Yesterday, this blog showed a RSS count of 10,685 because Feedburner forgot to show the number of RSS by email subscribers. Today, that oversight has been corrected and this blog broke 15,000 RSS readers. It took the blog 20 months to go from zero to 6,000 RSS readers and just six months to go from 6,000 to 15,000.
As I’ve stated in my BlogOnExpo video, your RSS subscription base is your blog foundation. RSS is the main thing I work on because it’s the only thing that I can control. As hard as I tried, I can’t control Google (if anything, Google controls you) so I don’t worry about it. However, RSS is something within my control. I know that if my RSS base is big enough, then nothing can take me down. I have wrote several articles on how to increase RSS subscription. For those who missed them, here they are again:
- How To Increase RSS Subscriptions
- How I Gain 4,691 RSS Reader In 1 Month
- How To Get RSS Readers To Visit Your Blog
- Evil Way To Increase RSS Subscriptions (This is more of a joke post)
You want people to add your feed to their RSS reader because it serves the same purpose as a bookmark. Remember how hard web publishers used to encourage readers to bookmark their sites? RSS is the new bookmark - having 15K RSS readers is the same as having 15K bookmarks.
RSS Number Double, RSS Ad Price Stay The Same
I opened RSS text ads back in August when the FeedBurner reader showed 7,727 RSS. Back then the price was $200 per month. Today, the RSS numbers have more than double but the price is still $200 per month. If you haven’t taken advantage of this advertising opportunity, then now would be the time to do so.
RSS text ads can have a full 80 character title and 150 letter description. It’s a great value and a fantastic way to reach over 15,000 readers everyday. If you’re interested in buying a RSS text ad, send the text and URL to johnchow@johnchow.com and pay with the PayPal link below.
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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Congratulations on the huge increase in readers!
Congrats, I think the competition helped a lot.
John, ProBlogger has you beat. They jumped up by almost 60k in one day! http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/01/18/the-day-feedburner-stats-went-crazy/
Ok, so it’s a glitch but still…
Yeah, but how long did it take to get the first 100 RSS subscribers?
A long time! Back then I didn’t even display my RSS link.
If you don’t blow your trumpet, who is going to blow it for you
The flip side of that would be if you have to blow your own trumpet maybe it’s not worth blowing…
It becomes easier with each barrier you cross. It will be far easier to go from 1k readers to 2k, for example, than it was to reach a RSS readership of 1k people in the first place.
Alan Johnson
I hope so! I’m closing in on 1k myself and would love to be able to hit 2k quicker than I hit 1.
First of all, congratulations
Secondly, it will certainly be the case since, think about it: when your blog is new and you don’t have an impressive RSS readership, your content should definitely be something special in order to convince people that they should subscribe.
But when you display your RSS link and visitors see that 1k people have already subscribed to your blog via RSS, the “hey, 1k people can’t be wrong, this one must be worth it” thought starts kicking in.
Best wishes,
Alan Johnson
Congratulations, John. It must definitely feel good to hit such a milestone.. I’m still working on getting to 100, lol.
Yea same here. then again I have zero rss subscribers
I just subscribed, so now you have at least one.
You should make it more obvious for people to subscribe to your feed. Haven’t you been reading johnchow.com?
All blogs, even this one, start with 0 RSS subscribers. If your blog is worth it, people will gladly subscribe and in the end, it’s all up to you: you can either leave things at that or start working towards achieving your desired results.
Alan Johnson
I only keep going from 0-10 every so often and I’m currently sitting at 2, so hopefully it will just take time, effort, good content and things should happen. I’ve subscribed to your blog, so there is another subscriber for you
Carl - Thatblogsite.com
congrats man! 15k rss viewers is insane!
I know that it is a good achievement, but John’s Alexa ranking has gone down and he is now over 3500.
Problogger and Shoemoney are also over 3,000 as well. Ya, we’re all super worry about Alexa.
The fact that you comment about it show you don’t know what it really takes to make money online.
That is right John, I don’t make money online for a living and probably don’t have the skill. But don’t you get a little worried when your Alexa is still decreasing? Or is it that more and more people are choosing to read your site via rss feed or that people want to have a look at alternative sites.
John, it seems that you bash which ever service that doesn’t give you a good score.
It means that Alexa goes in trends and is in no way reflective of real traffic. Plot of six month Alexa graph between me, Shoe and Problogger. You’ll see we both go up and down on Alexa at the same time. Alexa only measures traffic from people who run the Alexa toolbar. Don’t run the toolbar? You don’t count. This post should explain it: http://www.johnchow.com/why-alexa-is-worthless/
Here’s another one for you. This blog has a better Alexa ranking than The TechZone. Guess which site gets more traffic? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not JohnChow.com.
You’re right John, Alexa sucks, how many people out there have that stupid Alexa_Toolbar. they are presumptuous.
Thanks john for telling us.
Alexa rank is one of those things about which all webmasters know that they are worthless, yet a lot of advertisers who should know better pay attention to them. I’d say the same thing applies to PR nowadays.
Alan Johnson
Than why do you still use the Alexa ranking stat in your advertise page. I find it funny that you have updated your feed stat to 15000+ but not your Alexa ranking to 3000+
well done!
John,
Not trying to be a hater but I’m not sure why people are subscribing to your RSS now. Is it just a case of success attracts people? For the past couple weeks and I might venture to say months you haven’t really offered any educational or useful blog posts. It’s all been I’m going to this event, I achieved this, I ate this or we ate here and so and so is doing this.
I like you and your blog but haven’t felt there has been a lot of value lately. Hopefully there are some good posts lined up.
Value is different for everybody. One man’s junk is another man’s treasure. You may not be seeing the value in the past few posts because you haven’t been taught the value of dream building. There are lessons in those post if you can see them.
And tax write-offs in the meals
Do you get a tax write-off for photographed lunches, even if your blog doesn’t make money?
It’s a part of his brand and business model, since even the title states: “I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online”
Alan Johnson
15k RSS subscribers is NOT the same as 15k bookmarks. I have tons of bookmarks, most of which I’ll probably never look at again (thanks for keeping them organized del.icio.us), but only the feeds that are truly exceptional will last in my RSS reader. An RSS reader is far superior to a bookmark.
I was going to write a comment saying pretty much the same thing, but you beat me to it. The key difference between an RSS reader and a bookmark is that the former is (typically) visited on a near-daily basis whereas the latter gets lost in the pile and possibly never revisited again.
And, you beat me too, by about 2:17.
You’re right about bookmarks. I never even made much use of bookmarks when they were the “in” thing. You bookmark a site because you want to go back, but then you get so many bookmarks, you rarely ever go back to any of those sites again.
And, I always thought of bookmarks as being for sites you don’t visit every day.
Nowadays, if I find something interesting, I can blog about it and link to the site. Then, if I want to find that link again, I just do a search on my blog! I not only have a title to look for but the related content too. A post is more likely to contain multiple terms for the link, so you have many more words to search for than you would with a bookmark.
I haven’t added a new bookmark to my web browser in months, if not years.
hohoho..very tactically from admin!!
Congratulations on your latest blog milestone.
Congratulations John, I’m working to be there one day.
Wow you beat me of 15k rss readers.. Congratulations John!
[...] John Chow announced that his blog had reached a new milestone: 15,000+ RSS subscribers. He also wrote that: “RSS is the new bookmark - having 15K RSS readers is the same as having [...]
With the right time, resources and commitment I dare say anyone can get to where John is. Sure it takes a lot of skill and determination but probloggers do tell you how they’re doing a lot of things. Congrats to John for reaching 15k subscribers - very impressive.
It’s all about offering value and shameless self promotion - it’s a simple formula. However the time, skill and (dare I say it) luck that is required means most people fail to get there.
The biggest mistake people make is that they give up once they start losing momentum. Sure, it’s great when your project is hot off the stove and you feel excited but you will eventually lose momentum and that’s when a lot of people start giving up on a project with some more than decent potential.
Alan Johnson
On the flip side, you can stick to it day after day and still not get anywhere. Building the audience is the toughest part. There are certain milestones to reach, and they only seem easy to reach once you have surpassed them.
Back when I started blogging, I thought it would take a long time to build up my Technorati rank. I was at around 4 or so when I changed domain names, so I had to start all over and worried how long before I’d have 4 again. Then, 10 seemed an impossibility. 100 an improbability. But, I eventually surpassed both of those. Then 150 was much more difficult to reach, but I broke that too. Now, it’s a struggle to even reach 200!
If I were to start a new blog, reaching that 10 ranking would be almost a breeze the second time around!
Now, if only I could break the pennies per month monetization barrier…
Alan, that’s a very good observation and I think until my latest blog that’s been my mistake. I haven’t had the discipline to stick to it and push through that barrier. However, I will say that making money off a project is a BIG help to me in making sure I stick with it.
Discipline is always a must since, let’s face it, none of the A-list bloggers have had it easy when starting out. You have to let people know you’re out there on the one hand and let them know that you’re in it for the long haul on the other.
Sure, sometimes you simply don’t feel like writing and on other occasions, you seem to be able to come up with great content like there’s no tomorrow. Maximizing results on days when inspiration is on your side is the name of the game and the biggest mistake a lot of bloggers make is the fact that they don’t write or at least plan their posts in advance. As a result, they can find themselves staring at their screen and wondering what on earth they should write about on a day when they simply can’t come up with anything
Alan Johnson
OOOPS - John you broke 15,000 last week, your count hit 15007 I believe. I even made an off topic “CONGRATS!!” comment. You were at the expo at the time. Was everyone else sleeping it off too?
It doesn’t count until he’s actually blogged about it.
Heh, thats very true DCR
Congratulations John, thats for the links to those RSS help posts to. I keep going between 0 and 10 subscribers, its hard to get going.
Anyway next up 20k Subscribers, good luck!
Good job, that’s a BIG number. What’s the next milestone? 30000?
Well, I guess my blog stayed behind, but it’s running to catch you! Will i be able to overrun you?
Congratulation John for yet another milestone. I am proud to be one of the subscriber (via email) of Johnchow.com ………………
Congrats John! To help you celebrate, how about giving away some free RAM you picked up at CES to one or two lucky readers of this post?
We know how generous you are.
Wow, 15000 subscribers. Congrats on a job well done..
I don’t recall feedburner having any problems yesterday John. Similar to your blog, I also get ma