Add Subscriber-Only Content in Blogger

One sure-fire way to attract new subscribers to your blog is to offer an incentive: a download, PDF or other content which only subscribers can access.

Those using Wordpress to publish their blogs may be familiar with the RSS Footer plugin. For those using Blogger, it’s even easier to add subscriber-only content by simply changing a few settings in your Blogger dashboard.

In this post, I’ll explain how you can add subscriber-only content to appear beneath each post in your feed to promote your latest eBook, downloads or other incentive as encouragement to new subscribers and a reward for your existing readers.

Add your post feed footer

Blogger’s site feed settings include a little known feature: the “post feed footer”. This enables you to add some text or simple HTML code which will appear beneath every post published in your blog feed.

To access the settings for your post feed footer, log in to your Blogger dashboard, choose the blog you want to work with, and go to the Settings>Site Feed page.

To use the post feed footer function, you should ensure that your blog feeds are set to “full” (otherwise the setting will not work!). Change the “Allow Blog Feeds” setting to “Full” before going on to the next step:

Next, you will need to look near the bottom of the Site Feed page, you will see a large text box where you can add some content or simple HTML code. This is where you will add your subscriber-only content.

If you want to add a link to your free PDF or a page containing subscriber tips, you can add this using basic anchor tags, like this:

<a href=”http://your-site.com/link-to-content-page.html”>Subscriber Content Link</a>

You can also add image tags, and style text using bold, italic or inline CSS:

<img src=”lhttp://image-host.com/your-image.jpg” align=”left” alt=”Alt Text” />
<h3>Subscriber Content</h3>
Download your free eBook/content/report: <a href=”http://your-site.com/link-to-content-page.html”>Subscriber Content Link</a>
<strong>Thank you for subscribing!</strong>

Blogger does limit you to using 500 characters or less, but this should be sufficient for most requirements.

Once you have added your subscriber content to the post feed footer, you should save your settings.

If you redirect your Blogger feeds through Feedburner, you may need to wait for a few hours for this change to take effect, though those choosing not to redirect will see the effects immediately.

For Blogger Buster, I use the post feed footer to add a link to my latest eBook, which appears like this beneath posts in my blog’s feed:

Publicize your subscriber-only content!

Once you have created your subscriber only content, it would be a good idea to publicize it. This way you can inform existing readers and encourage new readers to subscribe to your blog feed.

I’ve found the most effective method is a two part process:

1. Highlight your subscriber content in your sidebar, along with your subscription links

   This way, you draw attention to the benefits of subscribing, while offering an easily accessible link to your blog feeds.

2. Write an explanatory post about your subscriber content, with instructions for how this may be accessed

   This is for the benefit of those unfamiliar with RSS subscriptions, and may also explain how to access this content from email subscriptions if you offer this service from your blog.

I hope this post has provided ample information for how you can add subscriber-only content in Blogger with ease. Please let me know if you have any thoughts or further suggestions by leaving your comments below.