By nickel

Just a quick note to talk a bit about the power of writing a ‘Welcome’ post when you receive a big link. This morning, FiveCentNickel was featured in the NY Times (along with a number of other sites). Jim from pfBlueprint actually tipped me off to it last night shortly after the article went live.

As soon as I realized what was happening, I quickly threw together a post welcoming NY Times readers to my site, giving them a tiny bit of background, and inviting them to subscribe to my writings via RSS or e-mail, complete with links to help make it happen. I even slapped in an e-mail subscription signup form to make it extra easy. The end result? It’s too early to tell with regard to traditional RSS subscribers (FeedBurner updates daily, and it takes a little while for things to settle out). However, I’ve already seen a nice jump in e-mail subscribers.

Of course, it’s hard to say how much of this was due to the ‘Welcome’ post — after all, people could have subscribed via e-mail using one of the existing buttons, or by visiting my subscriptions page. What I can say is this: the number of people signing up this morning is pretty disproportionate to the amount of additional traffic that I’ve received. Thus, it seems pretty clear to me that this one simple post has helped me to convert the additional pass-through traffic into (hopefully) regular readers.

The great thing about welcome posts of this sort is that you really only have to put one together once… You can then largely recycle the text for your next big mention.