This guest post is by Adelicia Davies

Most bloggers do not know this, but getting more email subscribers is the best way to make more money from your blog.

Consider the statistics – People who buy products advertised in email they get spend 138% more than other people. Also, 44% of email recipients buy at least one item a year from promotional emails they get.

The question now is how to grow your email list? You can focus on five main techniques, or methods which are given below:

1. Subscribe Box: Many bloggers make the mistake of putting ads prominently and hiding the subscribe box somewhere down below in the sidebar or in the footer. Instead, put a big box up top and in front of the visitor. Hammer them with the box on every page and in multiple locations on each page.

2. Incentive: You do not have to pay anyone to get them to subscribe to your list. But you can create something useful that they get free when they sign up. This can be a free eBook, downloadable software or a discount coupon or something related to your blog that might be considered to be of some value.

3. Human Face: People respond to and connect with a human face, rather than a site name or anonymous site administrator. Put a photo and a name next to the box, and add a personal appeal wherein the human face asks visitors to subscribe.

4. Maintaining Loyalty: It is not just sufficient to convince visitors to subscribe. You also need to take care of your existing subscribers with interesting and useful newsletters. Just sending them a newsletter filled with ads or product copy is not going to help. Each newsletter should make them want to eagerly await the next one. This is the same as publishing interesting posts on your blog to maintain reader loyalty.

5. Tracking: Use embedded analytics code to track the response to each newsletter. Find out what is working and make sure you know when a specific newsletter ends up reducing the number of subscribers. This will tell you what you are doing right and what should not be done.

Some bloggers sell email lists to third-parties, while a business blog will simply use it to build customer loyalty, provide product updates, increase brand awareness and sell more products. But, it only works if you have enough visitors and a big email subscriber list.

This guest post is by Ranchy Stephan

There’s a famous cartoon where a dog explains that he gave up blogging to go back to pointless, incessant barking. It’s a blow below the belt for bloggers struggling to gain a following, but there’s a lesson in there somewhere.

There are currently 122.6 million blog readers in the United States, predicted to go up to 150.4 million by 2014.

Even so, 60 to 80 percent of new blogs are still being abandoned by their owners inside of the first month.

More than 50% of the internet users is USA are people who read blogs

By the time three months go by, a full 95 percent of new blogs end up as just so much more junk cluttering up the internet.

There’s a good and simple reason why readers gravitate to a few popular blogs while the majority remain shunned. It is called expertise, which means that people will only listen when they feel the blogger understands the subject. They expect the blogger to share expertise and provide information which they didn’t know previously.

This is why subject-oriented blogs tend to do better than blogs where the subject of each post is vastly different. This topical style is just one of five major points which have a major impact on whether the blog has a loyal following.

The second issue is about having the blog plug-ins needed to allow readers to post comments easily. Some blogs require people to register and login first, while others may have a simple one-time moderation requirement. Then there is plug-ins like do-follow which allows bloggers to reciprocate to comments on each other’s blogs as part of an SEO strategy.

Reciprocation to comments posted by blog readers is just as important. When readers find that the blogger is responding to posted comments, it motivates them to come back and talk some more. This is how loyalty gets built, and readers start turning up every day just to see what’s going on and which new post has the most comments where they can add their own 2 cents.

Getting readers and visitors to subscribe to feeds is probably the single most important factor that fosters loyalty. Subscribers are essentially letting you know that they want to read every new post. It doesn’t get any more loyal than this.

To gain this loyalty, Bill has posted one video – 5 most important SEO tips for blog posts, just for the subscribers of  TheTrafficProfessor.

For viewing that video, one has to be a subscriber of TheTrafficProfessor. However, that’s easy enough by clicking through and jumping through the hoops.

Then there’s the incredible impact of social media, which is currently the second highest traffic source for blogs after search engines. Whenever a new post is published, a link has to be instantly posted to all the major social networks.

Social media is not replacing blogs, but the same 122.6 million blog readers are also on the networks. So ask blog readers to follow the blog’s social accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Letting readers know about new blog posts is essential to maintain a loyal following, whether it is done via subscriber feeds and/or social network updates.

I didn’t know this.

Wilby looking for a FREE WordPress Theme

Sitting here in a session at Blog World Expo I learned that 8 of the top 10 search results in Google for a free WordPress theme will give you (FREE) a theme that has malware that is installed or some sort of spam code.

Thanks, Google for making sure results are relevant!

There is, however, a place where the cheapskates (that’s me) can get a free WordPress theme that does NOT have malware or spam code.

1,448 FREE WordPress themes – remember, you get what you pay for.

These 1400+ themes have been downloaded more than 39 million (count ‘em) times. That’s a lot.

The themes are clean, and approved by Automattic…creators of WordPress.

Need a free WordPress theme?

Start here.

Getting a good theme is absolutely fundamental to getting good traffic.

Repeat after me…Wordpress.

I am at the Blog World Expo in LA for the next 3-days…covering it for Examiner.com.

Here’s my first article: Keynote Peter Shankman – lost in translation.

Peter Shankman at Blog World Expo

BWE has come a long way since the first try in Vegas some half dozen years or so ago. I was there then, too.

It’s stimulating here…there a lot of interesting topics and the exhibits open tomorrow.

Shankman…gets us off to an R-rated start.

Really, is that the best he can do? Needs to resort do such language to get a laugh?

Maybe I am just prudish.

Indeed he did have some good insights, gained from experience. I just wonder who could hear them.

Transparency – if you make a mistake, own up to it.

Relvancy – listen to your audience.

There were a couple of more but I can’t remember now. I think they started with an F-.

If you are here…ping me. And let’s hook up.

In this 35-minute video I address why blogging is still the King of Social Media. And Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and that other one, oh, Google+ are just princes.

I also cover:

4 items that all writers/web owners want.

4 problems a blog can solve

and the

4 next steps all bloggers and web site owners should take if they want to get more web traffic.

The Traffic Professor knows.

Wilby checking the currency converter

Where can someone find a good currency converter?

And why does a blogger need to know?

I am not sure why you would need currency converter but I know why I need one.

I have writers who work as part of my network that live in India, Romania, Bangladesh and Indonesia.

I also have tech support in India, Peru and Mexico.

All these workers want to know how much they will be paid. And for that reason…a currency converter will come in quite handy, no?

The best currency converter.

I also lived in Japan for nearly 20 years…it is one of the things I blog about.

My wife is ‘made in China’ and we have money going back and forth across the big pond from time to time.

Yup..you guessed it. We need a currency converter.

We also need to know what banks are going to steal from us when we make the exchange, too!

No wonder Jesus overturned the tables in the Temple. It wasn’t just because they were doing business there. It was because they were stealing, too.

Wilby applying for free tickets to Japan via the Tourism Agency

I have driven Jaguars, flown across country, interviewed…. all because I am blogger.

Here’s another perk for an influential blogger – a free round-trip ticket to Japan.

The Japan Tourism Agency is trying to pump some life back into an industry that has been devastated by a very strong yen, earthquakes, tsunamis, melt-downs and 20,000+ deaths.

Yup, sounds like Japan needs some help.

Bloggers who have reach in the search engines as well as a presence in other social media types are encouraged to apply.

I was in Japan earlier this year and if I went back….I’d stay with friends and eat out less.

Successful applicants must take care of their own accommodations and meals. Not much chance for me.

Here’s the link to apply – Japan Tourism Agency.

Let me know if you get picked…and I can tell you where to go eat and what to bring me back as a souvenir.

Lots of people ask me, “Bill, what’s your Google Page rank?”

“I dunno.”

“You don’t know your Google Page Rank?”

“Um, no.”

Checking your Google Page Rank

“Why not? Doesn’t everyone want to know their Google Page rank?”

“Beats me. What I care about is how much traffic I get. And is it relevant or not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Who cares what Google thinks of me. I am sure they don’t want to know what I think of them. I care what my readers think.”

“Don’t you care if you can be found or not? And doesn’t Google control that?”

“Yes, I care whether I can be  found or not. But Google is not the only search engine. And there is something that is better than Google search engine traffic.”

“There is! What?”

“I answer that question in TheTrafficProfessor.”

But for those who want to know their Google Page Rank….you can start here.

But, in the time it takes you to check it…you’d have been better off writing another post, adding another image, reaching out toe a fellow blogger or doing more research on another blog post.

That’s what I think about Google Page Rank.

The Traffic Professor will be speaking at the High Desert Branch of the California Writers Club (scroll down) on October 8th, 2011.

If you live in/near the area, please come out to meet me, ask questions, learn more about blogging, platform building or to just chill.

Traffic Professor at High Desert Valley

My topic is

Blogging as a platform for writers, still the king of Social Media

In this one hour presentation, including 15 mins for Q&A I will cover the following topics:

1. Four reasons why a blog is the social media platform of choice for writers.

2. Four biggest obstacles to getting a blog started.

3. Four key ingredients to attracting significant traffic to a blog/web site.

4. Four next steps every writer must take to bring attention to their work.

I have taken 10 different and unrelated blog topics to more than 1 million unique visitors each, and well over 50 million views overall.  I have two published books, and have addressed Mexico’s largest Writers’ Conference, Asia’s Largest Publishing Convention, and have spoken in Thailand, New York City, as well as to many of the California Writers Club branches.

The event will be held at the Apple Valley Branch Library at 10 a.m. on Saturday, October 8, 2011.

Call Carol Warren at (760)242-3367) or email to califcarol@verizon.net

President Bob Isbill at  (760)242-4148) or email to risbill@aol.com

20258 Hwy 18 Ste 430-PMB 281

Apple Valley, CA 92307