Dramatically Increase Subscriptions Without Lifting A Finger, Literally

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Glen Allsopp from Viperchill has launched a cool plugin called Viperbar. You can see this plugin in action at this blog. Well, it is so cute and a handy plugin that lets you to non-intrusively encourage your readers to subscribe to your blog.

The plugin is available at the WordPress official plugin directory. Here is the download link for you - Download Viperbar. And, did I mention? It’s FREE!

This plugin is really cool for anyone who is strongly struggling to build lists. The Viperbar just strikes your readers like a breeze and lets them do the subscription so easily from the bar itself. Hassle free for them and you.

As I said earlier, the Viperbar is a non-intrusive stripe above the header of your site. Here are the perks and how it will encourage your readers to subscribe:

1. Non-intrusive - I say it again because it really is. Most people do not subscribe if they are annoyed or if your subscription form interrupts what they were doing or makes your content inaccessible.

2. Not a pop up - I am not against using pop ups for increasing subscription but I personally stay away from using it.

3. Above the fold. It is just above your header - a spot that grabs attention so quickly and your readers can’t miss it.

4. Hassle free for you. It integrates with Feedburner, Aweber and Mailchimp. You just have to input the IDs or API Keys (details below).

5. You can track your conversion rates. Something awesome for a free plugin.

I assume that you have downloaded, installed and activated the plugin. Now you need to look for Viperbar below “Settings” in your WordPress Dashboard. What you first see is the General customization.

Enable Viperbar? - Click yes.

Fix Synchronized Backgrounds - Click yes.

Here you can put whatever you want to make it compelling for the readers to subscribe. I would suggest putting text only “Before the form”. That looks pretty.

Then you have options to integrate Feedburner, Aweber or Mailchimp.

You can choose to use either Feedburner, Aweber or Mailchimp forms.

Here, I have used only Mailchimp. So I have entered the Mailchimp API Key and the unique ID of the List to which to want to add the subscribers.

API Key - In your Mailchimp Dashboard, on the top right if you point your cursor over “Account” you will have a drop down list. Choose “API Keys & info” from that to get your API Key.

Unique List ID - Click on “Lists” from the navigation menu on your dashboard. On your list (which you are going to use for this form) just point the cursor to “settings” and choose “list settings and unique id” from the drop down menu. You will find your id there.

With Feedburner, you need to go to your dashboard and simply find the feed title.

Since I am not familiar with using Aweber, I cannot give you help with that. I will ask someone to write about that here.

In any case, use only any one of them. Otherwise you will be displaying multiple forms (boxes to enter email and names).

Here you can set the color schemes for your bar and the submit buttons. You simply have enough color options here. You can choose single color for the bar.

Well, you can actually play with the colors and combinations. If you use to have two colors you can select one color for top and one for the bottom of the bar. From the “Button” tab you can choose a color for the “submit” button.

Well, there is nothing to configure here. But it basically gives you the following:

1. Number of impressions - People who saw your bar

2. Number of submissions - People who made their mind to subscribe

3. Conversion rate - as it says!

This is something cool.

When you make changes with colors and stuff, you click preview and you can see that in action before you click save and make it live on the website. It is what that tab is supposed to do. But it is not doing it. I always get a static view!

As of now, I don’t have much suggestions to make. Given that the plugin is free, it is already giving us enough. But I would like to mention a couple of things:

1. As I said, the preview thing is not working.

2. It would be cool if we could change the color, font and styles of the text in the bar.

Otherwise the plugin is great and I highly recommend. It is free, non-intrusive and helps you to gain more subscribers without you having to lift a finger, literally. Try it out.

Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Article by JaneSheeba

+Jane is the founder of Problogging Success. She is an expert blogger, consultant, freelance writer and blog designer. Don't forget to get your hands on two FREE Ebooks she offers.

Jane has written 242 awesome posts for Problogging Success.