How your reputation as a blogger helps lead you to success

This is the first in a series of articles in which I hope to share with you my knowledge of how and why Technology Bloggers has been so successful, so fast. Learn more about this series by reading our Technology Bloggers success article.

When starting a blog, website or forum there are two ways you can do it. In the dark, or with a reputation. 99% of the time, it is better to start a site with a reputation, as I have found that your online history can significantly affect the success of your next blog.

History provides you with many things; especially experience, reputation and knowledge. When I founded Technology Bloggers I had already run a technology blog for almost two years. This had given me a lot of experience in the area, specifically things like where to get ideas from, keywords to use to help my articles get found in the SERP’s, how to write interesting tech posts (I hope!) and many other things.

Christopher Roberts Technology Blog had also given me a reputation. This reputation has been carried with me to Technology Bloggers, so people who liked my writing before are likely to have follow me – give me a shout out if you did 🙂

The reason that I said 99% of the time it’s better to start with a reputation, is because very few people manage to get themselves a bad reputation, sometimes unintentionally.

Tracks in the Snow

We will forever be known by the tracks we leave - our reputation

Apart from blogging, another way to build up a good reputation is as a commenter. I comment on loads of blogs, as I think comments are very important. If you have had me comment on your blog or have seen me comment on a blog, then you will probably know that I have a reputation for challenging the author, and sometimes writing almost article length comments.

Challenging the author gets you to know people better in the blogosphere as those sort of comments jump out at people much more than ones like “Great article, cheers!” do. Don’g get me wrong though, I only disagree if I don’t agree with the author. If I like your content I will congratulate you too!


Commenting also has another element. By placing your link on other peoples blogs you are getting some effectively free publicity. People read you comment, like your style, check out your blog. It’s that simple! Sometimes 😉

If you are new to blogging, don’t worry if you have no reputation, look for blogs that you enjoy reading, and ones which also write in your niche and comment on them, that should, in some way help to build up a good reputation for yourself – providing they are good comments.

I have been into blogging for just over two years now, but I have also built (and currently maintain) many websites; these have further advanced my reputation as a writer. Some people may not know me from my blog, but as the ‘maintenance man’ for the Royal Marines Association, City of Wolverhampton Branch’s website, for example.

My social blog and philosophy blog along with my website have also advanced my ‘audience base’ and they have hopefully also strengthened my reputation as a blogger.

By the time I started Technology Bloggers I had (and still have) a lot of powerful contacts within the tech blog industry. These people can be fantastic resources in times of crisis and trouble, one of the other reasons that I highly recommend interacting with other online.

Basically what I am trying to say is that it is actually years of building and preparation that is part of the reason why Technology Bloggers has been successful. If you are new to blogging you may find that it can be hard to start with, but by guest blogging, commenting and interacting with other bloggers, can get you there!

How to add an email subscription form to your blog

Earlier in the week, Wayne John from Southern California Web Development commented on how it would be great if you could subscribe via email to Technology Bloggers. This way you could read the latest and greatest content as an email, and then just visit the stuff that interests you to comment etc.

After a little puzzling I managed to enable FeedBurner’s email setting and add a subscribe widget to the sidebar.

Google FeedBurner LogoTo subscribe via email like many already have, please enter your email in the box on the sidebar, or even in the box below 🙂

Enter your email address to get free updates about new articles!

As this blog talks about WordPress, RSS feeds and stuff like that, I thought I might as well help other bloggers set up a similar system 🙂

What do I need for people to be able to subscribe via email?

Well first of all you need a feed. WordPress handles this nicely so that shouldn’t be too difficult! Second you need a feed manager. I use FeedBurner. It’s simple and easy to use. The problem with it at the moment is that it is really slow at updating, meaning that when I post an article at 2 in the afternoon, only 8 o’clock next morning does the feed update – for example. This isn’t a major issue for email subscription at the moment though.

How do I enable FeedBurner email subscriptions?

Click on the profile of the blog you want to enable emails for, then go to the ‘Publicize‘ tab. From here look down the sidebar and find ‘Email Subscriptions‘ – click that. You should then get a page looking a bit like the one in this picture.

Enable/Activate FeedBurner Email SubscriptionsThen click Activate!

You will then be taken to a page called ‘Subscription Management‘. Here is where you get your code! Now you can ether get the box code or get the code which links to the subscription page. I chose to have a box, but you take your pick. Add the code to your site/blog and hey presto! Test it out yourself if you like, but the code should work and your readers should now be able to subscribe to your blog via email.

Can I customise the FeedBurner code?

Yes – to a degree. I am not 100% sure what Google’s policy is on modifying the code, but I imagine they are okay with it. My default code would make Technology Bloggers ‘subscribe box’ look like this

Enter your email address: 

Delivered by FeedBurner

but my modifications make a much smother (I think so anyway) this

Enter your email address to get free updates about new articles!

Happy subscribing and happy creating readers and bloggers 🙂