Full Feed RSS Enable! Subscribe Now!
written by John Chow
This is my second blatant attempt to get more people to subscribe to my RRS feed. The RSS feed is now a full feed. That means you can read my blog directly from RSS without having to come here. The RSS feed has no advertising.
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I’m doing an experiment to see if having a full feed RSS will increases or decreases the blog traffic. Logic would seem to point to traffic going down. If everyone can read my entire blog from a RSS feed, why would they need to visit the blog? While that makes sense, there are a few factors to take into consideration.
The first is a RSS feed is not done in real time. A new blog post won’t show up in the RSS feed until, well, I’m not sure when the RSS feed updates. Therefore, readers who want to read the latest post will still click through to the blog to see if the post on the RSS feed is the current top post.
The second factor is reading comments. Unless you also subscribes to the comments RSS feed (also a full feed), you will still need to visit the blog to read comments, or to make a comment. One of the nice things my RSS feed does is show the number of comments left by readers and since this blog is pretty active, with lots of comments on each entry, I think many RSS readers will click through to read them.
The last factor is one of personal preference. I read many blogs that offers full feed RSS - Tech Crunch, Pro Blogger, and Steve Pavlina just to name three. Even though those blogs offer a full feed, I still click through to read their entry on their blog because I like to read from a blog instead of a RSS feed. I use my RSS reader to as a quick check to see which blogs have done updates. I’m sure I’m not the only person who does this.
You can monitor the number of RSS readers with the Feedburner button at the top of the blog. The number goes up and down everyday. Right now, it shows 860 subscribers. It will be interesting to see if offering a full RSS feed will increase the RSS subscription. It will even be more interesting to see the impact on traffic. Will it go up, down, or stay the same? What do you think?
Oh, and in case you miss the link to sign up for the full feed RSS, just click this very big ReviewME RRS button and subscribe!
Find out what I am doing right now by following me on Twitter! If you like this post then please consider subscribing to my full feed RSS. You can also subscribe by Email and have new posts sent directly to your inbox.
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Already subscribed =)
http://allenation.com
I’m already subscribed too. I tend to visit the blog rather than jsut read from the feed; since if you put hard work into the blog, I should at least take the courtesy to see it in its full form ads and all. You know, there are ways to put ads in the rss feed.
Yes there are ways to put ads in the RSS feed, but I want to keep it ad free for now.
I’m already subscribed. It will be interesting to see the results considering how many links to the RSS you have in this post.
Wel, I did say this was a blatant attempt.
I come to the blog even if you have full feed. Full feed helps me determine if i really want to read it completely. Half feeds are pretty annoying and i found them cheap ;-).
If the article is good, i come to your blog and read it there. It’s far better formatted on blog and yes i get to read comments with the blog itself.
So even if the traffic reduces, please go on with full feed and i will be a happy reader.
When you put the first HUGE link, I looked at your RSS feeds jump to abut 1100. Now they have fallen back to normal…
I too am curious as to the results of your questions. I’m sure you will share with us your findings!
I suspect your traffic will go down. I too maintain a short version on the feed and would love to see your report
Where’s the RSS button?
Keep us posted. I was just looking at trying this a few days ago, but threw it on the backburner.
hmm interesting… looking forward to see the results on this little experiment chow
I have always only been reading your RSS feed, nothing beats RSS feeds ever.
Doesn’t Google “punish” with low PR when linking multiple times to the same link?
I guess not but that’s interesting. It’s like enforcing visitors to actually click the link.
http://yarinbenado.com
Your getting desperate now John! LOL
Most of the feeds I subscribe to are full feeds and I generally take a quick scan through the entry and if it looks interesting enough I’ll visit the site itself.
I have subscribed to your feed for some time now and from my perspective I don’t think it will cut down too much traffic. If people like what you are writing, they will want to come and “see” it and not just read it.
Oh, it looks like that adwords ad got your name spelled right
I also wonder for the result of this experiment.
I’m going to make an RSS button 1024 pixels across and add a banner that says, “Mine is bigger than John Chow’s!!!” or maybe not.
Meanwhile, there is a way to make the Feedburner links invisible but it’ll cost you. However, I think it might be worth it, as I reckon visitors to my sciencebase.com site would prefer to see the feed pipe up from the sciencebase domain rather than this Feedburner thang, of which many less tech savvy readers may be suspicious. Just a thought.
The other problem with an unmasked Feedburner link for your RSS is that it shows up in the SERPs.
db
smtkr - RSS stats goes up and down everyday. As long as I’m trending up, then it’s fine.
David Bradley - Someone already made a button bigger than mine.
*Sits patiently waiting for an update on this experiment*
Thanks for stealing my work (the World’s Biggest RSS Button, which I created for ReviewMe.com) without attribution.
Based on what I’ve been able to glean from your site thus far, you ought to know better.
Way to steal an rss BUTTon.
Chris P. & David Krun - I did gave credit on the button when I first posted about it here: http://www.johnchow.com/the-worlds-biggest-rss-button/
However, you are correct. I should have credited the button on this post as well. It was a mistake on my part. I have corrected it.
Hey, John…check this service out.
http://www.derrich.com/2006/11/27/serialized-rss-feeds-provided-by-feedcycle/
Sounds kinda cool; suited to some of your “series” posts.
Problem with RSS Feed in WordPress.
I have a subdomain that I installed wordpress for another blog site, but the subdomain site's rss feed points to my parent site.
Can anyone come up with any suggestions?
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