My site traffic has been growing surely and steadily since I launched it online. I use Google analytics for stats, with Feedburner for RSS and email updates. I update my travel blog on average twice a week.
However, about 8 months ago I noticed a trend. Although my daily visitors were increasing, sign ups to my RSS and email list had stagnated.
Choices to Make
Being an avid reader of Daily Blog Tips, I knew that a popular incentive to increase subscribers was to offer a freebie. A little offering like an ebook or a report that will entice both regular readers and casual visitors to sign up.
What to give away? Well, as a photographer it made sense to do something with my photographs. So, I went to work on an ebook called “5 Top Places to Travel & Photograph” to give a way to all my email subscribers.
Why Email Subscribers Only?
Email works, that’s why. RSS just doesn’t seem to break into the main stream’s way of browsing. On top of that you have the following benefits:
- you get a contact name or email address.
- you can send them out personalized information
- with RSS it’s all anonymous which is not much good for building relationships
- you can tell who and when someone unsubscribe with email
The Results
It was a flurry of activity the first few weeks of the incentive. New email subscribers, on average, grew 15-20%
I saw the potential and increased the size of my sign up form. I also placed it on my homepage, (it was only on the blog before).
Email subscribers continued to grow, while RSS subscribers leveled off. I thought it had worked perfectly.
The Downfall
An unexpected thing happened. Although my email subscribers were up by 15-20% per week, my traffic took a nose dive of 25-30%. Where had they all gone? Why were people not going to my site anymore? Was I too spammy looking now?
The Reason
Well, the reason was quite logical really. The incentive, along with better subscriber placement forms, meant that my regular readers were now getting my updates delivered to them. Rather than going to the site directly.
The Rise
After about two months of lower weekly traffic, it slowly began to go up again. Now, it’s overshot it’s previous margin and continues to grow. What’s more, my email subscriber sign ups have leveled off at around 15% higher than the pre-incentive period. Which is good.
Conclusion
I put a lot of time and effort into putting together the photo ebook. I thought for the first few weeks it was great, then for two months as if it had done irrevocable harm. Now, things have sorted themselves out.
If you launch a subscriber incentive, such as a free ebook, don’t be surprised to see a quick increase and then a period of lower traffic.
In my experience it’s just your regular readers signing up, and not visiting as much. Give it some time, I think you’ll find your traffic will boost up again along with new subscribers as word of mouth passes through forwarded emails. Which is another bonus to email subscribers.
Of course, for any of this to work, you’ll need to have content worth talking about.
About the Author: Dave has been traveling the world for the past 5 and a half years in search of a place to live. He writes and publishes travel photographs on his website The Longest Way Home.
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