by Skellie
Photo by guano
Subscribers are widely regarded as the most valuable indicators of a blog or website’s success. When it comes to selling a blog, some pundits have valued 1 subscriber at around $35. That’s incredible. Whether they’re truly worth that much is a mystery, but it holds true that most of us look to our subscriber count as the primary yardstick of our progression.
The question I want to ask today is: should we be doing this? Much has been written by various bloggers — including myself — about trying to gather more subscribers. A lot less time has been dedicated to examining why we should be pursuing this goal. It’s assumed that subscribers are worth their weight in gold, but are they really?
I’m not setting out to prove or disprove the assumption. I want to test it, weigh up the pros and cons, and see what happens. As I write these words, I’m not sure what the outcome will be. I like subscribers. I hope they come out on top. But I can’t make any guarantees.
Form follows function
I’m concerned by untested assumptions. Are subscribers really important, or did we just decide they were important? Your subscriber count is a fun visualization — a badge you can wear, a number which can be volatile but, like blue-chip stocks, tends to increase over time. Part of me wonders if our veneration of the subscriber count started because of it’s game-like quality: blogging is the game and your subscriber count is the score. As humans, we like competing, we like to measure our success in numbers rather than an abstract sense of achievement.
I want to set aside my own fondness for the impetuous little subscriber count badge and work out if it really means as much as we think it does.
What is a subscriber… really?
Aside from the percentage of your subscriber count made up of bots and scrapers, each subscriber is an individual who’s elected to be notified every time you update your blog or website.
While it’s almost impossible to determine how your users interact with a subscription, we know one thing for sure: each subscriber means that at some point in the past an individual opted-in to voluntary interruptions from you. Something about your blog or website made them feel as if they didn’t want to leave it behind in the internet ether. They decided it was for keeps.
After that point, things get murkier. Email subscribers get posts emailed to them, but you don’t know whether they read them or delete them, or use a filter to send them straight to trash.
Those who follow you blog in a feed reader are also relatively mysterious. In Google Reader it takes a fraction of a second to skip a post and mark it ‘Read’ without looking at much more than the first few words of the headline. If you’re like me, most of the posts you’re delivered will be ignored in this fashion. Of 50 posts, I might only scan a handful. Most posts fall into the ‘Not relevant to me’ or the ‘I already know that’ category. Because there’s so little time involved in skipping past posts, I can stay subscribed to a blog even if I only read a fraction of its content– simply on the odd chance that it’ll eventually produce something I want to read.
Your feed readers could be:
- Ignoring all your posts and on the path to unsubscribing.
- Ignoring most of your posts and reading just a few.
- Reading most of your posts and ignoring a few.
- Reading all of your posts religiously.
It seems likely that most subscribers fall into either category 2 or 3.
Photo by kissthis
What does this mean?
Not all subscribers are engaged readers. In fact, I suspect that the ‘Returning Visitor’ count is composed of more engaged readers (proportionally). If you load up a website enough times and find it has little to offer, you’ll probably delete the bookmark. It’s a lot easier to sweep irrelevant feed items under the rug.
Your ‘Returning Visitor’ count will also include feed readers who’ve visited your blog to comment, extract the link to your post or vote for you on social media. I’m not yet sure whether subscribers are over-rated, but I feel confident in saying that the ‘Returning Visitor’ metric is under-rated.
Though each subscriber is not necessarily a ‘perfect’ reader (as they’re often characterized), I think the subscriber count is a better indicator of whether you’re on the right track with your content than your number of daily uniques (DU). Your DU count is held under the sway of too many variables you can influence but not control: social media surges, in-bound links and search engine traffic. Your subscriber count will depend on the quality of your content and your niche alone. Your DU in the short-term might say nothing about the long-term story behind your blog — and where it’s heading.
If you’re publishing for a niche audience who don’t often use feed readers, it might be more worthwhile to measure your subscriber count in comparison to the subscriber count of other blogs in your niche.
If subscribers are not necessarily engaged, daily uniques are even more flippant. It’s almost inevitable that most of the social media and search engine traffic you receive isn’t interested in your content. The web still has work to do when it comes to delivering the right content to the right people.
As for measuring your blog’s progress, I’d argue that your subscriber count is more valuable than any other metric. Your daily unique count tells you only how many people found their way to your blog — even if they navigated away instantly. Your subscriber count gives you an idea of whether your content is appealing to your target audience. That’s invaluable.
I do, however, think that a blog’s subscriber count is possibly over-valued by on-site advertisers and buyers. Of course, this is one thing that tends to work in our advantage. Only a small proportion of feed readers click back to your blog (unless you use partial feeds, which will mean you have less subscribers overall, anyway).
When it comes to on-site advertising, page views are the most important measure — as well as whether your product is targeted to the blog or website’s audience. Despite this, prospective advertisers do seem to be impressed by a decent subscriber count — probably because they assume that it’s accompanied by a lot of traffic. They also want the benefits of being associated with a respected blog or website. From a buyer’s perspective, I think subscribers are over-rated. From a seller’s perspective, they remain highly valuable.
When it comes to buying blogs as assets (with the assumption that the blog will eventually recoup the price you paid for it and make a profit on top of that) I believe subscribers are strongly over-valued. A blog’s subscriber count says very little about its potential profitability. If you’re ever looking to buy a blog as an investment, the key question to ask is: how much does it make?
Another thing to consider: people subscribe because of content rather than premise. If you buy a blog with 500 subscribers there’s no guarantee those subscribers will stay after the previous author hands over the reigns.
From a seller’s perspective, though, your subscriber count can drastically increase the value of your blog even if your monthly earnings are insignificant. Blog buyers seem to believe subscribers will translate easily into dollars. I don’t think this is true at all, but demand creates value, and there’s a very high demand to buy blogs with an established subscriber base — particularly in niches commonly regarded as ‘money makers’, i.e. blogs about blogging, SEO, make money online, gadgets and so on.
My advice to anyone thinking about selling their blog is to do everything you can to increase your subscriber count and monthly earnings. My advice to anyone looking to buy a blog is to look at the monthly earnings and page views, and get proof that both figures provided are accurate.
The answer?
A blog’s subscriber count is the best metric you can use to work out if your content is doing its job. If your count is plateauing, you may need to increase the quality of your content to get things moving again. If it’s falling, determine whether you’ve changed anything about your content (i.e. form, frequency, etc.) If the change loosely corresponds with the drop, I’d suggest that you revert to what you were doing before, or try something else.
If you’re hoping to sell advertising on your blog, your subscriber count will influence what you can charge. Buyers attach more value to this metric than they should. If you’re a buyer looking to advertise a blog, website or product, look at page views and relevancy over the number of subscribers.
If you want to sell your blog, chase subscribers like crazy. The other metric you want to bump up is your current monthly earnings. You don’t need to have these two things in place to get a good price, though. I’ve seen blogs with a few hundred subscribers sell for thousands of dollars without making more than small change. Conversely, I’ve seen poor quality blogs with a high monthly income sell for thousands, as well.
If you’re looking to buy a blog for love, a subscriber count is probably the key metric you should be looking at. If you’re buying for love and money, look at its subscriber count, page views and monthly income. If you’re buying for money, look at its monthly income and, to a lesser extent, page views.
Related reading:
Skelliewag features daily discussions on content creation, great ideas you can use, and design tips. Join the community by subscribing!
rss feed
52 Comments, Comment or Ping
Dan Cole
Subscribers are like a promise from your visitors to read your blog tomorrow.
If were counting subscriber, how about commenters, visitors, and page views? Maybe someone should make a wordpress plugin that tracks all of this data and graphs it, then adds points to mark when posts were made.
Feb 8th, 2008
Nick | PTO
Thanks for a wonderfully honest article.
I think your subscriber count can have another very positive effect too — it encourages you to keep posting.
The thought of having an audience of 500, 3,000, or 20,000 people who may potentially read and be influenced by your writing is a powerful one.
It’s also important from an income perspective outside of the usual advertising route. If you want to sell an eBook or product to your users, monitoring your subscriber count can give you a good indication of your likely earnings.
If you work on the (slightly optimistic) basis that two percent of your readers are likely to support you by buying a book or service, you can work out how many subscribers you need to obtain before pitching an item for sale to make it worth your while.
I was fascinated to read that subscribers are valued by some at $35 each. It would be great to also find out how much it costs the average blogger (in time and money) to obtain each subscriber!
Feb 8th, 2008
Martin
It’s certainly not the whole picture, and I would think the topic of the blog would have a major bearing on it depending on the average RSS savvy of the target readers, but as for relevancy goes, it’s got to be the most reliable one we have at our disposal.
If someone is buying direct advertising, then they need to know the distribution - regardless of whether it is a blog, newspaper, magazine, radio or tv. They don’t expect that everyone on the distribution list reads every article, every time, different media, and different niches will have varying %’s for an expected call to action.
I think because RSS gives power to the subscriber to easily unsubscribe at any time, is popular with many regular blog readers and represents a decision the user has made (at least initially) to follow your blog (something that you simply cannot get from unique page views) - makes it a sensible, low-variance way to compare the popularity of different blogs.
Certainly if you were going to buy the blog you would want to compare those values with actual monthly revenue and # of actions producing revenue (if possible - and any and all other data that might be available), but for a quick initial estimation, I think it is a pretty good metric to look at.
Feb 8th, 2008
skellie
@ Dan: That’s a wonderful way to put it. I will remember that :-).
@ Nick: Good point about the motivational aspect. For me at least, there are days when my daily traffic goes right down, but I can always count on my subscriber count being relatively constant. It’s a nice pick me up.
The $35 valuation came about because a few blogs with around 100 subscribers were being sold for $3,500 and similar prices. But I think that’s an over-valuation, and I also don’t think it’s linked to the subscriber count in that case. In a lot of those cases, it’s sort of like buying an expensive lot with just the foundations of a house laid. They’re really paying to occupy a semi-established space in a crowded niche that’s widely regarded as profitable (the example I’m familiar with was a blog about blogging.) The subscribers are just a bonus.
@ Martin: Good points, and I enjoyed your analysis. I hadn’t thought about a comparison with ‘distribution’ before. I guess it’s also comparable to ‘circulation’ metrics for magazines and newspapers.
Feb 8th, 2008
Mrs. Micah
To get an idea of who’s reading, I compare my subscriber numbers and my average unique repeat visitors per day. They’re not necessarily the same people…but it helps me know my site’s attracting power. Drops and stagnations make me evaluate my content if they keep up for a week or something. Fortunately that hasn’t happened much.
Feb 8th, 2008
The Word Wrangler
I think that reader comments are a better barometer of your blog’s success. I subscribe to many blogs, but don’t read every post. Sometimes I’ll go a week without reading a single post on certain blogs preferring to just scan the headlines.
Creating really engaging content is when your readers are likely to respond with a comment. Comments show more involvement than subscribers. So, I value the number of comments I get as opposed to the number of subscribers.
Feb 8th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
I had written about this very subject earlier this week: http://aplawrence.com/foo-web/why_increase_rss.html
Feb 8th, 2008
Mary Jaksch of GoodlifeZen
For me subscriber numbers are important for 3 reasons:
1. I want to collect a community of people who want to join me in a thoughtful conversation about life and spirituality.
The more subscribers I have, the bigger the pool of potential commenters is. (By the way, I have been religiously following Skellie’s suggestions on how to get lots of comments - and it really works!)
2. Subscriber numbers offer me instant feedback on whether I’m on track with my blog’s direction.
3. The subscriber count also tells me if a particular guestpost attracted new regular readers to my blog or not. I’ve just had my first guestpost published (following Skellie’s advice
,and am amazed at the stampede to my blog!)
Feb 8th, 2008
skellie
@ Mrs. Micah: That’s a good system, and I do something similar. If my unique visitors drop, it generally means my current post isn’t attracting much social media interest, or the social media interest has petered out. I try to come up with something that will encourage a lot of votes next up. When my daily uniques drops, it serves as a reality check about providing content that’s truly value packed.
@ The Word Wrangler: Comments are usually the thing I look to, but Church of the Customer has 100k+ subscribers and an average of maybe 5 comments on each post. I think sometimes the comment count doesn’t always express reader engagement because readers will generally comment much less if they don’t expect the blogger to interact with them or answer their questions. So it depends on the context, I think.
@ Anthony: That’s uncanny! A similar thing happened to me a few months ago when I sat down to write a post on writing leads for blog posts but decided to read feeds first, only to discover Leo Babauta had published a post on the exact same topic on the same day. Blogging is a strange beast.
@ Mary Jaksch: Congrats on the guest-post — I did see that, actually! :-).
Feb 8th, 2008
Michael Martine
There’s a certain amount of trust involved in subscribing, but only a little, since it’s so safe (no spam or selling of an address) and people can unsubscribe very easily. Subscribers are in control of the process, rather than the blogger.
But even a little bit of trust can be built upon to earn more.
Subscribers definitely represent a permission asset, no matter the level of trust or how much of their attention the blogger has. If you fail your subscribers by not delivering, your permission will be revoked and they will unsubscribe.
All of these are considerations if you’re monetizing your blog or selling it. Subscribers represent a degree of mindshare, to borrow an advertising/marketing term (although I like “attention” better).
Plus, as you pointed out in your “butterfly growth” post, Skellie, there are some things that only happen when you got big numbers. A high subscriber count is valuable for that, don’t you think? Especially if those subscribers are bloggers or if they participate in social media.
Feb 8th, 2008
steven aitchison
Hi Skellie
This is a good debate. personally i think it is psychological. when i see the A-list bloggers they are measured on subscriber count, how else could they be measured? If I see a blog with a low subscriber count I tend to question the validity of the information they are writing about, which is totally wrong as everyone starts off with a low subscriber count. However, as I said it is a psychological thing. The more subscribers I see on a blog I am trusting other subscribers to let me know a blog is good.
It is someone saying ‘I think your blog is good enough to take a few seconds and subcribe to your blog’
Feb 8th, 2008
Catherine Lawson
Hi Skellie - I didn’t invite people to subscribe at first. I just didn’t understand what a reader was, and I didn’t even get one myself until December!
I think some people, especially non-bloggers are probably more inclined to bookmark sites.
It would be great if you did some posts on how to gain more subscribers though. What is the easiest way to explain to people how to subscribe and the benefits etc, while only encouraging those who are actually interested in reading your posts?
I know Shoemoney and John Chow did the competition thing, but I think that really only attracts people who want to win a prize.
Feb 8th, 2008
David Bradley
I also just posted about how bloggers have become slaves to their Feedburner count in The Feedburner Myth. Readers might like to read it to learn a few home truths about their feedcount.
db
Feb 8th, 2008
Michael Martine
Regarding Steven’s point above: I’ve heard a lot of bloggers call this effect social proof, which a little less pejorative than bandwagon effect, which is really more what it is.
A visibly low feed count acts as a barrier to new subscriptions because it does the opposite: convinces people the blog isn’t worth their time because it’s not a proven winner, yet. And hey, everyone loves a winner, right?
Maki at Dosh Dosh proved that displaying a feed count isn’t necessary for success. Without the feed count visible, readers will make their judgments based on other factors, often assigning you the same amount of authority they would for a blog with a much higher feed count. If you’re otherwise doing well, people will assume your feed count is high. I had decided that I wasn’t going to display mine until it had climbed over 500. It worked. It will be interesting to see if, in a year from now, we will be recommending it be 1,000 as the bar is raised.
Feb 9th, 2008
Mario Sanchez
I wonder if the 1% rule mentioned by Seth in Meatball Sundae doesn’t apply here too: 1% of subscribers are likely to be engaged readers, maybe? If that is the case, if you want more engaged readers, increasing your subscriber count still matters. The number of subscribers doesn’t tell the whole story, but it is a good indicator of customer engagement.
Feb 9th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
What most of you are missing is that what you want are READERS.
RSS Subscribers MIGHT be readers and might not be. Anything you do to increase subscribers other than blatant “Subscribe to my RSS!” appeals will increase readership, but the metric itself is flawed.
What you really want to know is how many returning visitors you get PLUS RSS subscribers. If you have an email newsletter, you want that figure too.
RSS subscribers alone doesn’t give the full picture unless nobody reads you any other way.
For example: lets say some blog has twenty RSS subscribers. By the reasoning most of you use, you’d say he’s not doing well.
But if I told you that three thousand returning visitors come every week and that another two thousand read an email he sends out with highlights from the weeks activity, you’d have a different opinion.
Or take another case. This morning FeedBurner tells me I have 667 subscribers overall. Some would think that’s wonderful, but frankly that wouldn’t earn me much money. In fact, more than 10 times that many people visited me yesterday - and that’s where my income came from.
RSS subscibers don’t tell the whole story.
Feb 9th, 2008
David LaFerney
Organic search traffic is more likely to convert - even bounces from searchers are likely to be add clicks.
Even if they never or rarely return subscribers are more likely to spend time on the page, read, bookmark, and link to your content - thus bolstering your position in search results.
If your goal is to make money you shouldn’t ignore the significance of either group.
Feb 9th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
David said “If your goal is to make money you shouldn’t ignore the significance of either group.”
Exactomundo
Feb 9th, 2008
allen stern
Great post Skellie - thumbed!
I wrote about rss subs really being more like hits from the mid-90s…
http://www.centernetworks.com/are-rss-subscribers-equal-to-hits
Subscriber numbers really aren’t worth much.
Feb 9th, 2008
Dr.Mani
When I first (in 2001) suggested subscriber count alone may not be the
best metric to evaluate an email list, it was almost regarded
as blasphemy. People thought I was crazy to delete 14,000,
and then 7,000 ‘email addresses’ from my list.
For ezines, I use a metric I like to call ‘Most Profitable
Subscribers’ - which are the members on your list who deliver
the highest value to you, whatever your goals are.
If it is making money, then they are the highest dollar earners
for your business.
If it is supporters who will help spread your message, they
are the most vocal and enthusiastic helpers.
If it is clicking through to visit your website/blog, then they
are those ‘clickers’.
Is there some way to evolve a concept of ‘Most Profitable RSS
Subscribers’ in the same way? Surely that should be measurable
too.
All success
Dr.Mani
P.S. - I’m at 180 subscribers, but wouldn’t sell my blog if you
offered me $7,000 for it - because at 300 visitors a day, it is
worth far more to me (or anyone targeting this niche audience).
So, yes, I agree, RSS reader count may not always be the best
indicator of blog valuation.
Feb 9th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
@Dr mani
You are so right. I wouldn’t sell my site for less than $2 million dollars because it brings me consulting income that I’d need to replace and it would take that much to replace it. Actually, I’d need more: forgot I’d have to pay taxes! And maybe even more considdering how low CD’s are now..
But even if all I counted was Adsense earnings, I’d still need $200,000 and the $35 per RSS subscriber says it would be worth 1/10th of that!
As I keep saying, RSS is a lousy and imperfect metric.
Feb 9th, 2008
Michael Martine
These issues are why you want to use FeedBurner. When you check your feed stats, you can see more than just a big number (misleadingly gratifying as that is). You can see how many people clicked through and you can get an idea of how much reach you have. These are more accurate and useful than just the main count.
Feb 9th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
@michael
I certainly agree about Feedburner, and “reach” is an important stat (though RSS readers don’t necessarily click through). My “reach” runs about 6,700 per day according to FB but about 7,300 per day according to Google Analytics - who ya gonna believe? Google’s stats more closely match my own tracking, so I trust them more..
Let’s just face facts: RSS subscriber counts are a very vague and potentially misleading view of the “success” of your blog.
The true measure depends upon what’s important to you: if it’s money from ads, then how much are you making? If it’s to get you consulting business, how many new clients came from finding your site? If it’s reader involvement, number of unique comments is probably a good indicator, if it’s “influence” then inbound links are important.. and of course you could be concerned about ALL of those things - I certainly am!
Feb 9th, 2008
Michael Martine
Plus FeedBurner’s numbers fluctuate wildly. Some people seem to think that Google Analytics isn’t very accurate, either, but that’s a different discussion. I get what I need out of these tools.
Great points on knowing what’s important and what to measure regarding that, Anthony.
Feb 9th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
I don’t see my “reach” fluctuate much - it stays pretty steady, halving on weekends, right back up on Monday. Subscriber stats go up and down a little from day to day
Feb 9th, 2008
Hock
As I mentioned in my comment to your last post, the use of RSS subscribers as a yardstick to measure the performance of your blog is an inaccurate one and can often times be misleading. From the viewpoint of selling advertising or outright sale of your blog, some less informed person may be impressed with the large number of subscribers. However, the serious blogger should be digging deeper to measure the responsiveness of the community.
As an example, I use Google reader to track hundreds of blogs. Do I have time to go through all the blogs each day that I’ve subscribed to? Definitely not. Having me as a subscriber means that I’m potentially interested in your future posts based on your current and previous posts.
If you have an opt-in list, I’m going to read the email more than I will read every single post. I think more carefully about subscribing to an opt-in list than to an RSS feed.
So I think you need a better measure of what that subscriber count really does. For example, the comment to subscriber ratio will indicate how responsive your community is. If you have 43,503 subscribers but 5 regulars who participate, is that good enough?
I guess subscriber count has been emphasized so much because bloggers use it as a thing to wave at the advertisers to say, “Hey look - I’m really popular and I get lots of traffic so I deserve $xx to put your ad on my site”.
Feb 9th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
“If you have 43,503 subscribers but 5 regulars who participate, is that good enough?”
If you ask a lot of the so-called “experts” out there, yeah, that’s fantastic.. but of course it is not.
One of the things I’ve noticed here is how many comments agree that RSS isn’t what most say it is.. and I think part of it is how Skellie phrased it. If she had titled this “It’s important to boost your RSS!” the sheep would have applauded wildly and most of the rest of us would have sighed deeply and ignored it.
Skellie as usual did a great job of digging beyond the obvious and the “accepted wisdom”.
Contrast this with a similar thread that’s running at ProBlogger: I think I’m the only dissenting voice. Now yes, his readership has a lot of newbies, but frankly his posts often are not very deep - no offense to Darren; I think he does that on purpose because his readership is mostly naive. And of course the suggestions he’s giving will build readership just as well as they’ll build RSS, so there’s nothing “wrong” - it’s just unsophisticated. He doesn’t explore issues as Skellie did here.
Feb 9th, 2008
Millionaire Neumes
The biggest difference between RSS feed count and visitor count in the personal finance blog world is pfblog.com. As of today, he has 67,000 RSS yet if you click on the site meter link at the bottom of his site, he only gets an average of 1374 visitors. He has ads all over. How can he make money with less than 1500 daily visits?
Feb 9th, 2008
Evan
Yaro Starak prefers email subscribers to RSS subscribers - he believes they convert into dollars more easily - a whole ‘nother debate.
I think Problogger is so successful precisely because his stuff is so accessible.
How we assess the involvement of readers is a big problem I think (after all newspapers and magazines haven’t solved this and they’ve been around much longer than blogs). For different kinds of blogs it’s probably different. Fun/entertainment blogs vs information providing blogs vs news/gossip blogs probably have different kinds of reading.
It would be interesting to compare income from a blog with the different metrics and see if there was a relationship. (It would have to be within each niche I guess). Perhaps people could track increases in income on their blogs and see which metric best reflected this (that way they don’t have to disclose their income) and tell others the results.
Feb 9th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
@Evan
I’ve never understood the fear of disclosing income.
Here: I’m in a tech niche (Unix/Linux/Mac OS X), get around 7,000 uniques a day, and make $1,000 to $1,500 a month from advertising of all kinds. Like you, I’d love to know if I’m an over-achiever, and under-achiever, or on-target, but most folks seem to want to hold their cards very close to their chests..
Feb 9th, 2008
Evan
Hi Anthony,
Compared to me (and most bloggers I think) you are a huge over-achiever. I think I can do more but need time in my life to do techie stuff to my blog - like adding social networking links to my posts.
At the moment I’ve made about enough to buy a cup of coffee or two from six months work of several hours a day.
So many congratulations from me and hoping you continue onward and upward.
Feb 9th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
@Evan
(I hope Skellie doesn’t mind my posting this link - if so, please remove it, no offense taken):
I cheat:
http://aplawrence.com/Web/blogging_success.html
Feb 9th, 2008
Bugsy
$35 a subscriber. Hmm… so at 3216 subscricbers according to this moment in history, that’s a value of $112,560. I could live with that.
Great post. It’s amazing how young blogging is. An infant. What will subscribers mean 10 years from now? 20? 30? I can’t wait to find out.
Feb 9th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
This morning over at Problogger another of those “Increase your Subscribers” posts..
It’s a good post if you ignore the frenzy about subscribers - every suggestion (except one) is valid for building reader loyalty. That suggestion is to give something away but make people subscribe to get it.
That’s such nonsense. So you force me to subscribe to get something I want? What do you gain? I’ll probably unsubscribe immediately and if I don’t, it is not going to change anything: I either read you or I don’t, and this stupid trick isn’t going to change that.
But I will say one thing: tricks and gimmicks like that definitely do make me think less of the web site owner..
Feb 10th, 2008
Nick | PTO
@Anthony: Thanks for picking up on my article over at Problogger. You’re right about one of my suggestions for gaining subscribers being rather tricky; I included it quite reluctantly.
I have never responded to “subscribe to get a free donkey” -style incentives, but there are lots of people who do. Since it’s a perfectly valid approach that has been used in the magazine industry for years, it made sense to include it.
Free incentives are littered across everyday life and yes, just like subscriber incentives on blogs, they make the products they’re attached to look cheap too.
My view is that, just like the traditional publishing industry, the promise of quality content in the future should be the only incentive to subscribe. Fortunately, if your goal is to build subscribers, people like Skellie are here to prove that a content-driven incentive model is enough to do exactly that!
Feb 10th, 2008
Michael Martine
Man, I would so love a free donkey.
Feb 10th, 2008
Nick | PTO
This is your lucky day, Michael! From today, if you subscribe to the feed over at…
Some things are too good to be true, eh? Besides — donkeys are for life, not just for subscription incentives.
Feb 10th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
@nick
Well yes, but:
Magazine subscriptions are not equivalent to RSS subs. With a magazine, I pay, so the incentive is valid: I get something and you get something - my money. If I am reading your mag regularly, the subscription probably saves me money, too.
But RSS? If I *like* RSS and I like your site, I’m probably already subscribed. If not, all this trickery does is build a very fake and misleading stat for you if I fall for it.
I’m really sick of all this “RSS stats” nonsense. Anybody who’s buying websites based on RSS subscribers alone is an idiot.
Understand that I certainly encourage people to look into using RSS if they have never done so. I’m only objecting to the current frenzy of stat building among neophyte bloggers and those who feed them.
Feb 10th, 2008
Mary Jaksch of GoodlifeZen
@Anthony Lawrence
Your comment has cleared up a quandary I was in. I’m gearing up to publish my new Ebook on my site. I want it to be free, and freely available.
Recently I’ve been reading quite a few articles that strongly suggest giving out the Ebook only to subscribers - as a ‘free donkey’ (great expression!) to bribe them into subscribing. I don’t like the idea, and your comment has clarified why I don’t.
My main goal in blogging is to make a positive difference to peoples’ lives. So, I need to concentrate on making quality, useful content freely available. According to you, any gimmick or sales trick weakens a blog because it makes the reader mistrust the writer and what he or she writes.
In other posts Skellie also makes the point repeatedly that generosity is the key to blogging success.
Ok, then! When it’s ready, the Ebook will be freely available! (Tick…one question resolved on this moist and misty morning
)
Feb 10th, 2008
Gab "SEO ROI" Goldenberg
Skellie, I’m a subscriber. You write well, and mostly original (I saw Anthony’s post first, though his smaller following prevented it going hot on Sphinn) stuff.
To answer the q why so many of us care, it’s because Darren cares. He’s explained why, albeit indirectly. See his material on creating a Digg culture. I think that that largely turns on RSS.
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/12/27/how-to-build-a-digg-culture-on-your-blog/
@ Dan Cole - I believe Joost deValk already wrote a plugin to track comments, subs etc: http://www.joostdevalk.nl/wordpress/blog-metrics/
Engagement - Have a look at this awesome guest-post on measuring online engagement from Avinash Kaushik’s. You refer to engagement, but some more precision might help readers out.
Buying blogs as assets - Sure, PVs and revenue are key if it’s an asset that needs to make a ROI immediately. If you’re buying it to push a new blog/series/content elsewhere, subscribers are very valuable (assuming the other content is related). Just look at your 1100 subs in 5 days post.
Finally, a pet peeve of mine: keywords aren’t the same as a niche. If you want to talk about the ‘making money online’ niche, refer to it grammatically as such. Not as the ‘make money online’ niche.
Feb 10th, 2008
Nick | PTO
@Anthony: “With a magazine, I pay, so the incentive is valid: I get something and you get something - my money.”
It’s a good point, but I think there’s still a very real parallel with magazine and blog subs. Both parties still gain something (the blogger gains a subscriber for his ad metrics, whilst the subscriber gains the donkey). The only difference is that no money has changed hands.
I agree with you — it can be a silly game to play and it devalues whatever you’re receiving by subscribing. I have never read a free PDF book. I am much more likely to value, read and respect an author’s book if they’ve asked for payment for all their knowledge and hard work.
I also agree that there are a myriad of stat-building articles floating around right now. I think the reason is simple, though — it’s a hot topic right now, and writing about stats seems to really build your own!
Feb 10th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
“(I saw Anthony’s post first, though his smaller following prevented it going hot on Sphinn)”
No, that’s not the case. I’ve had stuff “catch fire” before; “smaller followings” don’t prevent that. I think Skellie simply did a better job with the topic than I did.
And “catching fire” isn’t always great either. When it’s happened to me it’s just been a big server clogging rush and then - poof! - all gone.. my blog isn’t of interest to the masses so I’m not likely to pick up new subscribers. Not that I’m crying poor mouth here: it’s of interest to quite a bit more than a handful and I’m quite happy with that
Feb 11th, 2008
Dr.Mani
@Anthony Lawrence:
You asked: “That’s such nonsense. So you force me to subscribe
to get something I want? What do you gain? I’ll probably unsubscribe
immediately and if I don’t, it is not going to change anything:
I either read you or I don’t, and this stupid trick isn’t going
to change that.”
- - -
I’ll stick to something I know about - asking for an opt-in
to giveaway a free report.
Yes, maybe it looks cheesy and will annoy or anger some folks.
But like pop-up window ads, people use it because it works.
And if you do it intelligently, you can build a fantastic and
responsive email list by giving away stuff after getting an
email address.
Sure, there’s an art and process about it, and you’ll have to
learn it and test different ways before you hit on a winning
combination - but don’t condemn the idea universally without
considering how effective/profitable it can be - for some
users.
And again, it may not work for everyone, or for all niches.
btw, @Gab “SEO ROI” Goldenberg - Avinash’s usability metrics
are probably the best I’ve come across in many years of
blogging. Did the exercise twice already, once in Dec.2007
and again in Jan.2008. Very instructive, I blogged about
my results too.
All success
Dr.Mani
Feb 11th, 2008
James
As you say, subscribers equal return visitors (even if most are sporadic and read just one in five articles). Return visitors lead to advocates. And advocates lead to referrals.
Feb 11th, 2008
Anthony Lawrence
@Dr Mani
Oh, I’ve no doubt that it works, just as you say popup ads work.
We can say that it’s all a matter of degree, and it is: the only “pure” website would be one that runs no ads and does no self promotion. Popups and cheesy opt-ins are just an extension.
Fine. I have my limits, and this is a line I won’t cross. I won’t run popups, and if I ever did an eBook, I wouldn’t use it to gain artificial “subscribers”.
Feb 11th, 2008
Mike Panic
First photo is of a Banksy piece =)
In any event, I don’t put nearly as much weight into how big my RSS feed is anymore, at least not as much as I did 6-12 months ago. I’ve come to realize that a LOT of people still don’t know what an RSS feed is and get so much spam that they are really not likely to give you their email address. I’d say 9 out of 10 of my friends in real life, on a good day, can tell you what an RSS feed is and that they do indeed use them. The reality is, if you run a non-techie blog, you probably won’t have as many subscribers. You run a blog about blogging, you are going to have HUGE numbers (ala John Chow or Problogger.net).
Going through stats, I’m more amazed at the number of people who bookmark my sites and how well they do month after month in Google searches. The RSS / email subscribers is just a bonus for me.
Feb 12th, 2008
Brian Clark
>>I’m concerned by untested assumptions.
100 years of direct marketing (and 14 years of commercial Internet marketing) proves the money is in the list, but most bloggers have no clue what to do with one.
Feb 19th, 2008
Reply to “Are Subscribers Over-rated?”