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Blogspot Bloggers Need a Wake-up Call

By Matt Jones on Jul 18, 2007 in Blogging Basics

feedburner rss
It’s been 1 week now since it was announced via the Feedburner blog the “FeedBurner Integration for Blogspot Blogs” but few blogspot bloggers seem to be taking much notice.

The small handful of blogspot blogs I actually read cannot be used as much of a judge of the millions out there, but perhaps blogspot bloggers need a reminder about how important RSS feeds and feed readers really are.

It is far to easy to think that it’s not worth building RSS subscriber numbers when you would make more from CPC ads if they actually visited the blog itself. Although there is some truth in this, the Typical RSS subscriber is completely different to your average Joe AdSense clicker and brings different benefits.

The Value of RSS subscribers

An important point to make before diving into how RSS subscribers make you money, is that if a potential RSS subscriber cannot easily click a Feedburer subscription button there is a higher chance they will not return at all. It is simply not a case of, “would I rather my readers were RSS subscribers or visited the blog”. It is that if you don’t have an easily subscribe-able feed, those who wanted to subscribe may be lost for good.

RSS users are at least partially web savvy and so probably know what Google AdSense is and wont click on them. However their web-savvyness brings greater rewards:

  • They are likely to have a blog of their own and so can provide inbound links to your site.
  • Subscriber numbers are a good judge of the content quality. Advertisers know this and so are more likely to buy a review/sponsored post if there are more RSS subscribers because it means your review will be of a high standard.
  • Although RSS subscriber numbers fluctuate from time to time they are essentially a guaranteed readership. Advertisers and buyers know this as well.
  • They represent your most loyal readership which means they are more likely to do your ‘bidding’, be it link to your or make a purchase at your recommendation through affiliate links.
  • Having your readers subscribe via RSS gives you an idea of how well your site is doing. They are another stat to measure and can result in an ego boost or a sobering plunge back to reality. Either way they are just about the fairest judge out there of a blogs quality and influence in a niche.
  • RSS subscribers can help to promote your post using a Feedflare (the “Digg This! Stumble This!” at the bottom of each post in the Feed).
  • Displaying a large number of subscribers using the Feedburner counter makes more people sign up. The subscriber counter brings instant authority and makes people pay more attention to what you are writing.



    • For some the reward of blogging is from comments, (which are important to me) or from what another blogger says about them (also important to me) but the most important thing is the feed subscribers.

    Conclusion

    All of those points apply to Blogspot Bloggers as well. If you are a blogspot blogger looking to increase your readership and earnings then I highly recommended heading over to Feedburner. If your not sure where to start there is a guide on the hompage where it says, “Learn how to burn your Blogger feed”.

    Learn how to drive massive amounts of traffic to your blog with the SEO book.

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    RSS Feed for This Post3 Comments »

    Comment by Dee | 2007-07-18 23:30:41

    Great article. It is also important for blogspot bloggers to redirect their feed to feedburner so they can keep track of all their readers. Perhaps ones that have subscribed before burning their feed.

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    Comment by Carol M | 2007-08-01 19:56:01

    I agree about the comments. In fact I wrote about that on my blog. Which is why I am making a comment on your blog. I got to your site through mybloglog. Check out my site and let me know if you interested in a link exchange
    http://freeadvertisingandlinks.blogspot.com
    silverdawn

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    Comment by Teresa Young | 2007-08-02 08:10:05

    Hey thats so funny I happened across your blog post today as I just set up my blogspot blog at Feedbuner still learning what all it does but gives me hope for my blog as its only a week old now that I am moving in the right direction ..thanks for all the great helpful tips
    Terry

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