Reasons why you don’t need to care about Feed ReadersWritten by Abdulrehman on February 1st, 2009
The big craze in the blogosphere about having a 4 or 5 figure feed count has been on for months now, and I must say that I am almost annoyed with people making tireless efforts just to get feed subscribers. There was a time when people used to envy big feed counts of problogger and copyblogger ; but now even newbies have a feed count of 5000+. How they’re doing it? I probably need a laugh on this one but there are lots of ways to fake the subscribers count. Let’s list them:
- Add your blog’s feed a thousand times on the same account on Netvibes, each one of them shows up as new subscriber!
- A fake photoshopped picture of the feedcount making it look real.
- Putting someone else’s feed count chiclet on your blog.
- If it the feed count is in text, then you don’t even need to fake. Instead of putting the script you can put plain text of as many subscribers as you want because it shows up the same way in the source.
- One person makes up hundreds of email addresses and subscribes using each one of them.
That shows how easy it is to fake the subscriber count and why people should stop being impressed by the count or trying to fake it. I can guarantee on a 100% basis that at least 30% of the subscribers of famous blogs never even look at the feed updates instead the feed updates or email deliveries keep piling up until you finally decide to unsubscribe.
After you start a contest asking each participant to subscribe, hundreds of them do so and when one of them wins, what interest do you think those people or even the winner have in your feed? All they wanted was that fancy prize. I am not stressing on the point that providing RSS Feed is bad, or one should not use it but that webmasters should not flaunt the big number because it is no more a big deal. If that is what your fame is depending on, then you’re on competition with the lowest category of the blogosphere which are the spam blogs.
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The big craze in the blogosphere about having a 4 or 5 figure feed count has been on for months now, and I must say that I am almost annoyed with people making tireless efforts just to get feed subscribers. There was a time when people used to envy big feed counts of problogger and copyblogger ; but now even newbies have a feed count of 5000+. How they’re doing it? I probably need a laugh on this one but there are lots of ways to fake the subscribers count. Let’s list them:
- Add your blog’s feed a thousand times on the same account on Netvibes, each one of them shows up as new subscriber!
- A fake photoshopped picture of the feedcount making it look real.
- Putting someone else’s feed count chiclet on your blog.
- If it the feed count is in text, then you don’t even need to fake. Instead of putting the script you can put plain text of as many subscribers as you want because it shows up the same way in the source.
- One person makes up hundreds of email addresses and subscribes using each one of them.
That shows how easy it is to fake the subscriber count and why people should stop being impressed by the count or trying to fake it. I can guarantee on a 100% basis that at least 30% of the subscribers of famous blogs never even look at the feed updates instead the feed updates or email deliveries keep piling up until you finally decide to unsubscribe.
After you start a contest asking each participant to subscribe, hundreds of them do so and when one of them wins, what interest do you think those people or even the winner have in your feed? All they wanted was that fancy prize. I am not stressing on the point that providing RSS Feed is bad, or one should not use it but that webmasters should not flaunt the big number because it is no more a big deal. If that is what your fame is depending on, then you’re on competition with the lowest category of the blogosphere which are the spam blogs.
I am Abdulrehman Agha, the guy behind 3arn.Net. I am 16 years old, study in grade 10 and live in Pakistan. I started this blog in the hope of making money on the internet, sharing my computer experiences and proving that despite many barriers, one can make money on the internet.
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I hear you. That’s a big problem with a lot of contests is that it’s essentially fake visitors and fake subscriptions. The people don’t care about the thing they’re viewing, they just want the prize.
Still, having more subscribers to your blog is better than fewer as it’s potential returning visitors. I just wouldn’t get caught up in it as you said.
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Good list man! Never tried Netvibes before. I understand that process can be easily automated
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Its never really ethical to do the things you mentioned above but I think its because of “human psychology”. Most people are tempted to subscribe just because a lot of people are following that blog.. just my 2 cents
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did just publish a comment or what?
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In the make money online niche, advertisers would pay you more if you have a high feed count.
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Great post! I never really thought that some of those feed counts could be faked like that…. who would take the time to go through all that just to show a good number?
But I’m guessing that there are a few that would!
I don’t pay much attention to it. For me, it’s the people who actually comment and participate on my blog that count the most.
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It is true that feed counts can be faked and how many subscribers someone claims to have does not change whether their blog is worth your time or not. It is never wise to do something that can be so easily revealed as fake as it will affect your reputation.
It is a good idea to offer an RSS feed for your blog though. Some people read blog posts almost exclusively in a reader or on an aggregation site such as FriendFeed. If you don’t offer full feeds of your posts you’ll miss out on some quality readers who will share and recommend your content for you.
When Louis Gray first started reading my blog he asked that I change my RSS feed to include entire posts. I immediately did so. When another reader asked for an email option I added that at his suggestion.
Just last night I recommended an exceptionally good site at FriendFeed and within minutes someone expressed disappointment that they didn’t have an RSS feed. You DO want to reach your readers wherever they choose to be.
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I really like your site, but this particular post just confused me a bit. thanks for the info anyways. I didnt know you could fake the feed count…..??
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I make it a point to not show the feed reader numbers on my sites. I also barely use my own RSS reader. I much prefer to surf to a site and read the content.
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