How to Get 2500 New ‘Subscribers’ to Your Blog Overnight (and Why I Don’t Really Care)

Every 2nd blog about blogging today seems to be writing about a video showing how to get 2500 subscribers overnight using a Netvibes accounts and an OPML file with thousands of copies of your own feed in it.

I’ve had a lot of people email me to ask what I think about the technique. My response:

1. It’s not surprising to see that it’s Possible - I’ve seen a few bloggers play with this type of technique over the years.

2. It’s an empty Achievement - so your feedburner button is a few thousand more tomorrow than it is today - but ultimately all it means is that you hacked it - no one new is reading your blog.

3. Do something that Matters - Expend the energy doing something that draws in real new readers. Network with other bloggers, write some quality content, write a guest post for another blog, make your blog stickier…. do something that matters

4. Social Proof? - Yes, having more numbers in your feedburner counter might convince a few extra people to subscribe (social proof) but what happens next week when feedburner closes the loophole and suddenly your regular readers see that you’ve just lost a couple of thousand readers? Is there such a thing as reverse social proof?

5. Risk? - I’ve never really been into ‘evil’ tactics - partly because I just don’t get into them but partly because when you deliberately do something to abuse a service that is provided to you by a company - sometimes things come back to bite you. I’m not sure if Feedburner (owned by Google) would take action against people trying to inflate their numbers - but do you really want to find out?

Want to know how to really build the number of subscribers to your blog?

• 11 Ways to Find New RSS Subscribers for your Blog
• A Secret to Finding New Subscribers for Your Blog (the start of a 3 part series)

OK - lets get back to blogging shall we?

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