Acceleration strategies work especially well for established blogs.

A fix and forget strategy means setting up a system that enables your blog to grow automatically. I use the first three described below with great success, and am about to try out strategy number 4.

The great thing about fix and forget strategies is that you only need to put in the effort once in order to set them up. When they are in place, these strategies will work for you day and night to grow your blog. I suggest setting up at least two of the these four strategies as soon as possible.

Once you have a few of these fix and forget strategies in place, if you are keen on implementing more acceleration strategies, you’ll find six more in the supplementary material for this course. These more advanced strategies require a bit more work and maintenance, however – so get these four fix and forget ones in place first.

1. Create an incentive for subscribers.

Readers are much more likely to subscribe to your blog if you offer something of value to offer them in return. Your gift can be an ebook, a report, an app, a video or any other digital product that’s useful and would benefit your target audience.

If you write an ebook, consider giving away the first chapter in return for the reader subscribing (like on Goodlife ZEN).

We’ll get into the details about a subscriber incentive in the next couple of articles in this module.

2. Use popups.

Popups that advertise your subscription gift can double – or even triple – your subscription rate. This is a rather controversial strategy, but the results are amazing. It’s important to set the popup to show only once so that your regular readers aren’t bothered by it. I use the plugin Popup Domination on Goodlife ZEN. This is what it looks like:

I’ve set it to a 15 second delay after someone comes to my site. It is said that a shorter delay gets more signups, as you catch the people who only pay a short visit, but I prefer new visitors to read in peace before they see the popup.

Why would anyone in their right mind use a popup?

It’s because the effect is stunning.

Take a look at my stats below. When I first installed the Popup Domination plugin, I experimented with turning it on and off to see the difference in the rate of subscriptions.

Days 1-4 illustrate the subscriber growth without the popup. Midway through day 4, I activated the plugin (you can see the spike). One day 12 I deactivated the plugin. Finally, on day 16, I reactivated the plugin. You can see how the spikes correspond to activating Popup Domination.

Settings for Popup Domination

It’s important to set the popup to appear only once so that returning visitors are not annoyed. Set the days before the popup is set again to 2000.

3. Use signup boxes.

A signup box can be a great way to get regular subscriptions.

For example, you can use the plugin WP Subscribers to create a signup box between a post and its comments. (Check out how this looks on Goodlife ZEN.)

A static signup box between posts and comments is a low-key way to get more subscribers. It works especially well in tandem with a popup.

There is also a free plugin you can use to create a static signup box. In this module you will learn a step-by-step process  to do this.

4. Use a Feature Box.

This is a relatively new development. It involves using a feature box above the fold on the homepage. As Derek Halpern points out, the feature box is mostly seen by new visitors, whereas subscribers follow links to new or older posts and don’t see the feature box.

Check out this post, written by Derek Halpern:

How The Feature Box Increased Our Blog Subscription Rate by 51.7%

Here are three examples (you can click on the images to take a look at the blog):

1. Derek Halpern: Social Triggers

2. Anastasiya Goers: Success Odyssey:

3. Jon Morrow of Boost Blog Traffic

Watch the video clip below to see what Derek Halpern has to say about Feature Boxes.

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(You can click below to listen to the complete interview with Derek Halpern.)
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In the next articles, we’ll get into the details of how to implement some of these fix and forget strategies.