Why aren't you offering RSS feeds by email?
If you're the least little bit concerned about your RSS feed subscriber count, then why aren't you offering RSS feeds by email? Unlike feedreaders, RSS email subscriptions count toward your total feed count every day until the subscribers go through the act of unsubscribing, whether the email is read or not. With feedreaders, your subscribers actually have to open their feedreaders every day and let them pull in the feeds. Now, I could end this as a soliloquy right here, but I don't think I'll get my point across. Instead, I'll give you a brief history of my problems and what I'm doing about them.
Feedreader Problems
As many of you know, I gave up on maintaining my RSS feedreader. I announced it with "I'm Spider-Man No More", a really lousy post in my own opinion. Oh well, we can't all be brilliant all the time.
Most of the problems could be attributed to poor connectivity somewhere between my local ISP here in the Philippines and the sources of the feedreader services in the US. The feeds were never up-to-date. Of course, some of them turned out to be dead blogs.
I wasn't commenting on blogs because I wasn't visiting blogs. I was relying on a poor feedreader connection to keep me up-to-date. In essence, using a feedreader was bad juju for me. I stopped using my feedreader and started visiting blogs in person, so to speak. It worked for a while, until I stopped having the time to do it.
The Email Alternative
Over the course of past couple of months, I've been slowly subscribing to feeds by email. Since I have my email client and my browser open at all times when I'm online, I can respond to a feed received this way almost instantly. Of course, it's only once per day, but it's still better than never.
The problem I'm having now is that many, and I mean many, of the blogs I'm trying to subscribe to by email don't offer email as a subscription option. Perhaps the authors don't feel that RSS feeds in general are important or perhaps they don't feel email options in particular are important. Whatever the case may be, they're completely wrong about it. I can look at my analytics statistics for any given day and see that quite a few of my returning visitors are RSS subscribers. Isn't that compelling enough to pay attention to your RSS feeds?
In some cases, it's a genuine error. The theme can have an error in it. A simple typographical error can render the feed address unreachable. Sometimes, the option is available on the page, but the author failed to turn the option on with the feed service. If I spot an error, I'll notify the blog author immediately, as I did with Todd of "Success with Todd". Sometimes they respond and sometimes they don't. Todd did and I appreciate that.
Blogs Without Email Options
I'm going to list some of the blogs or websites in which I can't subscribe to email feeds. Since I'm not using a feedreader anymore, they're stuck as bookmarks until they see the error of their ways.
- Always a work in progress!
Another Opinion Among Many- Are We There Yet?
- AV Enthusiast
- Canucklehead
- Cariboo Ponderer
- Redneck Bar and Grill
- The Irreverent Buddhist
- The Pisstakers
- Urban Iconoclast
- Webgrrrl.net
- You Can't Coach That
That was only a fraction of them. Perhaps I'll list more in a day or so. For anyone I've listed: If you don't know how to add an email feed as an option, I'll be happy to give you a hand.
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I didn't realize I could offer that. Thanks, RT!
DragonLady’s last blog post… Quickies
I know.
I used to know how to set that up, but now I'm drawing a blank….
Tim’s last blog post… Pancakes: Version 2.0
You're using FeedBurner. Just go to your feed, then to the "Publicize" tab. Click on the "Email Subscriptions" link in the left sidebar and go from there. If you don't have it activated, it isn't offered as an option when someone clicks on your standard RSS subscription link.
I totally agree with you on the importance of email RSS subscriptions. Perhaps it's because my site's genre isn't very technical, but about 70-80% of our RSS subscribers are email. I'd hate to see our numbers without them.
Matt’s last blog post… Deathly Hallows to Begin Filming Later This Year
Good one RT! Offering different ways to subscribe to blogs is so important. I found out the hard way that having a great big subscribe button isn't enough, since many visitors (through search engine traffic) don't understand what that button is for. I ended up adding text around the button for people visiting my site to know "how to subscribe" to my blog.
Lin’s last blog post… Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind
Am I an idiot for not doing anything with RSS? I'll admit I know zilch about it. Your guidance requested, merciful and knowledgeable RT.
Stevo’s last blog post… taking stock
I will send you what you need by email.
Hi RT,
Thanks for the heads up on that … I really appreciate it. lol, one of the hazards of being a "theme tinkerer" is that it's very easy to mess up a couple of characters of codes. It's nice to have that second set of eyes looking at things.
As far as offering an email subscription being important … your point is very well taken. I consider myself somewhat technically savy, but even just a year ago, I didn't have a clue what a feed reader or RSS was.
Todd
Fixed, but not exactly through Feedburner. They suck at getting a feed. I have to limit my feed to 3 articles for Feedburner to accept my feed at all. It doesn't seem to like me much. But, email is offered through SendMeRSS.com
MrCorey’s last blog post… Check out Doodle 4 Google and vote for your fave
FeedBurner freaks out sometimes. I've found most of the problems I've had with FeedBurner turned out to be problems on my end. In the end, I still think it works better than most other solutions.
Oh yeah, I'm now subscribed to your email.
Perhaps I should write something, then.
MrCorey’s last blog post… Check out Doodle 4 Google and vote for your fave
[...] to know how to use Feedburner to offer RSS updates by email? RT is the man to see. Check out info on the Top of the Blogs, a new ranking service . Heard about [...]
Timely Post, I'm just getting into this scene and have only used e-mail so far, not RSS cause I don't understand it.
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It's taken me ages to set up my RSS feed. I kept putting it off but I finally had success with it this weekend.
I was just reading about adding a link to subscribe by email on feedburner last night and then I noticed your article in my feed reader. I think I told you awhile back that I've always come away from your site with great advice, and as usual, you never fail to deliver. I'm finally set up. Thanks RT!
And I just subscribed to your email feed!
This would be a really good thing for me to implement. I don't know much about RSS feeds and whenever I try to learn I can never understand the explanations.
Most of my visitors come from RSS feeds. Granted its not a whole lot but without them I'm SOL haha