Chris Leckness is a Geek

Incoherent ramblings from a redneck tech geek

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t

I really don’t fret this much here on my personal blog, but Robert Scoble linked a post at Problogger why readers end up unsubscribing to your blog feed. I clipped the top 11, but the top 2 are what prompted my post on it. If you care to keep your readers, It appears from this research that you have to find the middle ground of post quantity. Post too much, they run… Post too little, they run… This seems like a no win situation.

34 Reasons Why People Unsubscribe from RSS feeds:

  • Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming) - 37
  • Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead) - 29
  • Partial Excerpts Feeds - 25
  • Blog Changes Focus (too much off topic posting) - 23
  • Too many posts that I see elsewhere (Redundant, Repeated or Recycled News) - 19
  • Uninteresting Content - 16
  • Irrelevant Content - 13
  • The Blogger’s Ego - Too much self promotion - 11
  • Low Quality Content - 11
  • Too many posts that are too long - 10
  • Negative blogging - 7

I have quit reading a blog or two in the last couple months for reasons 8 and 11, but I have been guilty of 11 a couple times. With Mobilitysite.com, we try to avoid number 5, but it’s tough to share info without recycling. We spend a great deal of time looking for info relevant and interesting enough for the reader that is fresh, but these days info spreads like wildfire fast. (which is good for our electronic society) Reason number 3 is a sore subject for many people that use their sites as an income source. Do you provide full ad free feeds or just excerpts with no ads. There are not many of us that offer ad free, 100% feeds anymore. I choose to offer my feeds 100% ad free with full content because I don’t need the income, I have a dayjob that pays me good enough and this is fun for me!

Read more about these reasons : 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog

Categories: Blogging - Commentary
2 March 2007 at 14:58 - Comments
  • I guess I am guilty of a lot of the points. I can't help with regards to the ads since I need the money to pay for the hosting and maintenance. I do not have adsense or similar type of ads in the feeds since I personally find them annoying. The ads you see are the affiliate links I've inserted in the actual post.

    As for the lengthy posts, it's the way I write because a lot of my posts are reviews and I feel that it can only help to provide as much information on a product as possible.

    I don't get too wrapped up about when people unsubscribe since I have to do what I do without being distracted. My main focus has always been to provide information that people will find helpful and interesting. I know that I can't please everyone.

    As for the feeds, I have way too many and never seem to catch up with them. In NewsGator, I have over 1600 feeds but I'm starting to filter them out and find those that I really want to read. I can't help it. I just keep adding new ones every day. I'm a feed junkie I guess. Some days, I just mark everything "read" just to get rid of the huge number. ;)
  • Chris
    If I don't read my feeds at least once a day, I end up flushing alot of the 30-50 post a day sites.
  • gasusan2005
    can't leave out Gear Diary :)
  • Matt
    I have to say that I subscribe to a bunch of tech feeds, some of my favorite (besides any of yours Chris) are Engadget, Engadget Mobile, and Gizmodo. I have found that gizmodo is a lot of the same content as engadget, but there are a ton of posts. Right now there are 234 unread in my Gizmodo folder. To me that is overwhelming and I usually end up simply deleting them all.
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