Those that have read this blog for more than a couple of months will remember the password post frenzy I whipped up on here a couple of months ago… the strategy added around 300+ subscribers in less than a week for probably the least amount of work I’ve ever had to do on this blog. Since then, a few have replicated this and seen various levels of success… but I thought I’d put out a short guide with the details for all those that haven’t done it yet.

Here’s what you need to create a post that will spread virally, and entice people to do things that will benefit your blog – be it increase links, subscribers and ultimately exposure.

Have something to promote.

I had a technique that I had been using myself, so know it was successful, to make myself a steady, guaranteed income without doing any work whatsoever once it was setup. The method still works but it’s harder to do now because of networks tightening down – however, at the time it was solid.

I had made around $7,500 in two months using this, and had not personally seen it discussed on any other blog. Two immediate things that would almost guarantee people wanting to hear about it (just for info, the method was about CPM arbitrage). I knew that this information was worth a lot of money to anyone that used it, and could have packaged it up and sold it… but at the time I was disillusioned with IM-related products so decided to do the next best thing.

Have a reputation.

If you do something like this on a brand new blog when no one’s heard of you before, it’s unlikely it’s going to work out at all (unless you do the next part well). People need to know who you are, whether you’ve achieved anything, how worthy your word actually is.

On this blog, people had about a 100 of past posts to gauge what I was capable of and whether the upcoming information would be any good… most decided it was worth the free risk.

Build Hype.

Hype makes the world go ’round. Well it doesn’t, but it’s largely important for almost ANY kind of marketing you do. Don’t go overboard, but remember that since your post is password protected, people have no way to gauge what’s in it unless you notify them before hand. While you’re doing this, you can hype it up a little bit. Read my hype post here. Almost 200 comments in a few days which is not bad at all.

Make it easy.

It really depends what you want, and what you’re offering. If you ARE offering high quality, don’t be afraid to make your readers do a little work… remember, you are giving them something at no monetary cost whatsoever. However, don’t make them do too much work as you’ll find that most people simply can’t be arsed.

In this case, I gave people a choice – refer three people to subscribe (can you see how that would spread?), write a review on your blog (more reviews = more exposure, again more chance of it spreading) or build links to this blog. I eventually cut down on the link building thing after being warned that it could be bad for SEO, but anyways – all three options benefited me and people could choose on which one they thought was easiest for them. It’s always good to give people a choice.

Promote

It was my first time doing this kind of thing, so I kind of just wrote up the post and let it sit there… I didn’t do any promotion on it and sat on my backside (it promoted itself fairly well though!). If I were to do it again, I’d promote on forums, other blogs etc, make sure that I got it in front of many eyeballs as possible. Don’t make my mistake.

Deliver!

Once you’ve got people waiting, it’s only fair that you deliver. It doesn’t matter if only one person signed up and followed through, you should try and deliver as best as you can. If what you promised is indeed quality, you’ll have people recommending your blog even after the hype is over.

Last but not least, don’t do this too often. Once a week will probably grow your blog quick for a month or two, but unless you keep up sensational quality people are going to get tired and stop listening to you (or worse, to stick your post somewhere you don’t want it to go… ). This can be worked for any niche – you can see a lesser done example of this with the popups on numerous blogs asking for your email in exchange for a product.

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, my results were around 300 more subscribers than I would have had otherwise, in less than a week. That’s quite a chunk of my RSS count, and the best thing is that once you have people subscribe as long as you don’t piss them off most of them will stay subscribed.

This idea is only limited by your creativity. Feel free to test, tweak it and let me know how it goes!

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