How I Reached 2,000 Subscribers On This Blog

In: Business Ideas| Updates By: Brian Armstrong

25 Nov 2008

About four months ago I wrote…

Congrats to this blog breaking the 1000 subscriber mark! It’s been a little more than a year since I got started. I think the next 1000 will go ever faster as we build momentum. Thanks to everyone who subscribed and commented!

Well, I’m pleased to report that as of today is has broken the 2000 subscriber mark and the Feedburner icon is currently displaying 2,037 subscribers.

Isn’t that interesting?

The first 1000 subscribers took 13 months.
The second 1000 subscribers took 4 months.
How long will the next 1000 subscribers take?

This is what’s referred to as a positive feedback loop. The more subscribers you have, the easier it is to get new subscribers. Why? Well there are a few factors…

Social proof. If someone casually stops by the blog and sees there are lots of people participating and reading it, they are more likely to stick around. Maybe those other people know something I don’t?
Organic search results. Google is fully aware of the number of subscribers to this blog (they own Feedburner). Google ranks sites with more subscribers higher in search results. As a result, the more subscribers you have the more traffic you will get from search engines which in turn brings more subscribers.
Word of mouth. If 2000 people get every message you send out, then they more people will forward it to their friends, digg it, bookmark it, etc. You get a network effect and more referrals with more subscribers.

One final thing I did to boost subscriber numbers is that I finally broke down and got an Aweber account. They handle the email subscription part of the blog so that when somebody types in their email (instead of subscribing to the RSS feed) they will get updates from the blog.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t think Aweber is a very good service. To get the emails looking right was a huge hassle and I already found several bugs in their system. However, it is the best thing out there and the pros outweighed the cons. The good things about it are that it allows you to create some popup offers for people to subscribe and the email subscribers count toward your Feedburner icon. You can also schedule email delivery better than with Feedburner. Overall, I’m glad I did it despite the hassle.

I’m getting about 25 new subscribers per day with Aweber in place (not counting new RSS subscribers), and at that rate….I’ll be at 3000 subscribers in just 40 days! As I’ve written about in the past, blogging is not an overnight way to generate passive income. But if you can stick through it for a few years by having a topic you are truly interested in writing about…it can finally start to build momentum and turn into a nice passive income business.

I think StartBreakingFree.com is finally getting closer to that tipping point of being a popular blog. As with most passive income businesses, there is a disproportionate amount of work up front for very little reward. The real payoff comes down the road.

Tags: aweber, blogging, feedburner, passive income, passive income business, subscribers

27 Responses

Andy @ Retire at 40

November 25th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

Wow, they’re pretty impressive stats. Well done and here’s to the next 1,000 – and of course, to the success of all our blogs.

Brian Armstrong

November 25th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

Thanks Andy! I noticed you don’t have the feedburner icon up yet on yours, was there some reason you decided to do this?

Andy @ Retire at 40

November 25th, 2008 at 4:48 pm

My main reason was to wait until I had over 50 subscribers – which I have now! Yay!!! I have also been redesigning the site outside of BlogSpot and that will be going up in the next week or so (heh, you have the scoop) and once that’s up I shall put up my shiny Feedburner stats.

The new site will look nicer too and have other improvements so watch out, I’ll be catching you soon. (I wish.)

Again, congrats. on your achievement, that’s something good for all of us to aim for.

Chris - Manager's Sandbox

November 25th, 2008 at 6:55 pm

Brian, any reason why you don’t use feedburner’s email service, as well? I like having all of my services at one site for simplicity’s sake.

- Chris

Brian Armstrong

November 26th, 2008 at 5:50 pm

Hmm…no real reason, I just prefer to keep everything under one system if possible. The people who were subscribed to feedburner previously will still get it through that system. Trying to convert them over would be bad and I’d lose a lot of people in the process, but trying to do it all by Aweber now should work.

Derek Halpern

November 25th, 2008 at 7:03 pm

Congratulations on 2000 subscribers. You are now breaking into the big leagues!

I actually wanted to ask you quickly… do you think the pop-up Aweber box takes away from credibility?

I think gaining a few subscribers faster now, may not be the best long-term solution because many of the aweber subscribers may not be “true believers” in what you have to offer or what you write.

Brian Armstrong

November 26th, 2008 at 5:51 pm

Hi Derek, yes I do think it takes some credibility away from the site to have it. However, it’s probably worth it to get the new subscribers. Definitely a tradeoff.

Derek Halpern

November 26th, 2008 at 6:11 pm

Do you feel they are “true” subscribers? The ones that will go around talking about your site to their friends? Or do you think they just subscribed because they were looking for free stuff?

Brian Armstrong

November 26th, 2008 at 6:38 pm

I think they’ll start out as the former, and hopefully end up the later months later :)

Derek Halpern

November 26th, 2008 at 6:40 pm

That’s a great way to look at it! Do you use AIM per chance?

Brian Armstrong

November 29th, 2008 at 1:48 am

Hi Derek, nope I don’t use AIM. A while back I decided to get rid of all chat programs to improve productivity. They make it too easy for someone to interrupt you – the #1 enemy of productivity :)

Aaron

November 26th, 2008 at 1:14 am

Congrats Brian! I have been a long time reader, and really enjoy the blog. Out of curiosity, what blog program do you use? Wordpress?

Thanks,
Aaron

Brian Armstrong

November 26th, 2008 at 5:52 pm

Thanks Aaron, yes Wordpress. I love it and it’s free. It’s one of the best open source programs out there today.

caleb

November 26th, 2008 at 10:20 am

Wow, at this rate you will reach singularity by February.

Has your blog’s monetization followed a parallel trajectory?

Brian Armstrong

November 26th, 2008 at 5:53 pm

Hi Caleb, the monetization has been more variable, but overall going in the right direction. I think a Blog with about 4000-5000 subscribers could potentially earn a full time income if monetized correctly.

Ben Moreno

November 26th, 2008 at 2:50 pm

I recently subscribed to this blog because of the 3 book offer. This is a good strategy.

What strategies can you recommend for blogs with under 30 subscribers?

Brian Armstrong

November 26th, 2008 at 5:54 pm

Hi Ben, the best strategy that I used was to write guest posts on more popular blogs. I highly recommend it!

Matt Thomas

November 26th, 2008 at 10:29 pm

Congrats on breaking the 2000 mark! It must feel especially good for you to achieve this milestone much quicker than the last. Best of luck!

I also wanted to mention something about your comment at the end of the post. I feel that there is also a disproportionate amount of work for non-passive businesses in the beginning as well. Granted, if the business is not passive there will inevitably be constant work, but it is disproportionate in that your income will be significantly lower (or non-existent) in the beginning regardless of the level of passivity.

Brian Armstrong

November 29th, 2008 at 1:49 am

Yep…totally agree. This is what makes passive income counter intuitive to most.

Caroline

November 27th, 2008 at 9:11 am

Once you are on a roll your on a roll. RSS subscribers are like a snowball being pushed downhill. at first they are small and roll slowly but as they go they pick up more snow and more speed.

caleb

November 27th, 2008 at 9:51 am

Brian,

You say it took you about a year before your blog picked up momentum.

If you were to start a new blog all over again now, from scratch, but knowing what you now know, how long do you think it would take to reach the same number of subscribers/revenue? (No cheating by using your old blog to direct traffic to your new blog.)

I am curious about how much of it is “skill and knowledge” vs. how much is “17-month gestation”.

Brian Armstrong

November 29th, 2008 at 1:53 am

Hi Caleb, that’s a good question. I think it could go a bit faster the 2nd time around by using some important things I learned:

1. pick a topic that has mass appeal – great way to do this is to browse magazines in barnes & noble. If there is a magazine dedicated to it, it probably has enough people interested to make a good blog topic.

2. pick something that I know I’m already passionate about so that it will be easy to continue writing – something I’d write about (like a journal) whether anyone read it or not

3. pick something that I have the potential to be the best in the world at someday, the #1 expert in a particular niche – even I’m not right now

Brian Armstrong

November 29th, 2008 at 1:58 am

Oh yeah, and be opinionated. Take a stance in your posts and say what everyone else was thinking but didn’t have the balls to say. I think I was too afraid of offending anyone up front and this was a mistake. It’s boring and not worth reading.

Tracey Grady

November 28th, 2008 at 7:30 am

Congratulations. I fall into the second thousand subscriber group. I have read before about the compounding effect of subscriber numbers after a slow build-up, and my (five month old) blog is seeing evidence of the compounding effect too, although my figures don’t match yours yet.

Brian Armstrong

November 29th, 2008 at 1:57 am

That’s awesome Tracey, keep it up and let us know how it progresses. Enjoyed your article on color palettes, I was actually just struggling with that this weekend for a new site. Design doesn’t really come naturally to me so I mostly just try things blindly or “borrow” from other designs until I get something I like.

Breaking Free

How I Reached 2,000 Subscribers On This Blog

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