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Plug Your Book!
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360.Yahoo.com. Yahoo offers its 360 blogs, another free ad-
supported service.
MySpace.com. A blog is part of the package for users who set up
a free MySpace profile, which is ad-supported. Similar free services are
provided on the many other social-networking sites, but MySpace is the
most popular. More on that later.
Blog-to-e-mail service
Loyal readership is key to your blog’s success, so make it easy for
first-time visitors to keep reading. One of the simplest ways for readers
to receive your blog posts is by e-mail subscription.
FeedBlitz.com and Feedburner.com operate two popular, free blog-
to-e-mail services. Both provide a snippet of code you can insert on your
blog to display a sign-up box or button where readers can provide their
e-mail address. Subscribers receive an e-mail digest of any new blog
posts, and can click through to your site to read more.
A subscription service makes it more likely that readers will stay
with you because they won’t need to remember to return to your Web
site. An e-mail service is a simple solution for your readers who might
not understand how to use Bloglines or other newsreaders.
Only about 20 percent of blog readers understand newsreaders, “so
if you’re not using e-mail, you’re missing 80 percent of your potential
audience,” says Phil Hollows, chief executive of FeedBlitz.
FeedBlitz’s free service also includes some reporting tools showing
how many of your e-mails are opened and which of your post headlines
readers click most. Knowing which of your posts gets the biggest
response is a valuable insight, showing you what content readers value
most.
Some authors and publishers who used to publish monthly e-mail
newsletters have abandoned their newsletters and now deliver similar
content in smaller, more frequent chunks using blog-to-e-mail.
E-mail service also provides you with a valuable business asset.
You’ll have access to those readers directly, so you can send special
messages for events like publication dates and book tours. This is why
many bloggers encourage readers to sign up for e-mail delivery: It
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