Very good topic today as getting people to subscribe to your feed or email list are extremely important. Often it can be hard to do and there are plugins that will help you although they are not always the best solution.

Remember that you can ask your questions in the comments below and we will cover most of them in future blog posts.

Are there plugins your recommend that work with WP for placing the RSS and e-mail sign up on or near the top of the page? Your recommendations would be welcomed. THANKS!

There are a few plugins that you can use for your RSS feed. Two that I use regularly on my blogs are Subscribe Me and What Would Seth Godin Do.

Subscribe Me allows you to add a feed button in your sidebar and only needs to be used if you do  not have a subscribe to feed button incorporated in your theme design. The vast majority of new themes now incorporate that feature.

What Would Seth Godin Do is a plugin that will allow you to add a subscribe message at the beginning or end of your posts but to only show it at specific times. Following Seth’s adage that you treat different visitors differently depending on how they have interacted in the past. This way new people can see the request but the regular readers do not get the interruption.

Autoresponder plugins that I have tried are usually more trouble than they are worth at least the ones I have tested. With widgetized sidebars it is easy to just drop in the code to your autoresponder inside a widget.

Now there are some paid plugins that claim to help but not having tested them I can’t comment as to their effectiveness.

My personal favorite and what has been most effective for me is to use a slide in or light box pop up that can be delayed which is easy with Aweber my autoresponder of choice for my blogs.

Your comments and questions are welcomed.

About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: blog, email subscribers, rss, rss subscribers

Aweber has a feature that makes it ideal to use with your blog. You can set up Aweber to automatically email your list every time you update your blog or at any time frame you wish to use. (Like a weekly summary.)

The advantage to this is that if you offer something you will have an easy way to remind people to stop back and visit because you added new content.

Now sites like Feed Burner have similar capabilities but by using an autoresponder you can also send out other broadcast messages to the list. This will allow you to deliver other items that can be list specific. For example I could put together a special report just for the subscribers which could be in a pdf or a special video. This allows you to have a stronger relationship with those that have shown they are interested in your content by signing up.

There are two things that usually cause problems for new people when setting these up. They are making the form fit which has been covered extensively in this post – Adding opt in box to your blog and setting up the automation on Aweber.

Once you have created the account for your autoresponder click on the create a blog broadcast button.

Then add your feed url in the box that says RSS Feed URL.

Then choose how often you would like to have them send to your subscribers. You can do it by number of articles or by set time frame.

I like to use automatically but that depends on what you promise people when they sign up.

Get your account set up at Aweber and check out their complete video tutorial

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About the author

Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy. After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably. If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.

Technorati Tags: autoresponder, aweber, list building, rss

Staying ahead of the story line in your niche can be very beneficial for your traffic. As an example I picked up on the story of Six Apart supporting some WordPress plugins for their proprietary items. It was a big story because Six Apart is the owner of the Typepad blogging platform and is a competitor of WordPress.

The key though is that by being among the first I have gotten some good backlinks and traffic from others referring to my story.

Here is a simple way to keep abreast with whatever is hot in your niche. Google news is constantly updating by keyword. They also have an rss feed for any keyword search you make.

This allows me to monitor any topic for the latest stories easily. Take your topic and go to Google News and do a search.

Click on the RSS icon and go get the url for the feed. The next step is to add the feed to your reader of choice (in my case I stick with Google and use Google reader but any feed reader will work).

Click the add a subscription button and fill in the feed url. You will get a box that looks like this.

Click add and then each time you open the reader you will see all the new items that Google has found on your topic. You can follow the same format to add any leading bloggers in your niche, other topics you want to follow or any other feed that you find helpful.

For me I check the reader a couple times a day and get the latest items all in one place allowing me to stay current, know which blogs I might want to go comment on or any other item that will allow me to be a cutting edge resource.

After all anything that saves me time and allows me to keep up to date with a minimal time investment is something I want to do. What about you?

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: cutting edge, Google News, Google Reader, rss

The last couple posts have dealt with some of the ways that I use Twitter in conjunction with my blogging to improve both.

First participate in ways other than just automating your blog posts. See a good tweet with information that would benefit your followers retweet it. Respond and have conversations with others there. It is called networking for a reason.

Just like your blog you are building a community or “tribe” as Seth Godin calls it. People who look to you to deliver information they want and being a credible resource.

The final tool that I have found is called Mr. Tweet. Follow Mr Tweet and you will receive recommendations of people you should be and recommend you to others. This allows you to expand your sphere of influence from the recommendations.

It will save you time although you could and should be finding those worthwhile people if you are using Twitter for research (see the previous blog post).

Last integrate your Twitter into your other social networking by adding it to Facebook, My Blog Log, Friend Feed and any other places that allow it. That is the real leverage as like your RSS feed for your blog it allows you to be updating things at multiple sites with each tweet.

Hope you have enjoyed the series and will be back to more on WordPress now after the Twitter break.

Mike Paetzold

Follow me on Twitter

Technorati Tags: Facebook, My Blog Log, rss, social networking, twitter, WordPress Friend Feed

I have been adding more content here and less answering questions so back to the questions.

Today’s question:

Mike, Two quick questions: What is the name of the drop down menu RSS subscribe plugin that you are using on this blog? I like it. The BIG one: I saw your wonderful interview with Liz Tomey. You said that you test different Adsense placements with different WP themes. In your testing, have you found that a certain theme and/or placement combination works well. So well, that you use it as a benchmark to start your other sites? Example: I got the Revolution Magazine theme (not cheap) and it is beautiful. Great content, good traffic – but the Adsense click thru is so very bad. Pretty ain’t always the best. Many thanks, and keep up the good work. Robert

The first part is easy. I use Subscribe Me plugin for the drop down feed buttons. I like it because it makes a one click to add to the reader’s preferred feed reader. For example I use Google Reader and if I click the Google button it adds it to my reader in a click (as long as I am logged in which for me is almost always).

The second part is much harder.

My best results for ctr on Adsense usually come from having the ads embedded in the post itself. There are plugins that will do that but I prefer to hard code the Adsense into the theme itself.

Sidebar Adsense has never done well for me for click throughs compared to having it in the article.

Now I don’t intentionally create Adsense blogs as a primary monetization. They come about by testing.

I start with Adsense and if that is converting I will start to test affiliate offers. As I am converting over though I will move the Adsense to the bottom of the post until I have proved out the affiliate promotions.

I use Adsense primarily for testing new niches as it does give me a good idea of how profitable it is. Adsense is never the primary monetization unless the niche does not prove out for affiliate marketing or my own products.

If it proves out then I switch to affiliate offers or create my own product as that is more profitable in the long run and the Adsense goes away. I will keep it up with Adsense only if it makes more that way than with affiliate offers.

If it is a dud I kill it and let the domain expire.

Hope that helps explain it better for you.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: adsense, affiliate marketing, blogs, google, rss, wordpress

This is the last post in the blog traffic series this time through .

Quite often I see people not use the most powerful part of their blog – the feed.

Here are just a few places and sites that you may be using where you can add in your feed and give people a chance to find your blog from things you are already doing. (This is not an all inclusive list by any means.)

• Facebook Profile
• Friend feed
• Squidoo pages
• Hub Pages
• Wet Paint pages

In almost all of these you just need to add the url to your feed and they will start updating your listing on all of those pages each time you update your blog.

If you have not set up feed burner or done anything special with plugins the default feed url for your self hosted WordPress blog will be http://yourdomain.com/folder/feed.

Now if that is not your feed look for the feed link, right click and check properties and you can see exactly what your feed url is.

Adding your feed into all these places will give more people the chance to find your blog while just doing what you normally do anyhow.

Even better especially for the various sites like Squidoo, et al your lens is getting new content added each time you post to your blog. Gotta love things that allow you to automate updating and we all know how much Google loves fresh content when the spiders visit.

As always your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: blog traffic, Facebook, FriendFeed, hub pages, rss, rss feed, squidoo, traffic

Today’s question:

How do I get RSS feeds to my blog please?

Now this can be answered a few different ways as it is not clear what you are asking.

WordPress automatically creates a feed for your blog. It is found by appending /feed to the URL for your blog. So if you are looking for your own feed that is the easy way with WordPress.

Now you might want to add your feed to feedburner especially if you want to use the feed blitz email service. Go to feedburner and get an account and add your feed there then promote your feedburner feed.

This can be important if you want to sell text links or advertising because most sites base fees off of PR, visitor traffic and RSS subscribers listed at feedburner.

Now the other question that could be being asked is how to import RSS feeds for content. Now if all you are looking for is a news feed or similar content to enhance your sidebar there are plugins that will allow that.

If you are looking to scrape content and use someone’s content to populate your blog my answer is don’t.

Technorati Tags: add rss feed, import rss feed, rss, rss feed

Pinging [ 3:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

A few similar questions have come in:

Do you use Submit Em Now in place of or in addition to UP Smart Update Pinger? What are the advantages / disadvantages to using each?

I want to know more about RSS feeds to and from my blog. I have a blog at ccblog. Also, with my ccblog, can I use different services to ping it or is it already done automatically?

First lets address SubmitEm Now – This is a plugin for Firefox. It is used to submit your RSS feed to the various RSS directories. It saves you time by allowing you to fill in a form and then use that information at each of the sites without having to retype it each time. It is not part of your blog.

Now the Smart Update Pinger plugin is part of your blog. It’s purpose is to keep you from over pinging. It checks to see if a specific post has been pinged before and if it haves does not ping it again.

This overcomes a problem if you are editing posts. For example – I don’t know why but quite often I will type ofr instead of for. I usually don’t catch it until after I publish the post. If I did not use the plugin then when I hit the edit button to fix it the post would ping again. Keep pinging quickly back to back and your feed will be dropped as a spammer.

Now the pinging is done automatically by the WordPress software. You can and should add additional ping services to your ping list. You can add to your ping list by using settings (options if you are not using v2.5) – writing. At the bottom of the page you will see a box where you can add these sources and click the update button.

You can also find a link to a complete list of ping services in the text above the box.

Hopefully this sheds some light on the differences but if not your questions and comments are welcomed.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: ping, pinging, rss, rss directories, rss feed

RSS tags [ 2:01 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Once again a question from the call this month. Today’s question is:

how do I get the rss feed chicklets on my blog pages like you have?

Well that is relatively easy. It is done with a plugin called Subscibe me. You will need to change the default settings once you upload and activate it.

There is only one set to show by default. Just check the others and make sure to add the subscribe me widget to your sidebar and you will have them showing. Personally, I prefer to use the dropdown but haven’t gone back and changed some of my older blogs but these questions are always a reminder to me too .

To summarize – Upload the plugin to the plugins folder. Go to dashboard and select plugins then activate it. Finally, just click on the options and change it to suit your needs.

Have a question or a comment? I always love to hear from my readers.

Mike Paetzold

Technorati Tags: rss, rss-tags