Bribing readers has been a touchy subject around the blogging world. We throw around the word “bribe” as if it is necessarily a bad thing, when in fact it can be one of the best marketing strategies around.

“Bribe (noun): anything given or serving to persuade or induce.” –Dictionary.com

Normally, bloggers offer bribes in two ways. The first is in the form of some kind of “exclusive” digital download (e.g. eBook, desktop wallpaper, discount coupon) offered upon RSS subscription. Second is in the form of entry into a contest, just like The Net Fool’s Outrageous Blog Contest offered here. I’m here to show you how bribery is not the root of all evil, and how it can help you succeed.

1. Incentivize Reading and Commenting
Here’s a fact of life: if someone offers you an incentive, you are more likely to play along. This is essentially what bribing is all about. As bad as it sounds, offering your readers a bribe will encourage them to come back to your website, read your blog posts and comment more often. As a businessman, I believe that there is absolutely nothing wrong with offering a little incentive to have your readers come back.

As easy as it might be to subscribe to a blog, many readers hesitate to do so unless they are getting something in return. If you start a contest or have some kind of exclusive content available for subscribing, people that come by are more likely to subscribe to your updates. What this means for you is that they will be reading things you write more often and will come by and comment on your blog. This is what we want, more frequent flyers, and more interactivity in the form of commenting.

2. Increase Your Daily Traffic
As I’ve already laid out, offering a bribe to your readers will have them subscribing to your RSS feed. Once they are subscribed to your feed, these new subscribers will be getting all of your new posts sent to their email inbox or RSS reader every time you update. What this means for you, is that you now have a larger pool of people coming back to your website if they see an interesting post. This will increase your overall traffic flow to your website immensely!

Think about offering bribes like baiting a fishing hook and casting the line. You are setting yourself up to increase the daily traffic to your website, gaining returning visitors, which are the most important  type of traffic available. So go ahead and offer that bribe, it’ll boost your traffic like nothing else.

3. Boost your RSS subscriber numbers
Obviously, the main goal in offering an exclusive subscriber bonus is to see your RSS numbers increase. As I have mentioned numerous times in the past, your RSS subscribers are a gauge for your ultimate success as a blogger. Without returning visitors and subscribers, your blog isn’t worth a whole lot and future readers will be less likely to subscribe.

One thing I have found to be true across the blogosphere is that people flock towards success. Knowing this, a typical internet surfer will be far more likely to subscribe to a blog with subscriber numbers in the hundreds (or thousands) than one with less than fifty. You want to inflate your RSS subscriber numbers as much as possible, and offering a little incentive to encourage this is no problem at all.

Bottom Line: Offering bribes to your readers is one of the smartest marketing ploys in the book. People that label bribing as unethical are going to be put at a loss to bloggers that are incentivizing subscribing. So throw away that “good blogger” mentality and focus on enhancing the experience for everyone by encouraging your readers to come back for more… it’s the best move you’ll ever make!

-The Net Fool

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!