The guest author, James Adams, is a writer working for Cartridge Save where he reviews products such as the HP 21 ink cartridge.

Once you’ve settled into the rhythm of writing your blog, one of the most important steps is to begin accumulating subscribers. Your RSS subscribers will probably turn out to be your blog’s most valuable asset in the long run. Here are a few tips to help you achieve this more effectively.

1. Make it Easy to Subscribe: You don’t want your readers to have to guess whether or not they can subscribe to your blog – you need to make it easy and obvious. You should have your subscribe button at the top of the page and after each post. Don’t try to get too fancy with your logo: most people recognize the orange RSS icon and that is what they look for.
2. Offer Email Subscription: Although RSS is pretty standard amongst bloggers, the vast majority of Internet users don’t really use it. If you want to make your blog available to them, then it’s a good idea to allow them to sign up via email.
3. Give Something Away for Free: This is an old marketing technique that you can use to get people to subscribe to your blog. If you create a short ebook or a PDF of your best tips or posts – then you can give this away for free when people subscribe to your blog. Make sure to mention this every now and then so that people will know about it.
4. Entice With Exclusive Content: One way to reward subscribers is to give out exclusive content that is only available to them. You might create a really good post with a series of tips, but then say that they final 3 tips are so good you are only going to send them to your subscribers.
5. Promote Off-site: Your blog isn’t the only place where you can try to woo subscribers to your blog. You can promote your blog – and the benefits to subscribing – in your signature on forum posts. You can mention it on Facebook and Twitter. You might even promote it in the footer of your emails.
6. Display Your Subscriber Count: Human beings often look for social proof before they will do something. If you have already garnered a good amount of subscribers, then you might want to display your number of subscribers. This can encourage other people to sign up just to see what all the fuss is about. Conversely, you probably shouldn’t display your subscriber count if you only have 1.
7. Educate Them: Since many people don’t know what RSS is, it can be great to educate them. They have probably heard about RSS, but no one ever explained it in a way they could understand. You can be that person. Let them know why it is so great, how to get started, and how to subscribe to their first blog. Use your own blog as an example, of course.
8. Run a Contest: Running contests can be a great way to get more subscribers. You might announce that the first 5 comments on each post for the next 2 weeks will be entered into a drawing for a free prize. Make sure to remind your readers that if they are a subscriber they will be notified of any new posts first, so they will have a much higher likelihood of winning the prize.
9. Create Unique and Valuable Content: It may sound like a mere platitude, but this is still the number one reason that people subscribe to blogs. If you give your readers something that they cannot find anywhere else, then you won’t need to use any tricks to get a large number of subscribers in a short time.

Getting a large number of subscribers is a long process that takes a lot of work and patience. However, it can really pay off for you in the future. Start using a few of these tips now to make your blog more successful.