sound bitter, but it just seemed like success was happening to everyone else.
Once I had this realisation, I decided that if I wasn’t going to get featured on Digg or Delicious for my new site, I would work on:
- Being the most authentic blogger in my niche
- Providing the best content that I can
- Interacting within my community as much as possible.
And what happened? In one year I managed to build my blog to just over 4,000 subscribers. Sure, it isn’t the success story that everyone else raves about, but it’s realistic and it is attainable. Or maybe I’m being hard on myself, because I don’t see that many blogs reaching these numbers either.
1. Getting 500 Subscribers is Much Harder than 1,000
Some of you might be completely confused by that statement and to others it will make perfect sense; let me explain. When I look at my own stats, I can see that it took me 5 months to reach 500 subscribers (which isn’t a bad rate of growth at all). Can you guess how many it took to reach 1,000? Just two.
You see, when I first started out, I was a complete nobody in my niche. I was fairly known in the internet marketing industry but totally unheard of when it came to personal development. Because of that, I had to establish a brand. I went with a logo people would remember, a unique design, and a desire to focus on content that simply helped people be who they want to be. Everything I would write would have the focus of helping people get what they want out of life.
From there I started commenting on other blogs, being active in Twitter and writing the best articles I could. I worked hard, but within a few months I was at the 500 subscriber mark. Once you get to this stage, things start getting much, much easier because when you’re trying to promote content that has no audience, you have to find people who might want to read it and show up where they are. Once you have an audience and write great content, they’re going to start sharing it for you.
If you’re struggling to get your first few hundred subscribers then don’t worry, as they’re far harder to get than the next few hundred. With the 5 months left in the year I managed to grow my site by another 3,000 subscribers. How’s that for exponential growth.
2. If You’re Going to Guest Post, Vary Your Audience
I have been one of the most active guest posters on the internet in the last few months and for one simple reason: guest posting works. It gets you out there in front of a new audience and just as importantly, an audience that understands blogs and what they are all about. If someone subscribers to another blog in your niche, there’s a good chance they will subscribe to yours if you’re writing great content. One thing I have noticed some people do is “piggyback” off a certain blog and try to write there as often as possible.
This is usually for big blogs which can help you get a lot of traffic and subscribers quite quickly, but things will soon die down. If someone has seen you guest post on a site 5 times and still haven’t subscribed, they probably won’t when you write your 6th article. There are a few benefits to varying your guest posting which include:
- Reaching a new audience: If you’re going for the same sites all the time, you’re going to reach the same readers. By varying your activities you can reach new eyeballs that want your content.
- Creating new connections: Guest posting shouldn’t just be thought of as something you can do to benefit your own site, but also something you can do to help the author of another site. Most bloggers love free content in return for a backlink so if you can help as many people as possible, there’s no harm in that
3. Find Ways to Collaborate with Others
As a blogger, I’m quite sad about the rise of Twitter in a way. Instead of the hundreds of backlinks a good blog post could get a few years ago, it will now get hundreds of tweets. Sure the tweets can bring you traffic, but they are not going to help your post move up the ranks in search engines. Even as a way for collaboration, people are focusing on twitter communication rather than working with people via their blogs. Usually these writers are coming from the scarcity mindset and if they link to other bloggers they’re going to lose readers and help their “competitor” grow.
First of all, if you think of other bloggers in your niche as competitors then you have a totally backwards mindset. Secondly, I’m here to tell you that collaborating with other bloggers in my niche has been one of the best things I have done. To begin with, I created a list of the top Personal Development Blogs. This ranks all of the blogs by their statistics and of course helps my site visitors find other amazing blogs to read. This page has been linked to by hundreds of websites and it has helped put me in touch with tons of other bloggers.
On top of that, I also ran a series called the Personal Development face-off. I had the idea thanks to Daniel Scocco doing this in the blogging niche and thought that the content generated here would be excellent. Even though I was featuring two other bloggers on my site every week, hundreds of people emailed me to say how much they loved the series. This positioned me as someone who was at the top of my industry because I had all of these top bloggers taking time out to work with me and because I was sharing the best content in the niche.
Don’t be afraid of promoting other bloggers. These days, I try to promote great content on other sites as much as possible. It will come back your way.
Glen is the author of ViperChill, a blog on Viral Marketing. He aims to help people create remarkable websites that others just naturally want to talk about.
These are some great strategies and also some great tips. One strategy that are really like is doing one post a week on some of the blogs in your industry and highlighting them on your website. This creates more buzz for your website because other bloggers will begin to recognize you.
For me, to get huge subscribers in short period of time, it is always best to be unique and authentic as what you have said.
It is because without those element, our blogs will have to compete with other blogs that are well established plus few hundreds ( or maybe thousands) new blogs each day.
Through this, our blog will be built on a really strong foundation i.e. loyal readers which follow us because our site contents.
When we have reached certain amount of subscribers, the lateer process will definitely way easier and require less effort as our loyal readers will also help us in promoting our blogs especially through the social sites.
I also think that it’s tougher for me to succeed. I hope your post will help me. I care audience more than money or whatever you say. In my opinion, if I have a large audience, success is on the way.
I Completely agree with you darren on the point that its really hard to get first few subscribers as compared to the subscribers you get in the later stage of blogging.
all it takes is time and pressure along with quality posts which are genuinely useful for people and more useful to people more success and subscribers .
This is so encouraging to hear! My blog is still very new, and I have a small number of people following it so far. But, I’ve just been made a featured blogger on one site, and also from the same site offered my first guest posting spot.
I certainly agree with you on the points, work your bum off, and get out there and network with others. Blogging is a huge give and take thing
Great post. And good job too! Will try to apply some of these techniques
Glen,
The idea of the face off is purely brilliant!
I really love the idea and it’s sparked a few ideas that I’d love to start trying in my niche.
I agree, getting your first few 500 subscribers is difficult, but after a while it gets much easier and I also think that as you start getting loads of backlink your blog starts ranking better.
One think you point out that is so important is about being authentic.
That is such an important point and I think that because of the “guru” mentality on the net a lot of people start blogging without any purpose and they think that because they’ve read about a guru making 5 million/day, they can just start stapping content and they’ll get the same results.
You really have to be passionate about a topic and you have to be willing to become THE expert in order to get others to want to follow you.
This is a really great post and I will keep it as part of my bookmarks because there are many techniques I’d like to put into place.
Thanks a million for sharing my friend and much continued success!!!
Krizia
I’ll take a cue from the post that Glen just wrote.
I’m an expert in healthy eating (my real passion/love) and I’ve been consulting since 2005 some of the top marketers in establishing affiliate programs (aka affiliate marketing) that generate high income for my clients (my job to pay bills).
I’ve been a guess blogger on Problogger, dumblittleman and entrepreneur-journey.
If you’d like to exchange content so we can help each other grow our blogs, check out my site and email me!
I’ll be checking out the sites of a lot of you here and will also be contacting a few of you to put Glen’s ideas into place!!!
Krizia
Great thoughts here. I appreciate this.
I think that too many people have that competitor mindset and yet a I agree with you that collaboration is so incredibly powerful.
The fact that first 500 subscribers took lot of time reminds me of Darren’s post in which he told that rockets use lot of fuel in starting phase.
One things that I liked about your goals is that you focused on being a good blogger in niche rather than getting featured on a site.
Hey Glen,
A super-effective subscriber-building strategy is to be remarkable, write amazing and useful stuff (for yourself and others), and leave high-quality comments on high-traffic relevant blogs.
This simple and genuine strategy seems to have worked for many now-big bloggers (Leo Babauta, Chris Guillebeau), and it’s working great for you with PluginID and ViperChill. It’s the strategy I’m using – although I’m in my beginning stages (my site Lifebeat is barely a month old), it’s been working so far.
Thank you for sharing your encouraging story. Like you mentioned, 4k subscribers in 12 months is very attainable, and you’re pushing me to work harder and make better stuff.
Great and helpful to-the-point article. Awesome to see you guest posting on ProBlogger,
Oleg
Well I am not at all agree with your twitter thoughts. If your post is good and attractive than with a single tweet you can also get good number of backlinks from similar niche and can improve your SERP.
Provided you should know how to handle twitter.
I disagree about guest posting as a way to get more subscribers. It is a waste of time, this is speaking from personal experience. You are putting your own good content on someone else’s blog and will get very few subscribers from this.
Do you provide the services you mention in your excellent articles?
I entered an incorrect web site address. This comment has the correct one.
I have made my fortune writing offline and I am currently on the journey of making my second million online, I have found that tweeting my posts from my blog works well to bring in some traffic and also writing articles for various other sites and placing my link where it is relevant. I have made a few deals with other bloggers to link swap as well but here I think the key is just hard work patience and persistance, when it comes to blogging you simply cannot give up.
Great tips!
Well, writing good and honest content has worked pretty well (hit 2k subscribers a few months back) for me so far. I think that is the most important thing that bloggers must do in order to gain readership.
Thanks for the great post! I am trying to grow my rss readership and these tips will help me on my way.
I submitted this post to reddit:
http://www.reddit.com/r/internet_marketing/new/
Thanks a lot ProBlogger, you know what My website title goes by Unto Pro Blogging and I got that inspiration from you. You are really someone I would love to be like in blogging. This post is one that encourages me to reach my goal, its my best yet on this site. Thanks again.
Great post I understand that having subscribers is very important to make money online with blogging. I think making money online without a subscribers list is possible. I think only the A-listers can afford to have such a subscribers amount. Thanks for sharing.
This is great. I been trying to attract more subscribers for couple months, with no luck. This will def help.
My niche is so small that I will simply have to expand to get any kind of subscriber-ship. However, I am in the process of doing just that, and I expect to be moving forward fairly soon. Thanks for the tips!
500 to 1000 sounds interesting. May be like we define it in Science, everything has a threshold before it starts rolling…Perhaps it’s true for blogs as well.
The face off concept is truly innovative. Haven’t anyone else do that yet.
From what I’ve seen, as soon as people let themselves be themselves, innovation and authenticity follow very rapidly.
Some friends and I use competition and collaboration at the same time. It’s hard to explain. We sort of help each other compete with each other. Ultimately, our hardest competition is within ourselves.
ZK – Yes, you can still get links, but absolutely nothing compared to what you would get in the past.
Guest Posting – I am proof that guest posting works. A guest post on Zen Habits, for example, will bring your site over 400 subscribers in that day. Of course, it already sounds like you are set on your ‘facts’.
Temitope – Glad you think this is the best post yet. I appreciate that.
Thanks for all of the comments
– Glen
good insight getting subscribers, I know what you mean, once word starts spreading it multiplys faster and faster. I try to write my content as if I have thousands of subscribers. I’m trying to take the “if you build it they will come” approach and I have faith in that.
Great advice. Has motivated and equipped me to grow my audience. Thank you.
Building subscribers is very tough.
In addition, although I have many visitors to both my blogs, none ever leave comments. So I have no idea who they are, what they want, what level of expertise they have or want, etc. although I’ve asked them several times in several ways to let me know. But the response has been a profound silence.
Any ideas how to get folks to participate more? Thanks.
I’m going to adopt your attitude, Big Ideas. I love it!
Great step by step to blogging success. Kinda like getting wealthy. The first $100 is the hardest to acquire. After that it gets easier.
I’ve been wondering why I’ve been stuck at around 13-19 subs despite traffic rising. Collaboration. I knew it was important, but I didn’t know it was THAT important. Thanks for the specific breakdown of the numbers. Looks like I’ve got some work to do.
The fact that it takes an immense effort to get anything worthwhile off the ground is not a new phenomenon, but we still seem to learn little from it. People still quit right when they’re on the cusp of success. Sticking with it really is a rare value, and it’s important to know when to quit, and when not to quit. This post will hopefully motivate some would-be quitters to realize that they’re not as far outside the realm of “success” as they think.
Good to see you here Glen.I often visit your site and I know you practice each of the steps you have written here.So it took you 12 months to get 4000 subscribers.Ok …Now I know where I am heading.
great idea..thank you for share this information
It was the Lifehacker effect that got you the traffic and a “healthy” archive that made them subscribe! Good job!
In the last few weeks I’ve been working on alot of ideas that have resulted primarily from collaboration. I even wrote a guest post for somebody called blogging is a team sport. Now I’m coming up with some of my most innovative ideas thanks to my ability collaboration.
@Christian: I think your comment is the stand out of all the ones here for me. I plan on subscribing to your blog right away because we’re both of the same mindset. I think that sticking it out with your blog is the way to go, even if takes time to get readers.
Thanks for sharing some pretty good tips, but I think if you are a blog which already receives a good traffic, this approach will work, but if you are small then not many websites would be willing to collaborate with you unless one is willing to shell out some money.
It’s the snowballing effect. Happens in nearly everything that matters in life.
How does one get into guest posting. Do you email bloggers? Or do they come to you? How do you get started?
Great ideas on kick starting your blog. No wonder you’ve come up smelling of roses.
I always find that competitors aren’t competitors but collaborators. In my business (web design) we often refer clients to other designers when we’re too busy or if they’re not a good match for our skills and other web designers refer work to us. Strange but true. I can see how vital it is in the blogging world too.
I agree, it is more difficult to get 500 than it is to get 1000 subscribers, followers, friends, or whatever one is collecting. It is a snowball affect though.
It definitely helps if you can decide on an audience and target them, speak to them, and draw them into you. Go narrow and then expand to a broader audience.
You have to have to be able to count to one, before you can add to two.
Thank you for the great info! I look forward to more!
Thanks for your report. I write for consumers, so I put a lot of links in my posts to help my readers with their consumer issues.
A friend told me you shouldn’t put links in because people leave your site. I notice newspapers don’t put links in their stories. They mention sources and research studies, but they don’t include a link.
Rita blogging at The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide at http://boomersurvive-thriveguide.typepad.com
Hey Darren,
thanks for this post. I love to read your blog, the tips are so useful and easy to understand so I can integrate them into my own blog. At the beginning it’s really hard to get some followers, but after a while you will get more and more readers who turn into subscibers.
Looking forward to you new articles!
Glen, Thanks for the interesting insights and great tips. I have not thought of guest posting in the way you mentioned, to a wider audience, but will think of it in this way now. Thank you!
krissy knox :)
connect w me on twitter:
http://twitter.com/iamkrissy
Really very nice post. Well I also trying for increase my blog subscriber by writing valuable post on my blog. It also increasing day by day.
Great tips and ideas in this post. Good timing for me as I’m now finding myself ready to transition from the beginning stages of blogging, which for me has been mostly about learning the nuances of being part of an online community and getting familiar with some of the background technical stuff.
Your success story on gaining 4000 subscribers in 12 months is indeed inspirational and actually has me a little excited about moving into the next phase of my blogging venture.
I appreciate the valuable tips and look forward to exploring your ViperChill blog to learn even more.
Best,
DeeMarieF
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Hi Glen,
Your guest post arrived in my Inbox exactly when I most needed to read it and it gave me a much needed jolt of energy to keep on going. Instead of thinking, “My hard work isn’t paying off”, I replaced it with, “How can I serve more people?” and I immediately felt energized and inspired. Thanks.
Excellent information.I´m building my own mailing list and get about 4 subscribers daily, so it takes time to get a sizeable list.I know I will get there eventually. By giving value, you are going to get more subscribers, the more you give value the easier it is.