Upon conducting the 24-hour RSS experiment, I promised that I would give away a free copy of Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger.  Using a process of random selection, the winner is…

Before we announce the winner, I would like to welcome all the new subscribers who participated in the experiment. I’m proud to announce that I managed to acquire 163 new RSS subscribers. Considering the current popularity of BlogaPro and the amount of time in which to conduct the experiment, I am quite proud of my achievements.

Enough drivel. The winner is Andrew Watson from Sydney, Australia.  Congratulations!  You will be receiving your free prize shortly.

Recently, I launched an experiment to discover how many new RSS subscribers I could attract in only 24 hours. While conducting the experiment, I set aside some much needed time to conduct an in-depth study of BlogaPro’s FeedBurner stats.

One interesting statistic was the number of individuals who had subscribed to the RSS feed through an email subscription.  In fact, less than 5% of the individuals who regularly read the RSS feed subscribe via email.  An interesting question crossed my mind…

How many subscribers had chosen to subscribe to the feed but had not verified themselves by clicking on the verification link in the email FeedBurner sent them? After conducting a search in Google, I stumbled upon “Notify Unconfirmed Subscribers” (or NUS), a WordPress plugin written in 2007 which is still supported in the latest version of WordPress.

The author, Keith Dsouza, writes that,

“Many users simply do not verify and thus leaving a lot of readers who do want to read your feeds cannot due to the verification email going unnoticed or landing in the spam folder.”

According to Dsouza, “NUS asks you for your FeedBurner username and password and fetches all those unconfirmed subscribers allowing you to send a personalized email to them asking them to verify their subscriptions.”

If you’re not too confident about handing over your FeedBurner username/password combination, worry not. I have been through the code (which is made available on the website) and username/passwords are being used for legitimate purposes as described on his website.

I decided to give Dsouza’s plugin a try.  The plugin revealed that BlogaPro had 41 individuals who had attempted to subscribe to the RSS feed but had not verified their email address.  Using the plugin, I wrote a customized message encouraging these 41 individuals to join. Since sending the friendly email, I now have 8 new subscribers - 8 more subscribers than I had previously.

During a quick nosy of one of John Chow’s latest articles, “Twingly Top 100 Blogs“, the RSS subscriber count located in the top-right hand corner happened to catch my eye. As a regular reader of this inspiring blog, the bright-orange counter has never managed to catch my attention previously. That probably says more about my inability to notice my surroundings instead of a flaw in John’s web design.

John’s 40,000-odd subscribers is beyond impressive.  Consider that 42,527 is more than the number of people that live in the majority of American cities. Heck, in the Dakotas you will be pushed to find a city with a greater population than John has subscribers.

The RSS Subscriber experiment:

Undoubtedly, John has accumulated his 40,000-odd subscribers over a number of years.  Nonetheless, it got me wondering how many subscribers could I attract in a mere 24 hours. If I did everything possible to increase the subscriber count, what could I achieve?

In inspiration of John Chow’s success, I have developed an experiment to determine the number of RSS subscribers that I can attract in a mere 24-hour period.  What will I be doing special?  That’s part of the fun! I haven’t quite thought of that just yet. I’ll determine the techniques that I use as I go along.

Now, you’re probably thinking to yourself that it will not be a “24 hour” experiment if you throw a regular sleep schedule into the mix.  Guess what? I will be refraining from sleep for the next 24 hours. In fact, I’ve topped up the cupboard with 13 Red Bulls (I managed to buy some loose for a reduced price) and am prepared to navigate the web for the next 24-hours in an attempt to earn RSS subscribers.

Help me on my Quest:

I could always do with a helping-hand.  There are several ways you can aide the experiment:

• 1. Post your own post about the quest.  Trackbacks are enabled, so you will receive a free link back to your blog. Encourage others to join in and follow some of the recommendations below:
• 2. Utilize various forms of social media to publicize the experiment. This can vary from Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon or any other means you can think of.
• 3. Most importantly, subscribe to BlogaPro’s RSS feed either by email, or through one of the many RSS readers including:
  • 
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  If all else fails, Feedburner’s own Email Subscription just might tickle your fancy.

Win a copy of Darren Rowse’s “ProBlogger”:

If you subscribe to the BlogaPro RSS feed by Email, you will automatically be entered to win a free copy of Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger. The winner will be selected at random.

Please note that this competition is available to readers worldwide. I will pay for any S&H costs. Without further ado, enter the competition by subscribing via email.

Note: The winner will be announced after 48-hours (it will take me 24 hours to recover from a lack of sleep).

And time starts now…

UPDATE: An post updating the results of the experiment has been released.

For those of you who possibly thought I had recently passed away, you might just be pleased to know that I am alive and well.

What has been the reason for my departure away from BlogaPro? Let’s just say that work has kept me occupied - that’s putting it lightly.

For those of you who are not taken the time to read my short biography, I am a software engineer for a small company (Livewire Digital Ltd) that has been developing the Media Desk HD system for the Volvo Ocean Race 2008-09, a system which is fitted on all eight participating yachts.  Further information about the system is available on the company’s website.

On the occasion when I haven’t been writing software, I have been traveling to the other side of the world. Most recently, I was in Cape Town on a 17-day trip to perform much-needed maintenance on all eight of the yachts after the first leg of the ocean race.

I can assure you that I will now be returning to my regular schedule of blog updates so stay tuned!

If you’re interested, I’ve left you all with two of my favorite videos from the race thus far which demonstrate our ‘crash button’ feature. This feature consists of a stern camera which maintains a 2-minute rolling buffer of video at any moment in time.  By pushing one of the buttons located above deck, the video is dumped to disk for later editing. Some great footage has been captured:

• Team Russia’s Chinese Gybe
• Delta Lloyd hit whale

I must admit that I have been rather reluctant to publish this article.  This is not due to the fact that I despise blogging but merely the fact that I was unable to attain a set goal…

Over a week ago, I took it upon myself to try and measure the StumbleUpon (SU) effect.  Of course, such a feat is useless without public support.

Prior to conceiving the idea, I had been researching similar effects caused by the likes of Digg and Slashdot.  Due to the lack of information of the potential benefits of being ’stumbled upon’, I decided to try measure the effect myself.

Unfortunately, I was unable to gather the much need public support that was required.  While the article did receive a few hundred hits (approximately 348 in the first 24 hours), it failed to gain notable attention.

Reasons for Failure

Why exactly was my attempt a complete failure? Simply…

1. The biggest mistake made on my behalf was the fact that I submitted the article to an unpopular category - the “StumbleUpon” category.  Articles published within the confines of the ‘Internet’ or ‘Blogs’ directory receive the most attention.
2. Some people thought that my underlying motive was to promote BlogaPro.  I’m not going to lie; I jump at every opportunity to promote my blog, but in this case, I was hoping to conduct a test in the name of research.
3. People are not interested in the benefits of SU - at least not the majority of them.  They use SU because of the social benefits the community offers and the ability to discover ‘undiscovered’ sites/pages.

Have you ever thought of the best method of getting links to your remarkable blog posts? The solution is rather simple.

“Ask for them”.

This was the rather simple but effective advice that I was given, after recently reading a post on seoblackhat.com.  In fact, the advice has proved to work so well, that I have decided to share my success.

After publishing a notable blog post, send emails to fellow bloggers in your niche.  Get a dialog going.  An attempt at a conversation will convey a sense of respect but will also show that you read their blog.

Ensure that your notable post is the most recent and is easily identifiable/locatable from the front page of your blog.

Asking requires sending emails to fellow bloggers. As is suggested on seoblackhat.com, “I’m not talking about an email that says, ‘Please link to this remarkable post.’”

The key in acquiring new links to your blog is in the delivery of the email.

Template Email

Utilizing the email provided by seoblackhat.com, I constructed my own version to send to fellow bloggers.  I suggest you use the following as a guide, but cater the email to fit your blog’s niche.

“Hi [Blogger’s Name]

My name is Gavin Smith, and I’m the author behind BlogaPro (blogapro.com), the site that teaches individuals how to earn money blogging.

You may or may not know that I am in fact an avid reader of your blog. After reading [blog post they did], [blog post they did 2], and [Blog post they did 3], I thought that [remarkable blog post you did] might be something that you would be interested in blogging about.

Would you be interested in doing an article exchange? Your article would feature on BlogaPro and would include a link to your site in return.

Keep up the great work, I look forward to your blog posts.

-Gavin Smith”

The underlining key is to reciprocate the favor and link to other great posts.  Providing an alternative opinion on another post is a great way to lure new readers. Think about it - the other blogger does all the hard work (research, writing, emailing, linking), but you get the visitors. Works for me…

As the author of blackhatseo.com suggests, “The secret to getting your purple cow out of the barn is to get the word out when you have something truly remarkable. It will get you more links, more subscribers, and (if you have a business model) - more money.”

I’d be interested to learn if the rest of you have found the same success in the ‘email approach’…

Ever considered how you can get paid per post? Let me introduce you to PayPerPost.com.  PayPerPost describes itself as,

“an incredible new self-service marketplace that allows you to get paid to blog about the products, services and websites you love. You can easily earn $500 per month or more with your current blog!”

If you are a blogger and have been writing about your favorite sites, products, or services for the last couple of years and are yet to benefit, your luck is about to change. PayPerPost allows bloggers to utilize the traffic to their site to earn cash - it’s time for the corporations to do the paying.

PayPerPost pays blogger for their opinion on a variety of topics from ’self-storage’ to ‘prison inmate search’ to ‘online dating’.  Think of a topic and in all likelihood, there is the opportunity to earn some cash.  In fact, the “marketplace” is the largest sponsored content marketplace in the world.

What’s best is that the pay per post process is so simple:

1. Search the list of available opportunities
2. Make a blog posting
3. Get your content approved
4. Get paid

The minimum earnings per post is $5.00 with the ceiling being the limit.  You can easily earn $500 per month or more with your current blog!  In fact, numerous bloggers on PayPerPost have managed to accrue a nice some of over $20,000 during their time with the site.

What’s best is that if you’re a big fish in the sea receiving enough traffic to appeal to advertisers on your own, PayPerPost offers a widget which provides the opportunity form direct relationships with advertisers.

Join the wave…

I’m sure a number of you are familiar with the Digg/Slashdot effect; after all, there is a Wikipedia page that is dedicated to the phenomenon.

While the ’slashdot effect’ has received a lot of study, few have taken the time to consider the effect of being ’stumbled upon’.

With the StumbleUpon (SU) front page purporting that there are over 6 million stumblers, the benefit that the social-community-site brings is potentially huge.

I actively use SU on a regular basis (gcs584).  Even though I don’t submit as many articles as others might commit, I do enjoy wading my way through the many great sites that others have stumbled upon.

I owe a lot to SU; my previous blog gathered some of its best followers after one particular visitor decided to commit one of my articles.  At that stage of the game, the blog was fairly new and struggling to survive due to a lack of motivation on my part.

I write in hope that others might read - at the time, nobody was reading.

The Experiment

How much traffic can SU drive to your next big article?

In order to properly measure the full potential of SU, this article needs to make it to the front of the pack - the front page.

I have adopted Google Analytics as my tool of choice to measure the number of visitors to the site.  Unfortunately, I am on a shared hosting plan with bluehost, but past experiences suggest that the server will be capable of handling the increased traffic. After all, the hosting company does provided unlimited bandwidth.  I’m sure it will be run through its paces…

In order to ensure an accurate measurement, I have signed up for a free account with ServerMojo to track the server’s up-time.  A great feature of the service is that others can track the server’s up-time themselves.

How can you help us measure the effect?

That is where you come in.  In order that we mimic the submission of popular article being stumbled, I am going to need all of you to contribute to the effort.  Remember, the goal is the front page! I encourage your participation in two ways:

1. Either click the button located just on the left, or select the “I like it!” button located in your StumbleUpon toolbar.
2. Post a link to this article on your blog encouraging others to participate in the effort.

The Results

I hope to publish the results of the experiment within the next 48 hours.  The release of the results will potentially be extended if the ‘effect’ carries on for more than a day.

Stay tuned!

[Update:] The results have been posted.  See how we managed…