Despite the hoards of people claiming to unsubscribe from my blog because of the Rick Roll April Fools day joke, the FeedBurner widget is showing that this blog broke through the 23,000 subscriber mark. While this may come as a surprise to those who unsubscribed (or believe what they read in the comments), it doesn’t come as a surprise to me or anyone who understands Internet marketing.

Your Readership is Dynamic

A blog readership base is a dynamic element - it changes all the time and is not static. The people commenting on this blog now are not the same people who were commenting six months ago. Six months from now, most of the people commenting here won’t be commenting anymore. That’s just the way it works. If the commentators on your blog hasn’t changed in the past six months, it means the only people reading your blogs are friends and family members.

This dynamic element of the blog readership is the reason I never worry when I see comments by readers claiming they’re leaving. I know the chances of them completely leaving is very slim. Sure, they may unsubscribe from the blog RSS or comment less, but very few readers will completely leave a blog. And the fact that they left a comment saying they’re leaving make them less lightly to leave. If they left, they wouldn’t be able to read my reply. Human nature being what it is, they’ll check to see if I or anyone else reply to their comments.

While we all want to see readership keep going up, there will always be bumps along the way. As long as the general trend is upward, you really don’t have much to worry about. I was thinking about photochopping my RSS widget to show 10 subscribers and making a post asking, “Where did everybody go?” but decided against it because April Fools is over.

Apology for the Rick Roll

I want to apologies if I upset anyone for the Rick Roll prank. I assure you that was not the intention. While most will take the Rick Rolling for what it is - an April Fools joke - some were extremely pissed off by it. To those who were enraged by my stunt, I offer the following kind words from my favorite childhood TV show, The Muppets. I think it truly express how I feel.

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There are a lot of blogs out there that talk about how to make money online and there are even more that just talk about making money in general. The blog of Srini Saripalli, which serves as the subject of this review, isn’t all that different in this respect, but his presentation appears to be honest and genuine. Heck, his blog doesn’t even have much in terms of advertising!

Who is Srini Saripalli and Why Should I Care?

I wish I could tell you. His blog must be fairly new, because when I went to the about page, all I got was a message about how he’s “working on updating this page….:)- Please Check Back Soon!”

As far as I can tell, Srini is trying to establish himself as an expert in marketing, small business ownership, making money online, and entrepreneurship. The content of his posts range from business development to real estate investing. The trouble is that without an About page, it’s hard to give any sort of “expert” status to Mr. Saripalli. Contrast this to the established “expert” status of a John Chow or a Guy Kawasaki.

Another issue with his blog is that it’s pretty hard to spell SriniSaripalli.com. His name isn’t his fault, per se, but he could have selected a domain that’s a little easier to remember. As such, you’ll notice that he says he’s from SuccessEngineer.com in his videos (which I’ll get to in a moment). That domain just redirects to SriniSaripalli.com.

I should also note that the products and forum links at the top of the page only return 404 errors. That just lacks professionalism.

The Only Advertising on Srini Saripalli dot Com

Although he may use AdSense on some of his other sites, Srini Saripalli has made it a point to keep advertising to a minimum on what he calls his “authority site“. He says that he wants to use this blog to provide value to his readers, rather than make any money directly. It’s more about establishing his name. Poking around, it seems like the only advertising is comprised of four 125×125 buttons in the sidebar.

Strangely, two of the four links lead right back to SriniSaripalli.com. In terms of the other two, one leads to a single-page sales letter for an online workshop, and the other is a form to get pre-launch notification for some training program. It seems that Srini is behind both of these, so there’s no real paid advertising on his blog at all.

What’s weird is that the buttons are replaced by text links when you go into an individual article. Even so, I don’t think this “How Can I Help You?” section is all that useful.

Quality Content or Another Dud?

On some level, you could say that Srini Saripalli has some decent ideas on his blog. Unfortunately, English does not appear to be his first language and this shows in most of his posts. Here’s a brief excerpt from his post on selling e-books:

Execuse if the content in this post sounds very generic. The intenet of the post is to give a new reader and overall idea on what how to get started with information marketing?.

I can discern the meaning, but it’s still a little frustrating to read. The videos, in like manner, seem to start with good ideas, but there is definitely room for improvement. The image is over-exposed, resulting in a big wash of white. You can see this in his posts on transcribing random thoughts and his post on using AdSense.

Other posts that caught me eye include:

• Col Sanders & The Legendary Story Of Kentucky Fried Chicken!
• How To Write Comments On Others Blogs? The Right Way In Web2.0 & Social Media World!
• Buying A Website? 21 Checks That You Cannot Afford To Miss…
• How to Succeed at Being a Failure?

Srini has a habit of putting question marks where they don’t belong, as you can see in the title of the second and fourth post on the list.

Srini Saripalli: Decent Start, Has Work To Do

The concept behind SriniSaripalli.com is a good one and I think that he’s going about it the right way by being honest and open. The posts, if you can get past the grammar issues, are genuine and offer a decent amount of value. Srini isn’t exactly groundbreaking in the advice that he gives, unfortunately, so it’s hard to recommend him over some other blogs that offer more original content.

If you’ve been on the Internet for any length of time, then eventually you will be Rick Rolled. I’ve been Rick Rolled more times than I can remember. As a matter of fact, I Rick Rolled myself when making the Free PPC Secrets post.

The question many people have when they get Rick Rolled is how the hell do you get out of it? To answer that question, I put together this little video to show how to safely get out of a Rick Roll in just a few seconds.

Now that you know how to get out of a Rick Roll, why not test it out?

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WordPress Tutorials Blog - Discover how to use WordPress as a marketing weapon. Subscribe to our blog to win free themes every month.

Best Credit Card Offers Get up to $250 or even FREE round-trip plane tickets by signing up for hot credit card offers and bank deals!