While most of the readers prefer to visit the blog there are many who may like to read your blog via RSS readers. This in itself is a major problem with only a handful of ways to monetize your RSS feed as compared to infinite ways available for the blog.
If you do some research you will find bloggers who have over 50,000 daily visitors to their blog via RSS feeds, yet they are earning less than many other bloggers who have less number of visitors to their blog. Even though RSS feeds of forums have hundreds of subscribers, still they find it difficult to monetize their RSS. However, one thing in favor of these sites is that they sell ad space at a very high price keeping in mind the large number of readers visit to their site every day. However, you should still provide full RSS feed to your readers because they genuinely like what you provide them.
Having a large RSS subscription is essential and one thing every blogger should try to build for his site. RSS represents a loyal base of audience and if you have your RSS subscribers increasing it indicates that your blog is growing and is heading towards the right direction. Remember most of your RSS readers will not visit your blog, and making money from your RSS feed is very difficult. While most of the readers prefer to visit the blog, but there are many who may like to read your blog via full feed RSS. This in itself is a major problem with only a handful of ways to monetize your RSS feed as compared to infinite ways available for the blog.
The best way to make many from your RSS subscribers is to encourage them to look at your blog. Following are some of the ways to get them to visit your blog:
Use FeedBurner FeedFlare
Most of you might be running your RSS feeds through FeedBurner. FeedBurner provides a very useful feature called FeedFlare that allows you to add a comment count at the end of each post. This lets your RSS readers to see the number of comments a particular post has generated. Unless a reader subscribes to your comments RSS, he cannot read the comments others have made on your RSS post. This encourages your reader to visit your blog if he wants to read the comments .If a RSS reader is interested in your post, there are high chances that he may click on the comment link to get the view of other subscribers.
Encourage comments
Having no comments on your blog does not help you much. You should encourage your readers to comment on your post. As I had discussed previously that a blog is a two-way communication tool between an author and readers, it should remain that way. One way traffic is never good in any case. The easiest and the most effective way to encourage comments on your blog is to ask for feedback. A RSS reader has to visit your blog if he wants to comment on your post so it is a great way to get them to visit your blog. In the beginning you may have to comment yourself by fake names to get the ball rolling. It is sneaky but there is no harm in doing it. Many popular forums are using this technique.
Use some videos
Another nice way to get your RSS readers to visit your blog is to embed some videos in your RSS feed. An embedded video cannot be played with a RSS feed. If your reader wishes to watch the video then he must visit your blog. Adding a nice description on what the video is about always encourages your readers to visit your blog. A video without description is similar to a blank post. Your RSS readers will see a blank post if you do.
Link to old post.
This is one of the best way to get your RSS readers to visit your blog. Whenever you write a post and it has relation with some of your old post, you should provide a link to it. It has many added advantages, besides getting your RSS subscribers to visit your older post it also lets search engines find your older articles. It encourages your RSS readers to click on it to see what they have missed earlier.
Tell your readers that RSS feed update takes time
A new post will not be available as a feed until your RSS feed updates and updating your feed may take several hours. So in order to visit your latest posts they should visit your blog for the current post(s). A way to remind them could be saying something like this at the end of your post “This may not be my latest post. Do visit my site for the latest posts, in case you may want to get the latest updated post.”
