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5 Reasons I Unsubscribed From Your Blog
By admin | June 2, 2007
We all know how hard it is to get more RSS subscribers on your blog. There are all kinds of tricks to increase readers but the biggest trick is to keep them. I have seen the stats here going up and down, slowly creeping towards 200. From a personal perspective I listed my top 5 reasons why I unsubscribed from [insert random name] blog. Please feel free to leave a comment telling us your main reason to drop a feed. Us bloggers might learn a thing or two 
1) Oh, you got a life?.
This is a simple one. If I don’t see any updates in 3-4 days I assume you must have stopped blogging and went on to do something useful with your life. No reason for me to stick around anymore, I’m gone. Your spot is taken by someone’s feed that does provide me with new stuff. Sorry.
2) Have to Register to Comment?
Really, you’ve got a nice blog and I liked your article but I don’t think I’ll come back. The only way for me to participate is to register before I can leave my comment, Sorry but I don’t have the time/am too lazy to register. Now I feel left out. Better luck on the next reader.
3) Didn’t I see this before? On someone else’s blog? Last week?
It happens, a lot. Some bloggers tend to copy their articles from bigger blog’s hoping to get noticed. If I read a great article on blog A on a Monday, I really don’t want to waste my time reading the slightly edited version on blog X on a Friday. Try to be original. Obviously most popular topics have been covered by heaps of people but try to add your own insights and/or experience on the subject.
4) More clicking? I just told you I’m lazy.
A full feed is appreciated. I don’t want to read half the story and then have to click a “read more” link to get the other half. Now I have to wait until your blog is loaded up again in my browser. But wait, that other blog there is already fully open. I might as well go there.
5) Slow down will ya!
Your blog is great, I love your articles. But I’m struggling to keep up with them! You’re updating those posts faster than a speeding bullet. I’m not superman and only have a limited amount of time per day. I’d rather read 10 posts on 10 different blogs than spend all my time on your blog, see ya.
-Update: Sure enough I run into an article on ProBlogger.net minutes after I posted this :/
Don`t want to miss a thing? Just subscribe to the full RSS feed :)!
Topics: blog |
November 30th, 1999 at 12:00 am
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:05 am
It’s so true. That’s why I haven’t unsubscribe from your rss feed yet. hehe
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:14 am
Good to hear!
June 3rd, 2007 at 12:52 am
About point 4: delivering a full RSS feed like John Chow does, creates a lot of duplicate content on a blog.
I’m posting only half article on the main page so that the single article pages have a dirrefent content, and that’s wht mine is not a full feed. Check my blog out and subscribe, it’s a nice one
June 3rd, 2007 at 1:59 am
I did #2 last week by accident! I set it up on Feedburner to require a password when I actually thought I was safeguarding my stats (behind a password).
I don’t unsubscribe from blogs for any of those reasons though. My main reasons for unsubbing from someone’s blog are 1)content no longer works for me, and 2)editing down my reader.
I’m a new subscriber to your blog (last week). You do a great job.
Laura
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:10 am
The biggest reason for me to unsubscribe from a feed is a stale blog. My level of interest is equivalent to the blog author’s level of interest.
Next is the blog isn’t what I thought it was going to be. At first, the content seemed to strike a chord with me, but seemed to drift into another direction. If that’s on purpose, that’s one thing, but if it’s simply a lack of focus, then that’s an entirely different reason, which makes me re-evaluate my reason for subscribing.
But I must say, Bob, your blog is truly one that’s always cooking. Practically everytime I come here, there’s a new post. Keep’em coming!
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:59 am
@SEO Blog: (hope thats not your real name ;)), I don’t see how this creates duplicate content on a blog. I believe tne actual blog is something different than it’s Feed screen. If yoiu mean because the trouble you might get with google, having duplicate content, look at my robots.txt (following advise from notsoboringlife.com) where I tell Google not to index my feed.
Laura and Mark, thanks for the compliments, it’s people like you that make my day!
Hmm, seems some people took the header personal, I lost 10 subscribers last night
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:31 am
I followed the advise of notsoboringlife.com too, my supplemental results are still the same, after 2 weeks…
June 3rd, 2007 at 11:53 am
To be honest I have not seen many changes in the supplemental results, guess time will tell.
June 3rd, 2007 at 6:51 pm
For item # 4 I think if your content is interesting readers will crave for more, I don’t mind pressing other link to get what I want
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:07 pm
I find that posting everyday really helps have a steady amount of visitors. The few days when I didn’t post by stats really did plummet!
June 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm
True Dexter, but if I see the feed isn’t complete, I won’t even bother reading te first half unless the title is catchy.
Hi Tom, yeah, one of the most important rules, keep posting
June 3rd, 2007 at 9:41 pm
All very true, but unfortunately, we can’t change some of those points…
I went away for about 14 days, only posted twice while away from my blogging routine, and saw about 1/3 of my subscribers disappear.
Garsh! lol
kweenkong
http://blogbandaids.blogspot.com
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:02 pm
KweenKong, I don’t want to hear scary things like that, I’m leaving on holidays next week for 10 days!
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Ouch! 14 days is quite a while in blog years.
However, I have learned that the fluctuation in feed subscriptions can be due to the readers just not pulling the data for a while — not unsubscribing necessarily. That explains why they go up and down all the time.
At first it freaked me out that for every 2 subscriptions, there would be 3 unsubscriptions, and the cycle would continue with varying results. It wasn’t until I learned of this that I can keep my pulse in check.
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:10 pm
@Bob: it’s amazing how attached we’ve become to our blogs, isn’t it? I’m even blogging in my head when I’m not online. Don’t they have something I can take for that?
June 3rd, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Yes, I admit, I’m an addict!
June 4th, 2007 at 2:13 am
[…] it may not be as in depth as I usually do. So, please don’t delete me from your RSS reader (okay Bob?). I’ll be back and promise to deliver worthwhile information. I may even show you some […]
June 4th, 2007 at 4:11 am
Wouldn’t you know: I just got back from a blog requiring me to login to comment (#2 above). Ugh! And it was a topic I really wanted to express my opinion on. Come on, there are spam filters out there that do a good job of filtering out the baddies. No sense in making it difficult to increase your blog’s worth. Oh well, as you said, Bob, better luck with the next blog.
June 4th, 2007 at 4:36 am
@ Bob Yupp Bob many time I disregard reading a lengthy post without an eye catching titile.. Sometine I even read thos 3 to 4 line post and don’t bother whatevr is the title
June 4th, 2007 at 7:31 am
@Mark, where did you get that information about people not pulling the data?
June 4th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
A visitor left a comment on my blog telling me about it. Something to do with people just not using their feed readers during a period of time, which causes the numbers to drop. Additionally, sometimes the services they use to subscribe go down and influence the numbers, but come back up.
June 4th, 2007 at 11:36 pm
[…] Link From bobmeetsworld.com […]
June 5th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Is it possible that someone unsubscribe from your blog for a certain period (most probably when you’re on holiday), and then subscribe again when the blog becomes active? i.e the fluctuating trend of subscribing and unsubscribing to a particular feed.
June 5th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Affzan, I wouldn’ know why people would go to the trouble of unsubscribing and then subsribing again when youre back.
June 5th, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Yeah that’s what I thought. I normally keep all the blogs that I subscribed to, even though it’s not active for weeks. But that’s probably because I don’t subscribe to a large number of blogs.
July 11th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Yea…yea…maybe..yes…maybe…no….right Bob..!?
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