So one of the things you have to do to make a blog popular is advertise and get other people to come visit your blog. To do that, you have to try things to raise awareness of your blog. That’s where services like rssHugger come in. rssHugger describes itself as:
“rssHugger aims to provide blog owners with a unique easy-to-use way to promote their blogs by sending them traffic, building backlinks for search engine optimization, as well as attracting new rss subscribers if the content is interesting to the reader.”
At first, they were going to charge $20 for you to be added to their network. This fee could be reduced to $10 if you were to blog about them and provide a link like I am right now. After getting some feedback from people, they decided to drop the fee if you provide a link to them. I have to admit, this is a much better idea than the original one. If they were to keep even the $10 fee, I wouldn’t be writing about them now, because small up-and-coming sites like myself really have to watch where we spend our money and how we try to promote our sites. With services like Technorati and Facebook, there are many free alternatives to try out. Given that this is a new service, I’m willing to see how well it does. Since it’s free, I have very little risk involved as it only will cost me a link.
Overall I think it’s a decent idea. This space is kind of crowded, but now that they have dropped their fee, they at least have a chance to get some viral marketing. I tend to be the suspicious type, but if they can convince me to do it, they have a shot to convince others as well. The site is relatively well designed and I was able to find answers to my questions. The only thing I couldn’t easily find was a picture I could use of theirs that I could add to my post.
Do I think this site has a chance to be successful? I’m not so sure. This is a pretty crowded space. There are lots and lots of sites right now where people go to find other interesting sites. Most of them don’t focus on RSS feeds though so rssHugger might be able to carve out a niche of its own. Some problems I can see early on is that it will probably be tough to constantly send traffic to my rsshugger page (or it will be as soon as I get added) which means I likely won’t be able to crack the top 100 too often. To make matters worse, if I’m up against the likes of John Chow and other large players, my site will definitely get buried. I’m interested to see how the proprietor of the website, Collin LaHay, addresses this issue. Other than that, it will be a wait-and-see approach for me. I’m not sure how much traffic a link from this site will provide to me, but if it does any good, I’m more than willing to discuss it and promote the site.
I commend him for starting something. Like Rick always likes to point out to me, it’s better to do something, anything, rather than to do nothing. His goal of funding his college education is admirable, and hopefully this website will help him on that journey. We all have our Journeys, and I hope he is able to fulfill his.
John Chow’s page is #1 on the top 100. Yours is 33. Not too shabby
Clicking on the Random Blog link on rssHugger’s site, I got yours on the 3nd click. So, either the blog gods are smiling on you today, or this site is getting a lot more traffic than you’re letting on
The site is relatively new, so It’s not surprising that I’m up on the list right now. I’ll probably move down,not up, if bigger websites start submitting their URLs.
I wish I was getting a lot of traffic. My blog is still relatively new, only two weeks into this, but I’ve done better than I thought I would. It’s hard work to try and get people to come to your site but hopefully I’m doing good so far
Oh, in case people don’t realize, you should click on my rssHugger link. I think it has something to do with where I get ranked. The more people who click on my link, the better I do.
So all revenue generated by the website goes towards your goal right? I think a lot of people that have been able to support themselves through their blog (and there are people out there that make a living by blogging) are just in the right place at the right time. And they find a niche. It seems that the more specialized your blog is, the more regular traffic you get.
For example, I started a basketball blog because I love pro basketball. I had a lot of initial success (I’m convinced that if you write anything about a Boston sports team, you’ll have instant success) but after about two months, I realized it was pretty tough, because there’s a lot that’s going on in the NBA on a daily basis. I read on article on ESPN about finding a niche in the blogging community, but since I don’t necessarily have a favorite team, I was kind of wondering what to do. But I think I’m going to turn it into a fantasy basketball blog, maybe I can find a niche that way.
So, I guess my point is, you never know what’s going to happen.