In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

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If you use the Google Search Engine (and who on the planet doesn’t?) then you’ve probably noticed the sitelinks that often appear under the first organic search result. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t have the first clue why those links popped up from time to time.

Luckily for me, one of my Twitter friends passed on the URL to a really great article by Eric Lander that explains Google Sitelinks in great detail. Apparently Eric has done a great deal of research into the subject, and he detailed his research, including a number of theories, examples, and best practices that I think we all can seriously benefit from.

Eric made it pretty interesting, even for those of us much less versed in the search engine industry. Take a look…

This is just a quick note to let you know that the October Edition of Answers eMagazine is finished and available. Current subscribers will be sent the download information via email or you can download it directly from the subscribers’ area.

In this month’s issue the Cover Story is about landing pages, what they are, how to use targeted landing pages, and how to write really great landing pages. I’m also running a Special Feature about putting website counters on websites… should you have a counter on your homepage?

In addition, we’ll talk about the difference between reporting and being an expert on your blog, continue our series on tips to increase your conversion rates, and discuss why you should be gearing up for the holidays now.

All in all, it’s a pretty full issue, so I hope you’ll take the time to subscribe to receive your copy now at:

http://imarketingwatch.com/answers/

When Aweber first posed the question, “Can you get more readers by displaying your subscriber count,” on their blog, it got me to thinking about some of my niche businesses. I use email marketing extensively in my business, so anything that will increase my subscribers is a good thing.

The general idea here is that you may be able to turn more of your website visitors into subscribers if you can prove to them that many other website visitors have made the same choice. Marc Kline puts it like this:

Just because someone else does something, doesn’t mean you should, does it? Maybe not, but from infancy all the way through adulthood, we take cues from others on what is worth our attention.

To test the theory, Aweber makes it possible to display a chicklet that shows your website visitors how many others are benefiting from your email newsletter… in other words, the chicklet shows your current subscriber count under your subscription form.

It’s a nice little setup because all you have to do is insert the code and Aweber keeps track and maintains your subscriber count for you. No fuss, no hassle.

So I decided to test out the whole social proof theory with a couple of my niche websites that offer newsletters.

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