70 RSS Feed Readers

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The first time I saw my RSS count to 70 readers I was happy…I mean really happy, but than everything turned back to normal (i.e. around 60 readers). Than back again now I since 2 days in a row I see 70 RSS readers and that great feeling is back.

The main reason why I am happy for this is that people have subscribed to my RSS feed without any incentive from my part except the “If you like this post subscribe”, but that is not what I call incentive, rather a reminder. With incentives I mean, running a contest so that people subscribe to my RSS feed or similar contests or ideas.

Having RSS readers subscribed to your blog without running a contest or something is like measuring your blog as what it is, rather than running a contest where your subscription number counts just because they have other goals rather than reading your blog (yeah, the contest winning price). Even tho running a RSS contest is a great marketing idea, as possibilities are higher that some of the subscribed readers (the ones that subscribed to WIN something and not because they do like your post) will actually remain as subscribed readers and WILL most likely convert into regular readers.

RSS readers

RSS readers are those regular readers that read your blog via feed reading (such as bloglines, feedburner etc), and regular readers means your blog is worth something (no, not only in monetary way, but as informative blog to read and grab useful informations, tips or advice). For me, having 70 regular readers via feed that do actually read my blog rather than having 700 readers that subscribed just because I was running a contest or something similar is way much valuable.

Increasing your RSS readers base

Now that Google has penalized several blogs (and static sites) that have been involved in link selling and buying it is not that easy to give value to a website. Before (i believe you did so) the value of a website (as quality site) was determined by PageRank (even tho it could be faked, as everything else), now even those quality web sites that are content rich but were involved in link selling and buying have a low PageRank or their Page Rank has been wiped, and here the RSS count enters in action.

Good websites that have a huge reader base are more likely going to have a decent RSS readers number (ok, did I just said that my blog sux?) which helps us to have a clue if the blog, even without a Google PR, is one of those valuable blogs that have good content to share with us. If Google has the power to give and take your PageRank, with RSS readers YOU have the power of that and you have the responsibility if your RSS number starts to crawl (it is a sign of low quality content if RSS number crawls). So the main 2 reasons to increase your blogs RSS readers number are

• Increase reader base and self esteem 😉
• Increase your blogs monetary value

As I said, the PageRank could of be easily manipulated and increased by buying several high PR backlinks, the same (or similar) thing can happen with the RSS readers but just that it is quiet more difficult as the RSS faker needs to:

• a). Have several several computers and visit his/her site daily to be counted as RSS reader
• b). Have thousands of emails to subscribe to his feed by email
• c). Be a total loser and grab someone elses RSS reader chicklet (which can be easily found who is doing that)

Here are some blogs that have great content, bad Google Page Rank and a good (and excellent) RSS reader base

• John TP – RSS Count: > 2000
• Blogging Experiment – RSS Count > 700

These are both blogs with Alexa ranking smaller than 100k and that were effected from the PR penalization, John TP has a pagerank of 3 while previously it had Page Rank of 6, blogging experiment has PageRank 0 while previous PR was 4 but their loss of PageRank of course does not mean that those are not quality blogs.

Should RSS count be my next goal? Even tho I believe it does not need any incentives, it just requires good articles.

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