10 Ways to Increase RSS Subscribers

One way one bloggers gain readers is through RSS (Really Simple Syndication). RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish regularly updated works such as blog entries, news headlines as well as audio and video in standardized form. RSS feed benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. I use Feedburner as a my RSS feed and management tool. There are many feed and management tools to choose from. Just do a google search and you'll find one. I find Feedburner quite adequate and it is one of the most popular ones around. If you have a Blogger blog you may generally use your GFC (Google Friends Connect) plug-in to gain subscribers/followers as well as an RSS feed. But for other blog formats such as Wordpress, they use an RSS feed for their subscribers. In general, bloggers want more subscribers and more subscribers hopefully leads to increased readership. So how can you increase your RSS subscribers? Here are 10 tips.

1. Make sure your RSS icon is highly visible and is placed above the fold. Meaning on the top of the page without having to scroll down to view it.


2. Don't overwhelm your new subscribers with extraneous posts. You don't want their feed to be cluttered with posts they don't want to read, which could lead them to unsubscribe from your blog. So make every post count.


3. Use your RSS feed link when you comment on other blogs. Instead of using your blog URL, put in your feed URL and that way it leads people to your feed to subscribe.


4. Make sure to display the RSS icon on every page of your blog. That way people don't have to go back to your home page to subscribe if they decide to follow your blog. Remember people are busy, make it easier for them every step of the way.


5. Urge your readers to subscribe at the end of every post.


6. Make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your blog. Make the subscription button highly visible and easy to utilize.


7. Offer your readers something for free in return that they subscribe to your blog. This can be done with a free ebook, newsletter, giveaway or contest.


8. Offer category feeds so visitors can choose a specific category or topic that interest them. This way they don't have to subscribe to the entire blog.


9. Utilize cross RSS promotion. Get other bloggers to advertise and promote your blog feed on their blog and vice versa.

10. Make sure to explain to your readers or visitors what RSS is so they know why it's important to subscribe and utilize it. Some people have no idea what the RSS icon is for and thus they don't use it.

One helpful tip: Make sure to check your feed periodically to make sure your feed is working and your link is working.

Hope you found some helpful tips today. Now be a dear and please subscribe to my RSS feed in the upper right hand corner :-)

Top 20 Sites for Free Ebooks

Well, with a heavy heart, I have decided to suspend Friday's Free eBooks. The reason being, it's very time consuming. Even with the help of my book loving friend, Ollie Moss, it still consumes the better part of my day to format, link all the books, double check to make sure they are still free the day of and to cross check and see if they are available on other formats aside from Kindle. Another reason is there are tons and tons of blogs and websites that are solely dedicated to informing readers about free books that I'm just a tiny drop in the bucket. So I've decided to list the several sites that list free ebooks for your enjoyment. This list is in no particular order. I've used many of the sites, some may require that you register for free first like Smashwords and Amazon. You can bookmark this page and use it as a reference.

Thank you for tuning in every Friday for past weekly lists. Hope you'll still check back throughout the week for other book related news, resources, updates and giveaways. Thanks again for staying with me on this journey! You can still keep up with Ollie on Twitter for her daily updates about free ebooks. If you know of some other great free ebook sites please leave a recommendation in the comments section. So here's your top 20 sites for free ebooks, plus a bonus one. Blessings!

Google Books
This Google mega ebookstore is loaded with books, most of them aren't free. However, there are a lot that are. Scroll down and look at the Best of the Free section.  



Amazon Free Ebook Section
A great listing of the most popular free Ebooks available on Kindle.

Project Gutenberg 
Project Gutenberg is the place where you can download over 33,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device and too in different formats. 

Smashwords 
Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform for ebook authors, publishers, agents and readers. They offer multi-format, DRM-free ebooks, ready for immediate sampling and purchase, and readable on any e-reading device. 

Scribd
Scribd is the site where the world comes to read, discover, and share reading. It's like Youtube for documents.

Free Ebooks.net
An online source for free ebook downloads, ebook resources and ebook authors. Besides free ebooks, you also download free magazines or submit your own ebook. We tried the search function and weren't really impressed. Instead, try clicking on the categories or headings and browsing. 

The Online Books Page 
A listing of over 1 million free ebooks. It is hosted by the Library of University of Pennsylvania.

ManyBooks.net
You can browse through the most popular titles, recommendations, or recent reviews from the site visitors. There are more than 29,000 free eBooks available here. 

Neotake
Neotake is a new eBook search engine which has indexed several eBooks in various formats like ePUB, PDF, LRF, TXT, Mobipocket etc. It also has a mobile version of the site. More than 200,000 eBooks have been indexed currently. 

Free Nook Books (Barnes and Noble)
The creators of the nook ebook reader have a spot on their ebook store called Free nookbooks.

Get Free Ebooks
You can download free books totally free. The ebooks which you find within this site are collected from all over the net or either personally compiled by founder. 

PDFGeni
A search engine to help you find out the ebooks that interests you. 

Open Library
The world's classic literature at your fingertips. Over 1,000,000 free ebook titles available. While the home page looks like it's filled with ancient texts, try out the search function and you'll be surprised at the newer ebooks you can find. 

Bibliostastic
This site is Connecting authors with open-minded readers, digitally. This site provides a great platform for new and evolving authors to reach a wide audience and for readers to give them direct feedback. 

Ebookee
Ebookee is a free eBooks download search engine where you can find relevent links for numerous e-books. 

ReadPrint
Website offers thousands of free books for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast." Lots of free classic books and literature here.

Bookyards
Bookyards has a total of 17,008 books, 41,784 external web links, 4,197 news & blogs links, 384 videos, 32,963 Ebook links and access to hundreds of online libraries (800,000 Ebooks) for your reading pleasure. 

2020ok 
They have links to loads of specific ebooks sites for kids, so well worth a visit.  Their selection seems to be largely Out Of Copyright ebooks, so thus not the latest writings obviously, but some jewels none the less.


Globusz
Globusz provides a platform to new authors to get their writing skills test by the actual readers. And readers don’t have topay anything to read or download the content. 

Ebook Junkie
You can get number of free downloadable ebooks from this site. You also have the option of variuos categories to choose from. 

Bookboon
On this site you can download free ebooks for students and travelers in PDF format. All the books can be downloaded without registration. These ebooks are legal and written exclusively for Bookboon