The Art of RSS Solicitation | Boost Your Subscriber Numbers with Flattery

28 Aug 2008

The Art of RSS Solicitation – Boost Your Subscriber Numbers with Flattery

Author: Jim | Filed under: Blogging Tricks, Observations

Let’s talk about Ancient Greece… a bit of a change in pace, eh? Back then, the “sophists” were a group of teachers of philosophy who had mastered the so-called “art of flattery.” The word “sophistry” has meant many things throughout time, ranging from “poet” to “sage.” At any rate, I believe firmly in using sophistry to boost your RSS numbers… it’s a lesson you shouldn’t soon forget.

The theory follows that by asking things in a different manner, you can extract much more in return. For example, if I asked you to borrow your cell phone for a call, you might simply walk away saying that you are busy. However, if I complemented your new shoes beforehand, you’d probably be much more inclined to lend me a minute of air time. The sophists were the best of the best, and grew wealthy by flattering the masses. Let’s use this brief culture lesson to dominate the web!

Setting Yourself Up – RSS Readers and Dedicated Emails
The first thing you will need to successfully grab anywhere from 10 to 25 subscribers day after day is a dedicated space to dump all of your RSS feeds. Most of you probably have RSS readers by this point… if you don’t, I highly recommend using either Google Reader or Bloglines to collect and organize your thoughts. With one of these “readers,” you can subscribe to as many blogs as you want and see all their updates in an easy to follow manager that sorts things based on your personal preferences.

Our second option would be to set up a dedicated email account for subscribing to RSS feeds. The downside is that you always need to confirm email subscriptions, but you may prefer the convenience of inbox updates to an RSS readers. At any rate, using flattery means you will be collecting quite a few registrations, so we don’t want our mail emails cluttered. I recommend registering a fresh GMail strictly for email subscriptions if this is your favorite.

Research for RSS Potential – The Hunt is On!

Now that we have accounts to use for RSS registration, it’s time to use the art of sophistry to get what we want. What we are looking for is blogs with less then 100 RSS subscribers that seem new and active. As far as the blogging crowd goes, those writers that have just begun (1-6 months) are going to be a lot more likely to actively seek out subscriber numbers. Anyone who is putting out content multiple times every week (preferably daily) and has around 50 RSS readers is ideal.

By using RSS solicitation, or the art of flattery, we can get them to subscribe for our own blog in seconds with literally the click of a button. Most bloggers at this stage just want acceptance. So regardless of niche, though your own niche would be best, you can get them to register as a reader to your blog simply by writing them a nice comment or email telling them that you love their website, want to support it, and have already subscribed to their blog. Of course, use your RSS Reader or dedicated email to sign yourself up to their feed. We want to mention our blog off hand, as a side note, and hope that they take the bait.

The Key: Do NOT ask them to subscribe to your blog. This comes off as spam, selfish or just not genuine. What you should do, is simply tell them you support their website (hopefully you do), and mention that you are also a blogger looking to boost your own exposure. Anything along these lines should be enough for them to return the favor, and you have yourself +1 reader in a few seconds!

Sophistry, the art of flattery, is just as useful as it was for the Ancient Greeks as it is now in the internet age. You can very easily boost your RSS subscriber numbers by 10-20 people a day with just a few minutes work if you do this correctly. Again, nobody likes false numbers… so unless you have a good blog that can support the growth, people will examine your traffic and know what you are doing. Regardless, this is a most powerful technique that can be used to dominate your competition.

-Jimvesting

Disclaimer: I do not approve of using this method to blindly ask anyone and everyone to subscribe to your feed. I have use this method sparingly on blogs that I legitimately like, and only endorse the method if you subscribe to their feeds in return.