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Full RSS feed: Short-term loss, long-term gains
July 17th, 2008Do you publish summaries of posts in your RSS feed? If you do so, I’m pretty sure the reason is to monetize your blog. RSS feeds are extremely hard to monetize and limiting the size of the posts to force the user to visit your website is a common thing. Unfortunately, it’s the opposite: in the long run, you will loose money.
The preview feed
I think most bloggers started this way with their feed. What’s the point of putting ads on your website and publishing your content in a different place? What’s the point of having 5,000 readers if they all can read my content ads-free? Well, I’m sure you all read other blogs and even yourself get frustrated when you can only read a preview of an article in your favorite news reader. You don’t feel like visiting the website just to read a single article, so what’s the point of subscribing if you still have to visit the damn website? My usual reaction is simply to unsubscribe.
If myself, as a reader, unsubscribe from “preview” feeds, I’m sure you do and I’m also pretty sure that’s what your readers do! That is one of the main reason some blogs aren’t able to increase their number of subscribers. You might gain 10 readers a day, but there’s a strong possibility you’re also loosing 10 readers every day.
So, what do I do?
You should publish your full articles into your feeds. You can also place some ads into your feed if you really want to maximize your profits: it’s something we’ll see more often in the coming years. I personally don’t like to put ads in RSS feeds but this really is a personal decision and I don’t think this would impact the number of subscribers a lot. The main reason why you want a full feed is to keep your subscribers. You might not get a buck from your RSS feed, but loyal readers will comment on your blog often and also talk about you on other websites. What you really want to do is getting loyal readers in order to make long-term gains.
Thinking short-term is usually killing a business. Long-term thinking gives you less money at first, but it’s definitely worth it in the long run. I personnaly think full and ads-free RSS feeds are the way to go. You just have to make sure you write good enough content so that people feel the need to comment or visit your website for whatever other reason.
12 Responses to “Full RSS feed: Short-term loss, long-term gains”
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I think that if you’re maintaining a completely ‘white-hat’ site you have to be prepared for the long game. Sure ‘black hat’ tactics can give you a substantial boost and a few minutes of glory, but they invariably won’t last and can lead to permanent damage.
This is why the long-haul tactic of content creation and the gradual build of traffic is so valuable nowadays.
Yes you’re right, but it’s all part of a complete SEO strategy.
Indeed. The core SEO techniques will always remain, but people seem to overlook the overall importance of content and instead pursue link-building through old skool methods. Valuable links are harder and harder to come by, so their time would be put to better use creating a phenomenal website that attracts the all important ‘natural link’.
ındeed. four core seo theer sie
thanks you verry goodt
LOL interesting site name and certainly love the site layout and graphics, very clean and clear.
Content is always a thorny issue especially if you have multiple sites, also finding original material to base a good article on can be difficult.
Hiring people to research and write material is very hit and miss and the associated management of the process can be time consuming not to mention frustrating.
So i have gone back to using article directories and picking what i consider to be good or most interesting in relation to the topic that im working on.
Thanks a lot for your comment hughmac!
Do you re-write what you pick in article directories?
I never thought of this, I actually had a reader tell me they were annoyed at first because I only sent previews, but came to like the blog so it’s okay.
I think I will toy with sending out the full feeds and see what happens, I guess for me, I just use the feed reader to check the updates. If it looks like an article I’ll comment on, I just go read it on the site. I now realize that not everyone does this.
I will try this and report my findings, thanks for the post.
It’s a very interesting idea to post all the article to the feed. But I don’t think I’ll ever do this — writing a catchy first paragraph still seems a better approach
Romeo: You can go with summaries in your feed, it’s probably better to monetize, but you certainly loose readers because of that. If you take a look at some of the biggest blogs, it’s always a full RSS feed. Anyway, I guess you do what works for you!
im going to always be a preview rss kind of guy, theres too many tactics to steal peoples full feeds and display them as your own, yes you can then email them and take action, but seriously, who does that? Granted its just as easy to steal the article from the site but at leat that cannot be done with things like wp-o-matic.
SEO Tipss last blog post..
SEO Tips: I agree, it’s a matter of preference in the end. I like to show my full feed and haven’t had any problems so far with all my blogs so I’m keeping finger crossed!