I will never understand the hype about getting readers to subscribe to our blogs. Why the hell do blogs need subscribers? Give me a real live visitor anytime. Subscribing to blogs is not the same as subscribing to a magazine. We subscribe to magazines because we worry we might miss an issue if we buy from new-stands. In fact that is the main reason why people subscribe to anything. They worry they will miss out something. But blog?
Bloggers encourage their readers to subscribe. They say something like, “subscribe to my feeds so you will not miss my next update” What? You mean you are going offline? Or are you planning to turn your blog into a subscription base site? Else how can anyone of your visitors miss you next big update?
Feed Readers were invented for the benefit of blog readers. Like the Newsagent that I used to read on the various topics that I have subscribed, these Feed Readers does the same thing. The subscriber gets to read their favorite blogs all in one place without having to surf all over the Net. Blog subscribers are normally serious blog readers but subscribing to your blog doesn’t mean they read your blogs daily. For all I know, they might just browse over your topic of the day and keep scrolling down without actually opening your post.
Somewhere along the line, people started to get obsessed with their number of blog subscribers. A high subscription base augurs well for the blogger in terms of their ego. It became a gauge for the blog’s popularity. Ways and means were created to increase their subscription base so that they have a respectable number to show in their sidebar. Why the obsession, I will never know, but BloggingExperiment.com is really going all out to lure subscribers by having a contest with mind blowing prizes.
Now I am not linking to BloggingExperiment’s contest with their required anchor text needed to qualify for the contest. The prizes are great but I don’t plan to enter because of the “twist” needed before they are going to give away anything to the winner. What is the “twist”? Here is the “twist”
The Twist:
However, there is one twist: For the prize to be awarded, Feedburner must report at least 150 subscribers to this site when the contest ends at 12 p.m. CST (I believe that’s GMT -6 but double check me on that) on September 1st. If it’s at 149, there’s no winner. Now wait, before you start writing an angry comment or email, realize that’s less than 6 new subscribers per day and it’s been growing at pretty good clip without me promoting a contest.
The prizes gets even better if BloggingExperiment can hit more than their target.
Why am I against this twist? You guys go and read what Darren Rowse has to say in his post titled, Why does my Feedburner Subscriber Count Fluctuate? September 1st is a weekend, if you haven’t check your calendar.
II am really surprised with BloggingExperiment’s obsession over their number of subscribers. In all fairness, they have a great blog and it is only a matter of time before they get their deserved subscribers. The blog is less than 2 month’s old and they already have 68 subscribers at this time of writing, so why the hurry to get subscribers. I think they should channel their effort into getting more visitors instead, buthen what do i know, their experiment is to make “from $0 to a full time income in only one year” and they have 322 days left. Whether the experiment succeed or fail will depend totally on their definition of what “full time income” means.
No, I am not against people subscribing to blogs. It’s good for blogs to have a loyal pool of subscribers, but frankly speaking, I hope these loyal subscribers will be loyal visitors instead. If Blog Stats and Feed Stats were given as a choice, give me Blog Stats any day. I will rather have 500 daily visitors than to have 500 subscribers who doesn’t visit and maybe doesn’t even read what I wrote.
Related posts:
- Reason Why Blog Subscribers Are not Increasing On the 7th. of November, I started a campaign to increase my blog’s subscribers and left it at that, with no follow ups of whatsoever. It has been 20 days since and I have refrained form looking at my feeds number wanting to let it increase to a respectable level...
- The Advantage of Subscribing to Blog Feeds. When I started blogging, my intention was to get all my readers to my blog physically so I can have the pleasure of seeing my daily unique hits soar and at the same time maybe get some Ads clicked by them. I still feel that way, but lately, I kind...
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- Some Realy Cool Christmas RSS Icons. I was thinking of creating a set of Christmas RSS Icons for my subscribers when I chanced upon this set at ajaxpath.com. The download link cam be found at the footer of my feeds. From time to time I will be adding goodies and freebies links to my feeds,...
- How to get Malaysian Blog traffic to your blogs. Whatever lessons you have learned are all taught by people with a culture and beliefs that are totally different from ours. No doubt, most of what was taught is universal and can be applied to our blogs to bring some traffic from overseas, but frankly, most Malaysian Blogs rely on...
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I do have some blogs in my reader. But not your personal blog because I prefer the ‘home feel’ when reading.
But this blog has a huge Feed icon. So, erm, how? I subscribe because I don’t want to jump all over the net. Can get tired from the jumping, the net is so huge, you know?
My sentiments exactly. Like you, I dont care so much as the amount of people who subscribed to my feedreader.
There are also feeds such as google reader and bloglines as well as other readers that are not accounted for. There are a plentiful of silent readers on my blog whom I’d love to know more about them. Statcounter is limiting.
At the end of the day, live visitors are important. I would really love to get more visitors to my blog.
Well, for those who has this obsession with numbers and stats, anything, any excuse is good enough for a little ego flattery and competition.
I don’t mind subscribers as well as real time visitors because at the long run it helps as well. I completely understand the need for people to subscribe and while I don’t push it, I know it helps save a lot of time.
I personally will subscribe to any blog (including personal blogs) that I like and for the most part I keep my feeds clean.
Sometimes, its not about the amount of people that visit. It’s the amount of people that take time to read your blog to begin with that matter. Even if they are lurkers, they pay attention. For a personal blog, that says a hell lot.
@ Marina, both bloglines subscribers and google reader users are counted by Feedburner’s feed count.
To be honest, I hadn’t realize that Sept. 1st fell on a weekend but I think you’re missing the point a bit. Not only have I been increasing my subscriber count, I’ve also been gaining back links. This will help my blog get more traffic as you mentioned. Plus, I’d rather have 500 people subscribed to my blog that might read my content than 500 people who aren’t subscribed and won’t see the posts at all.
Also, a large subscriber count can inspire more people to subscribe. Last but not least, services such as ReviewMe use the RSS subscriber count as one factor in their ranking of your site. If I can get more subscribers, I will have a better chance at making more money.
Great post and it’s nice to see a counter point presented!
WishBoNe,
Hahahaha, was waiting for someone to bring this up.
Like I said, I’m not against subscribing. I only prefer subscribers could be visitors.
Blogging Experiment,
Ok, got your point. Hope you do well in your experiment.
Thanks for the interesting perspective.
I had a blog that didn’t have an rss feed with the site, then as soon as I added one, I had 100 subscribers the next day. It was quite a smart move on my part.
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