Do Your Really Care About Your RSS Feed Numbers?
Yesterday Hunter Nuttall wrote a really good post on how he managed to build his RSS feed subscriber numbers to 500+ and what it took for him to achieve this. He has only been in the blogging game for a little over 10 months and according to Hunter, it was due to three major things:
1. Content
2. Innovative Thinking
3. Marketing
Moreover, while I agree with Hunter 100 on his reasons, I beg to differ and ask you the following question:
“Do you really care about your RSS numbers?”
I used to care. Initially when I started blogging, I saw some blogs that had thousands of subscribers basically overnight, and I figured I wanted to be like that. However, I soon discarded that aspiration because quite frankly RSS numbers have nothing to do with the individual success of a blog.
Who defines success anyway? Furthermore, who are we to assume that somebody is or is not successful because their RSS feed number is in the thousands or in the dozens.
As a matter of fact, I think that RSS numbers are a mere stroke for our egos.
Being blinded by the appearance of success seems to be a common phenomena on the Internet. Also, do you really give this little number so much power as to tell you whether your blog is a success or not?
To take this even further, have you ever noticed that certain blogs in certain niches are automatic feed magnets, while others seem not and yet when you visit them, they are a hive of activity that is reflected by a lively and active community.
Quite frankly, give me one of these blogs any day, regardless of their subscriber numbers. These bloggers are the real heroes of the blogosphere in terms of content creation, because they are naturals at engaging their readership.
As a reader I care about the way I am welcomed on a blog and not about the status of celebrity. Furthermore I also care about the content. Most celebrity bloggers don’t give a rats arse about their readers anyway judging by their lack of comment interaction. They are probably too busy counting their dollars and sucking up to each other. I say this because I subscribe to one of their email lists, and tomorrow I get 5 more promotions from passed on lists which is bordering very close to spamming.
Those of you who subscribed to my list through my eBook offer have NEVER and will NEVER get an endorsement email from one of my “buddies” just because he just launched this incredible new product. Heck, I probably have a list of 200 and never even bother sending emails. Darn, I could have made millions by now! Ah yeah, I forgot, I need thousands for that.
On the contrary when I visit Brett’s blog or Friar’s or Vered’s or Cath’s and the countless others of you who have a lively community you guys always reply to your readers. See, even busy celebrity bloggers should have the decency to interact with their community as for without it, their blog would be just a blog among millions too.
Personal interaction is worth so much more than awe-inspiring RSS feed subscription numbers.
I don’t require an RSS feed in the thousands to tell me that I’m good at what I do. I get confirmation of that every single day with a fully booked business schedule and happy returning clients. I also don’t do the rounds and rub shoulders with the big knobs. I have never been good at this social thing. I’m cool with that because I know that my success is earnt by myself and not thanks to some instigated promotion from a “celebrity”.
I wish we would stop being blinded by empty appearances because they don’t always paint the right picture. Most often they actually trick people into believing the wrong thing. I see blogs with thousands of subscribers and yet, the blog owner either has no active readership, or else they do have lots of comments but can’t be bothered to reply.
If I was to believe in the power of RSS numbers, I would not read those “smaller blogs”, blogs that really matter to people. Blogs with real value and not another endorsement of Stumble Upon, Twitter, eBooks, membership sites and what not. Let’s look at it this way, why else do they have such a big ACTIVE readership if not for giving proper value to their readers. These are not your typical comment replies like “great post [insert your celebrity name here] I’m glad I learnt something new here today”. Instead these are loaded with intent on discussions that matter.
Here is the thing. You need to look and listen and make up your own mind about people. But for some reason there seems to be this crowd of suck up my ass and I suck up yours type of behavior online. I guess it is the same offline too and I’m sick of it. To make matters worse, it is all so artificial and it tricks new people into believing that these guys are heroes.
In case you haven’t guessed yet, I make this my official statement of anti suck behavior. Maybe I should develop a button for this as well.
Anyway, it looks like this has turned into one of my ongoing rants.
How much do you care about RSS feed subscriber numbers and do you really think that high numbers automatically equals success, popularity or the fact that the blog is positioned in a hot niche?
Monika
About the Author: I'm a passionate freelance writer and problogger. To further build my business I'm also in the process of building my own niche empire which pays me residual income.
Brett Legree | Oct 2, 2008 | Reply
Monika,
Thank you for writing a nice post today (and for saying what you said, too). I don’t really think too much about the numbers.
What is important to me, what keeps me going really, is chatting with everyone who comes to visit. That’s the best part. I believe you can fake or game the system to get RSS numbers up. You can’t fake community.
You have that here too, by the way – a wonderful, vibrant community, which makes it a joy to come and visit.
-Brett
Lin | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Monika, I agree 100% with your post. I’m not fooled by the subscriber chicklet numbers on blog sites, since they are easily manipulated to appear as though there are more subscribed readers than there are in reality.
Nor do I determine a blog’s popularity or “success” based on the number of comments to posts. Most of my own traffic comes from search engines, people searching for information on various topics and find my blog. Some of these visitors subscribe and begin commenting on new posts, while others get the information they were looking for, read a few more related articles, MAYBE leave a comment and then leave.
RSS feed subscribers may or may not read every single post published, nor will RSS subscribers comment on every single posted article. Heck, they may not be at all interested in the post title/headline subject and not click over and read the post at all until something of interest appears in their reader.
What makes a successful blog is up to personal interpretation, personal goals for the blog etc. What one person may consider to be a successful blog, another may not. Oh well.
InfectedByBugs | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Monika, I again agree with you but Lin’s post is what I kind of was going to say. The post was very informative by both of you and thus I remember the days when I wished I was the best of the best and therefore cared loads about the RSS Feeds.
Now’days i care more about advertising and making the content interesting otherwise there is no point.
Cath Lawson | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Hi Monika – I agree with you completely. And when I hear another blogger refer to themselves or a member of their community as a celebrity it makes you want to puke. As Liz Strauss said – “Internet famous is not Oprah famous.”
What really amazes me about all these folk with a huge amount of RSS subscribers is that they all have a heap more than me, yet the appear to have a lot less traffic and far fewer commenters.
They’re either inflating their numbers, or folk are subscribing and not coming back.
Like you I get tired of those who share lists with their friends, or email me promoting their mates products. How many times do I have to put Mike Filslimy in the spam folder before he disappears?
And I hate hate folk who act as if they’re some kind of star and never respond to commenters. Folk are giving up their time to read your blog and make a comment, so the least you can do is talk back to them.
You’ve made some excellent points Monika and you’ve said what a lot of us are feeling.
Carla | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
“In the contrary when I visit Brett’s blog or Friar’s or Vered’s or Cath’s and the countless others of you who have a lively community you guys always reply to your readers. See, even busy celebrity bloggers should have the decency to interact with their community as for without it, their blog would be just a blog among millions too.â€
I learned about interacting with my readers from Vered. Now, it just doesn’t seem right not to, no matter how busy you are. If you can take the time to write a post to bring in readers, you can at least respond to them.
In terms of number of subscribers, I really don’t care (though I’m obsessed with checking my stats!). My blog is pretty new so that may be part of it.
Friar | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@Monika
I’m a complete RSS Moron. I don’t know what it is, or if or how I can get it. I dont’ think RSS is available on the free version of Wordpress.
Some people tell me they’ve subscribed to the Deep Friar. I’m not really sure what that involves, but I take that as a compliment, and I’m grateful. I have no idea on how many subscribers I actually have, though.
I do like to look at my Blog Stats on Wordpress. When I post, traffic goes up. When I don’t, it goes down.
Well, THAT pretty much sums up my level of knowledge on the whole subject!
Writer Dad | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Monika,
There is a reason I sent you that email. This is it. I love your outlook, always. I agree with everything you’ve said here. I’d rather have a small audience, fully engaged, than a large audience, scanning my content to drop a comment in hope for their own traffic. Such behavior is ridiculous. Thanks for being rad.
Lance | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
When I first started out – I was thinking – more subscribers means more success, and validates my writing. But, what I’ve found is that it is about the community that develops. This is where it’s at for me. When someone leaves a heartfelt response – that’s worth so much to me. Do I still check on what my subscriber count is? Yes, occassionally. But not because it matters as much as I thought originally…
Hunter Nuttall | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Hey, thanks for the link. I agree that when looking at someone’s blog, you shouldn’t use the subscriber count to decide whether it has value to you. Just because lots of people are doing something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for you.
On the other hand, for me as a blogger, I want to get lots of readers. I’m sure I don’t need to explain why. We can debate how important RSS subscribers are compared to search traffic or email list subscribers or whatever, but regardless, more RSS subscribers mean more readers.
I find it interesting that different metrics don’t always correlate. My comment count seems very low relative to my subscriber count (my last post being a notable exception), and I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m scaring people away from commenting, I don’t know.
Cath Lawson’s page views seem to be extraordinarily high relative to her subscriber count, and I’m not sure why. I guess maybe great SEO or social media traffic.
So there’s more to the story than just the number of subscribers, but it’s still a hugely important metric–unless you fake it!
Vered - MomGrind | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Thank you, Monika.
I do care. Probably more than I should.
I agree that it has a lot to do with your niche – blogging, productivity and self-improvement blogs do seem to be feed magnets.
But when everyone around you is obsessed with subscriber counts, it’s difficult not to become obsessed too.
Cath Lawson | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Hunter – Actually, 75% of my visitors are repeats – I’m not that great at SEO that I can get that many visitors so easily. Either not having the plugin is making a difference, or folk are typing my URL direct, or bookmarking me.
I don’t know if my subscriber count is right as I didn’t install whatever it is James told me to install, because subscriber numbers are meaningless to me. What is more important is the number of folk visiting my blog and what they’re reading.
My Alexa rank has improved a bit since they changed it so that it didn’t just count folk with a toolbar.
I know Alexa isn’t completely accurate but I would say it’s a lot harder to fiddle than subscriber numbers. Nor is it that easy to fake the number of commenters you get
I do get quite a bit of traffic from StumbleUpon – though not as much as many folk because I’m banned – so people just tend to stumble the posts they like rather than almost everything I write.
The page view number is high because I get a lot of page views per visitor. I used to think increasing my visitor numbers was important – then I realised it wasn’t. Folk could wind up on my site, take one look and leave and still be counted as a visitor.
Grizzly | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Hey stranger,
I find the blogs worth reading all have 1 thing in common – a healthy comment section full of real opinions and a nice exchange between participants who all get to know one another. Kind of like yours Monika.
RSS numbers are all too often padded by an email list (feedburner counts aweber lists in the total) and you end up with people like Caroline Middlebrook or Garry Conn who seem to have thousands of readers but really don’t. Most are just people who downloaded the free ebook and have never been back.
RSS numbers don’t make you money – but the little widget sure has convinced a lot of beginners that it will if you could only get more readers. Sadly it is all show and as you said little more than an ego boost.
I’ll take search traffic any day but then again I’m just an Adsense pimp unlike your crowd of real writers. Take solace in the fact that you folks do have a real community and support each other far more than the IM crowd does. I’d take 10 friends over 100 acquaintances any day.
Hope I wasn’t sucking up Monika!
(never get the time to chat with the people I enjoy the most – what’s up with that?)
Cath Lawson | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Grizzly – I think there’s a lot of sense in being an adsense pimp. Until recently, I had the ugliest website on earth with a really high adsense click through rate.
I figured I could put it on a blog, make it prettier, optimize it a bit more and I’d make ten times the amount. Now I’m getting more traffic and making bugger all. I was better off with the ugly site that had well blended adsense.
What would your advice be – switch back to the ugly version, add more pages and optimize it well or what?
Grizzly | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Hi Cath,
As a huge “ugly” blogger you can guess my answer. You probably will upset your readers but the uglier the site is, the better the results are when it comes to CTR. No question.
In reality you don’t want any social traffic at all on an Adsense site – just targeted search traffic. Without switching back, you might try to limit the options people have to leave your blog – ie. either click an ad or back out is best. Also make the main ad block the first thing the visitor sees. Don’t blend it in. It should be in their face. If you have a nice looking header then ditch it. You want the site to look like an amateur set it up.
It’s ironic but I like Blogger simply because it is a perfectly ugly template right out of the box. People can’t wait to leave and a good percent do it by clicking those ads. The catch is that you have to have content that will pass a visual check so the formula is pretty silly. Great content on a really amateur looking blog – go figure.
If the blog you were referring too is your http://cathlawson.com/blog/ then may I suggest using the big square ad block up top and moving the RSS blurb to the sidebar. This will get your ads noticed – at the moment they are not the focal point and you probably have people skipping over them to get to your content. You are just a bit too reader friendly at the moment which is good for collecting those RSS subscribers but not so good for clicks.
Hope that helps and good luck Cath.
Lin | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Grizz, it’s great to see you here. Anyone interested in making money online really needs to subscribe to Grizz’ blog. Grizz tells you the truth about how to make money online while others typically give you garbage. Grizz, I’ve been reading your blog (and Monika’s) for quite awhile now, and both of you are awesome. I’m making good money on my blog and it’s a good thing since I’m gonna be a grandma in a few months and plan on spoiling him or her rotten.
Ross | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
I can’t believe other people are finally seeing the light.
Something that gets SO OVERLOOKED is that RSS subscribers don’t matter on some types of sites. If you’re getting a massive majority of your visits/page views via Google, and those visits/page views continue to grow monthly, why do RSS subs matter? I’ve lost track of the number of sites who have literally 10 times more RSS subs than I do, and less than half the visits and pageviews.
If you’re attempting to make money blogging, a high RSS subscriber count is nice to show off to potential advertisers. But visits and page views are going to remain a heck of a lot more important to those same advertisers.
Grizzly | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Lin,
Thanks for the vote of confidence Lin. Monika is going to kill me for Bogarting her comments… (she is such a sweetheart though so I’m sure she will forgive me. I hope
)
Congrats on the Grandma status! Spoil away.
Kelly@SHE-POWER | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
This is a great post Monika and I agree with you. I have a lively community at my blog and they give me all the validation I need to continue spinning my yarns. I also have increasing traffic and an improving Alexa rating, but the funny thing is my subscriber numbers have stayed almost the same or even dropped slightly over the past couple of months. I have no idea why. For some reason I don’t attract subscribers and the ones I have, more than half of them are via email. Does this worry me? A little. Mostly because I don’t understand it. Though I wonder if it’s because I don’t have a clear niche and I need a site redesign.
But it does beg the question, are RSS numnbers always an indication of your readership? if I have growing numbers of commenters, growing traffic, am well bookmarked on social media and an increasing Alexa ranking, then aren’t I doing well? Should I worry about my subscriber numbers? Does it mean I am doing something wrong?
I don’t have an answer to these questions. You have really got me thinking now.
Kelly
Rita | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Monika,
To answer your question: not a whit. If I can touch ONE person, make ONE person laugh, make ONE person think, that’s good enough for me. And I don’t mean per blog. I mean PER WEEK!
Rita
One addition: I believe it is important to respond to EVERY comment, whether your commenter agrees or not. I’d rather engage my commenters in a good discussion than gain more readers.
Davina | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
Hi Monika. I recently unsubscribed from one blog because the blogger did not or rarely did reply to comments. You know what that’s like? Going to a party where all the guests sit around in the living room chatting, eating snacks, waiting for the host or hostess who never shows up.
I believe community is more important and only by accident did I learn the other day that I have 13 subscribers (and 1 of them is myself). I started to compare my numbers against other blogs in the list on the home page in Feed Reader, and my numbers definitely don’t measure up. And… I realized after the initial “sigh”,… that I didn’t care.
I’m happy for the readers and commenters that visit my blog. I’m having one helluva good time writing, commenting and reading, and hearing my own voice too. But I can also say that I’m equally happy for those people who do care and are happy with their subscriber count.
Evelyn Lim | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
This is an interesting topic. Because I blog on personal development topics, I only want bigger numbers because I feel that I want to have a greater reach to people who are really in need of assistance. I don’t check my rss feed numbers every day. Perhaps once every 3-5 days.
But yes…building that community is important. I sure don’t want a blog which has no life. I may as well put up static pages.
I also know that some of my personal friends, who are non bloggers, subscribe to my blog posts. While they may be reading my posts, they are just uncomfortable with interacting all that much on the web.
So I’d say that it’s the balance that I’m hoping to strike. I spend a lot of time interacting on blogs now; so I get more repeat visitors nowadays. I guess if I spend more time on other strategies, I’d be building up on the numbers….not sure…just a guess.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Brett: That is correct. Apparently you can fake your numbers. I have no idea how. My community is awesome for sure and it is thanks to you guys that is the case. I’m merely the intermediate connector I guess and the voice who rambles on.
You know, it was actually you to taught me the importance of community and for that I am very thankful to you.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Lin: Exactly. It is all in the eye of the beholder. You are doing the right thing by aiming for search engine traffic. I also agree with what you said about clicking through from the feed to the blog.
As a matter of fact I hardly do and only make an effort every now and then to actually visit a blog and comment, just to show the blogger that I am indeed still reading them.
Most of the time though I read blogs in my feed reader as it is faster. On busy days (which is most of the time) I tend to just delete them because there is no way I can keep up with everything that is being said.
So if I do this, others do too and therefore the feed number becomes really a joke.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ IBB: I hear you Shannon. I guess most of us fall for this “false trap” when we first start out. Once again it is the classic noob follows celeb without understanding why.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Cath: On ya woman! Exactly my point. I find this actually borders on arrogance, not replying to comments. Heck, if folks are so busy as not to have time to reply to comments, then for goodness sakes hire a person to do it on your behalf.
The lack of this just goes to show that these guys really don’t give a rats bum about their readers. All they care about is selling them yet another membership product.
BTW, glad you discovered one of my earliest mates and buddies online the one and only MR Griz.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Carla: Hey, nice to see you here. I went to see your blog and love it. Simple but stylish, nice template!
Vered is great with her interaction and that is why she has such a strong following. Interestingly enough she doesn’t always post 1,000 word posts, sometimes it is just an image. This proves that it is more important to have the connection through the comment section than even writing something just for the sake of it.
She certainly has this nailed won pat.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Friar: Don’t worry, you are better off not knowing about this stuff as it really doesn’t matter. Just to satisfy your curiosity though, if you click on that orange square button in your browser window (you have to be on your site of course)it will lead you to the subscription page of your blog.
There you can subscribe with a feed reader (you need to sign up for an account). Usually you can do this on any blog.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ WD: LOL, this is me being a little rad. If you talk to my friend Don (we chat on skype daily) you would hear him laugh out loud because I am not so well behaved in the real world. When something ticks me off I can well react like you did with that idiot sticker guy.
Like you, I get ticked off by false appearances and falseness (at least I have you down as a person who would). I think we are both strong believers of principles.
You keep on doing what you do Sean, because bloggers like you are a offering so much more to their readers than the average “celebrity” who has only one concern. To bleed their readers dry of money!
I believe there is a place for helping people and another for making money.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Lance: Thank you for your feedback. Like you, I get excited by my reader responses and no longer by my feed number. The number means nothing at all and as we already have established, it can be faked anyway.
But a reader response can’t be faked, unless of course it is one of those classic “thank you for a great post”. In that case we already know what these guys are up to.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Hunter: You are welcome. I guess your post really got me going. Nothing against you as you well know.
I would have to disagree with your comment about having more readers with more RSS subscribers. In fact, you could have a huge subscriber list, but hardly anybody reads your blog. Just look at Griz’s comment below to see what I mean in regards to CM and GC.
Here is the thing: if you want to make money with your blog you don’t want social traffic, instead you want search engine traffic and that’s it.
If on the other hand you are happy with a huge influx of traffic from social networks, like Stumble Upon, Twitter and Facebook, get active there and the traffic will roll. However, even that traffic is worthless in terms of commenting. Unless you are in a niche (say politics) where everybody has an opinion and wants to share it too.
To give you an example, I am subscribed to about 1oo blogs. Most of the time I don’t have time to read my feeds and when I do, I read them there and then.
I ONLY visit the blogs of my friends and my regular readers on purpose because I believe that the least I can do is to show up every now and then and show them that I care about them.
All the other blogs never see the light of day from me which means no traffic – right! So, now multiply this by 500 feed readers and on average probably 2 out of 3 elect to stay where they are in order to save time. I don’t have statistics on this BTW and quite honestly I don’t care because to me it means nothing.
All I’m saying is if I behave like this, then most likely others do to, hence the feed becomes a joke.
As for your lack of comments. I guess I don’t know the answer to this. It could be the niche, the fact that most subscribers don’t bother to visit the blog unless there is a great headline, or other aspects I can’t think of now.
I do know that Cath has a lively community of friends and since she travels in the same circles I do, we tend to cross over with many of us. She is also the ever present comment lady and I have a feeling she does spend quite a bit of time visiting other blogs. I used to do this for about 8 months and it is VERY time consuming. I spent about 3 hours every single day to visit other blogs, comment and what not.
Now I have to say – what for??? Back then I too believed that social traffic was the bees knees.
Wow, I guess I could go on and on. LOL. I hope what I said makes some sense for you. if not, I’m happy to clarify.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Vered: I understand why you feel the way you do. I did believe the same thing because I listened to the wrong “gurus”. People like Griz have opened my eyes a long time ago and since then I have made many wonderful friends who really know how to make money online and I can tell you right now, it is not from social traffic or RSS feeds.
In the end, it also depends on our primary objections of our blogs. I don’t know what yours is Vered.
For me, this blog has never been about making money. It is about sharing my journey and my knowledge and hopefully I can help some people along the way.
So I’m really not too worried about traffic either, even though I’d love to rank on page one of Google for the keyword “freelance writing”. But that ain’t going to happen unless all of you link to me with that anchor text and if you do it all at once I might even get banned from G. LOL.
Depending on what you try to do with your blog e.g. monetize it, or not, will really stipulate what actions you have to take and who you should listen to or not. Hope this makes sense.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Griz: Hey, you can suck up to me any day my friend. As a matter of fact I just sent you an email about 1 hour ago. We must have connected somewhere as I read your last post and then spent another hour reading the various links you provided. LOL.
I like what you said about friends and acquaintances because it is what got me to re-brand my blog from being a general meta blogging blog to more of a freelance writing (hint hint) oriented blog.
As for being an Adsense pimp, I tell you what. I’m following in your footsteps, so watch out.
You can hit me up on skype any day. Looking forward to connect again.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Cath: wow, fancy turning my blog into an Adsense advice center. Woohoo Griz, keep it coming buddy.
@ Griz: Also, trying to blend in the ads too much I believe might get you banned from Google anyway. As far as I know, the ad blocks have to look like ads and can’t be blended into the site as if they are site links.
Correct me if I’m wrong Griz.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Lin: Wow, congratulations on your upcoming grandma status!
Guess what, I’m grandma too as off the 30 September. Currently there is this cute little bird the size of my thumb in a little box in the bedroom and the proud parents keep watch all day and night. 
I agree with you though on Griz, blog. It is a must read for ANYBODY wanting to make money online and since this probably involves 95% of us I might just lose all my traffic. Hehehehe….but I said it before and say it again. Griz is one of the first guys who opened my eyes in terms of making money online.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Ross: Well said and welcome to my blog. Gee, this is turning out to be quite a party.
I hope some people will finally start to understand the difference between search traffic and social traffic after reading through all the comments.
If we can just save one new noob from walking down the wrong path, then it is all worth it.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Griz: Tssk,tssk….comment hugger you!
So this is what you get up to when you are sick of fishing and golf and pimping Adsense? Hahahaha….
Forgive you? What for? For being a great sport and pimp? Hmmmm….let me think about that one for a moment. I promise to get back to you.
……………………
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………………
…………..
………….
….
big hugs
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Kelly: Ata my friend. That is what I intended to do, to get you all thinking.
As you can see, I already partially answered your question. I too don’t have all the answers but I do know that RSS doesn’t indicate your actual traffic at all. It just looks cool that’s all. It might impress the noob Internet marketer too because they think wow, this chick got a huge readership, she must be doing something right. So they subscribe and read maybe one post or too and then never return.
Being bookmarked and having a lively community indicates much more that there is active traffic from people who care about what you have to say.
But by now, you probably realize that this traffic is no good if you were wanting to monetize your blog at all. I don’t think you intend to, but I don’t actually know.
Here is what I think about subscriber popularity or lack of it. Unless you get linked to and promoted from a big blog with a big RSS feed, your numbers won’t climb magically like you see some of them do.
As a typical example let’s take Caroline Middlebrook. She rose to fame basically overnight because she got endorsed for her Twitter report both from Starak and Rowse. Once they endorsed her book it just created a massive avalanche of traffic and new subscribers. So here is this chick who tries to make money and at the same time teaches others how to.
The irony is that today, when you visit her blog, there is hardly a community and according to her latest income statement she earned less than $1,000 last month. While this is awesome for a newcomer, it is a joke when you look at how long she has had those RSS numbers. So, give the fact that she promotes an awful lot of affiliated stuff on her site, she should be making a lot more. Income usually grows over time, yet hers has diminished.
This tells me that she has not idea how to make money and the only reason she did up until now is because she was riding the wave of popularity. Now as it looks, this wave is about to die and then what?
Yet, new people who happen to come upon her site see the huge RSS number and are impressed because that is what they hear is good. So they too subscribe and start listen to a person on how to make money when in fact she doesn’t know herself.
See where I’m going with this?
So if you ask me whether you should be concerned as to the lack of your RSS feed number I say no.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Rita: Here is a woman after my own beliefs. It is all about touching others, isn’t it? As bloggers we have such a big voice really. Being able to reach out to others and touch them with what we have to offer means so much to me too.
And like you said, I also believe and always have believed that it is important to reply to every person who bothers to offer their opinion. Sometimes one does slip through the net, but if he/she does it is never intentional on my behalf.
Thank you for stopping by and voicing your opinion. This has turned out a very great conversation.
Grizzly | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
You are not wrong Monika.
(Got your email and will be replying shortly)
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Davina: Wow! Your comment analogy in regards to going to a party ROCKS! In fact, it is spot on. I’m happy for you that you don;’t care about those numbers. You are a lot smarter than I was because I used to care.
You got the right idea about the REAL reason why we blog and being able to enjoy it in the way you do is awesome indeed. Thanks for sharing your views on this as well.
Brett Legree | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@Monika,
Wow – you’re welcome, and thank you too. You have always stood out as a shining example of a writer with a very real and human voice – so I think you already knew a lot about community. When I first stopped in here, it was like getting together with a good friend for a pint or a cup – and it still is
-Brett
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Evelyn: I think you have the balance down pat anyway. From what I see, you already have a lively and very supportive community and therefore you RSS feed number doesn’t matter at all.
Like I already mentioned in another reply, most feed readers probably never bother to visit the actual site anyway.
I do understand where you are coming from though. In the niche you are in, you want to reach a lot of people. I guess what you are doing now helps with that for sure.
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Brett: That reminds me, flat white anyone?
Monika | Oct 3, 2008 | Reply
@ Griz: Awesome, looking forward to it and thanks for the clarification. I guess I learned something from my Jedi masters.
Hunter Nuttall | Oct 4, 2008 | Reply
Monika, wow, this is turning into quite a conversation!
I didn’t understand Griz’s comment about CM and GC. If someone subscribed just to get a free ebook, wouldn’t they unsubscribe afterwards if they weren’t going to read the posts? Why would they want to continue receiving emails or RSS updates that they weren’t going to read?
I agree that not every subscriber reads every post. I’m subscribed to too many blogs and so I skim a lot of them. Sometimes I’ll even mark posts as read without reading them, but that’s rare. This isn’t a good situation, and I really need to cut down on the blogs I’m trying to follow so I have time to read all of the ones I’m subscribed to.
I agree that an RSS subscriber is not necessarily a regular reader, but it’s the closest metric we have for measuring them. At any rate, changes are what matter – at 500 subscribers I have a certain number of regular readers, and at 1000 subscribers I’ll have about double that number. More subcribers = more readers, even if not all subscribers are readers.
Now, as for search traffic, I agree that that’s a money maker. Maybe it’s not strictly necessary (look at Steve Pavlina with 1% of his traffic from Google and making $40,000+ per month), but it would be wonderful to have lots of people coming in every day, without any effort on my part, eager to click an ad or buy something. Definitely.
I’ve been reading some blogs you know and love that talk about how they don’t spend their time writing content, they spend their time building links. However, what I haven’t been able to figure out is how they build links.
Here’s how I’m building links now. I get subscribers, and if I write something they like, they link to it. Of course, that’s a very slow process, and I’d love to speed it up, but how?
I have a product of my own to promote now, and I’d like to get traffic to it. Because of my subscribers I have a customer/affiliate base, but I’d really like to have search traffic as well. So do I write Squidoo lenses, Ezine articles, or what? That’s what I’m not seeing an explanation of when people say to “build links.”
Monika | Oct 4, 2008 | Reply
@ Hunter: Phew, where do I start. First off, I truly recommend you go back to Griz’s blog and read all of his info. I know it is a lot, but if you truly want to learn about Internet marketing, then he is the man.
A comment is not long enough to teach you the importance of link building to be honest and from where I stand I think you are starting to grasp that it is link building that matters to make money online, nothing else.
There are virtually so many ways for you to do this and Lenses, Hubs, article submissions are all part of this. Another popular option is to drop comments on dofollow blogs with your anchor text as the link.
Doing this though isn’t as straight forward if you keep using the same anchor because you will get penalized from Google with the Google bomb. At any rate you will want 25% of your chosen keyword and for the rest you need to use related LONG TAILS.
But writing good content as you are striving for to get people hopefully link back to your site isn’t going to fast track your efforts because you cannot control what anchor text people use to link to you and this is key!
Barbara Swafford | Oct 4, 2008 | Reply
Hi Monika – You must be reading my mind. I’ve been wanting to publish another post about this subject (and stats, in general), and I find your post. For the longest time I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around WHY everyone is so obsessed with the number of subscribers they have. For the life of me, I can’t figure it out. Whether I have zero or 50,000, it doesn’t matter as long as what I write helps just one person.
Thank you for being so open on this subject. I’m making a mental note of this post so when I do another post about RSS subscribers, I’ll be linking to you.
Monika | Oct 4, 2008 | Reply
@ Barbara: I look forward to see your post because I believe you have a lot to offer in this regard. I think it is high time we stop separating the wheat from the gold because so many bloggers just don’t know.
We can’t really blame them either because they are being lead the wrong track. If it wasn’t for me finding the right people to teach me what really goes on I wouldn’t know either.
Your generous offer of a back link is certainly appreciated, thank you very much.
Grizzly | Oct 4, 2008 | Reply
Hunter,
I checked your site and rather than saying anything I’ll let you confirm a few things for yourself. If you have a backlink checker do the following; check the anchor text for your site and Caroline Middlebrook’s. You will find that both of you have your names used in 99% of all the anchors. This means you will only rank in Google for your names. If you check the backlinks of either of my make money online blogs http://makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com/ or http://makemoneyonlinegrizzly.com/ you will see that the vast majority of my links are for make money online terms. I get thousands of targeted visitors each day from Google as I rank on page 1 for dozens of high traffic keywords. (Search Google for “how to make money” or “how to make money online”)
I mention this because I also explain to my readers how this is accomplished. No offense but you just haven’t been reading the right blogs. The A-list don’t teach anything – they foster a belief that all you need is 40k readers and you can make money. Well yes you can with that kind of readership because you can sell advertising. The problem is that you will starve to death long before you reach those kinds of numbers. CM has 5 times your readership and makes no money. I have far less readers than CM and I make a lot more money than her simply because I have the right kind of traffic. The fact is social traffic doesn’t spend money – they are bloggers, just like you, and they come, read and then leave. Whether you have 600 readers or 3000 readers you still will not make money.
You said you haven’t seen anyone explain how to build links. I do. But it isn’t just building links – it’s also on page SEO and your site doesn’t have that either. What is your blogs keyword? No one will search for your name. What is your blog about? What type of search traffic is your blog relevant too? First you need to answer these questions and then target those keywords in your blog title, header and posts.
You won’t make money with your adsense until you start getting targeted search traffic that is relevant to the ads on your site. At present your ads aren’t targeted to a single term as the Google bot doesn’t know what your site is about. The only term it has deduced your content to be about is “hunter” hence the variety of hunter ads. This is not good and you have been smart priced – meaning you likely only get single digit CPC.
If you really want to learn how to drive real traffic then forget about the A list and concentrate on SEO.
I don’t mean to sound critical so forgive me if I come across that way. Making money from social traffic is a huge waste of time and the chance of succeeding is slim to none. (Just how many people are going to get 40k readers? Honestly?) Making money from search traffic is guaranteed and can be achieved by anyone.
Good luck Hunter.
Hunter Nuttall | Oct 5, 2008 | Reply
Monika, I agree about Griz. I’ve read some of his posts and he really seems to know what he’s talking about.
“you cannot control what anchor text people use to link to you”
Ain’t that the truth! In fact I’ve heard that people have been penalized for suggesting possible anchor text for others to use when linking to them. If you can’t do that, it’s even harder to control.
steph | Oct 9, 2008 | Reply
Here, here, Brett and Monika!
Also, I still, after a year, have no clue how many people subscribe to my blog or even read it. Honestly. I don’t know how to find out.
I liked this bit: “Here is the thing. You need to look and listen and make up your own mind about people.” Spoken wisely.
Ari Herzog | Oct 13, 2008 | Reply
As others have said, content is more important than number of subscribers. I subscribe to numerous mailing lists and most of them go straight to the trash as the content is meaningless.
A bigger question is why you had 50 comments over two days and none in the past week.
Monika | Oct 15, 2008 | Reply
@ Ari: Thank you for stopping by. If you read my new post you will know the answer to your question.
Dave Fowler | Oct 17, 2008 | Reply
Hi Monika,
I’ve had you on my feed for a while now. The truth is that I’ve now got so many feeds from bloggers who interest me that I simply don’t have the time to follow up on all of them, all of the time.
The system works though because I read Davina’s post with her link to you. So in reading a blogger I like, who found your post important enough to link to, it was inevitable that I would click through – so in short, I followed a personal recommendation from someone I like and trust.
I’ve spent nearly an hour reading through the post and the comments (reading, not skimming) and I’ve learnt so much.
This has to be some proof that building a community and interacting with them has great value.
Plus now I’ve added Grizzly to my feed reader.
Thank you!
Ricardo Bueno | Oct 25, 2008 | Reply
Hi Monika,
I check my subscriber count every now and then (mostly to see who has subscribed via email since I’ve seen those numbers increase and it’s sometimes interesting to see when I recognize someone). But I don’t check my subscriber numbers religiously or anything like that. Sure increase numbers are great but I can’t spend my time and energy focusing on that ya know? If I do, then it means I’m spending less time with my existing readers and they’re the ones that really push me to keep moving forward! Getting to know them more, is more important to me.
Dafydd | Mar 13, 2009 | Reply
Do you guys have a recommendation section, i’d like to suggest some stuff
Monika | Mar 13, 2009 | Reply
@ David: If your suggestions tie in with my topic of freelance writing and Internet marketing by all means let me know and I will create a resource page. Use my contact form. Cheers