When theory meets practice
You know that post where I argued that as more viewer read via RSS the subscription model would favor the occasional thoughtful post rather than many random miniposts designed to drive traffic? Well, there was one bit I got wrong: I underestimated the ego reward of watching visitor stats climb during the day.
The problem with RSS is that there's no good way to track who's reading what. For full feeds like my own there's no need to click through and thus generate a page view. So there's a strong temptation for me to post more frequently to stir up more linkage and thus measurable traffic from outside the feed, even if that doesn't necessarily mean many more readers. Sad but true.
Unfortunately I'm in book-writing mode, which means that all ideas tend to spiral out into thousand-word essays, far too long for blog conventions. Plus it's hard to write an essay a day along with the book and my day job. Thus a policy reversal: until either my ego needs diminish or RSS readership becomes measurable, I'm going to try my hand at shorter posts that riff off of other people's thoughts--like, well, all the other bloggers.
Rather than using such ugly words as "derivative" or even "lazy", I'd like to spin this as an exuberant embrace of intellectual sampling. This is, after all, the Remix Age.
Most shared RSS readers (Bloglines, LiveJournal, etc.) put in the User Agent header how many readers a feed has. If you have FeedBurner scrape your feed and redirect RSS readers there, it lets you see how many readers a feed has based on those numbers. It's only an estimate though because some sites like Kinja don't report those numbers.
Posted by: George Hotelling | February 08, 2005 at 06:21 AM
I'm going to try my hand at shorter posts that riff off of other people's thoughts--like, well, all the other bloggers.
No, Chris! No!! Don't give in to the Dark Side, Chris!
Posted by: fling93 | February 08, 2005 at 11:26 AM
I agree with fling93, don't succumb to the temptation of easy posting. Resist and post something of substance when you have something of substance. That's why I visit your site, for the longerish, less-frequent posts with more thought invested in them. Links to other blogs / articles are a dime a dozen. Though it may not generate more page views, good, thoughtful writing that tells a story will create more value for your readers and more repeat visitors who are more likely to buy your book.
Posted by: James | February 08, 2005 at 12:55 PM
In each post, ask questions. Then your readers will surf over to comment. Not only does this increase clickthroughs, but it also develops a healthy community of more active readers.
Posted by: Nick Douglas | February 08, 2005 at 01:13 PM
Don't do it Chris...noooooo! Quality, not quantity. As Mike D of the Beasties said in your own magazine, "We make sample-based music ourselves, so who would we be to tell people they can't sample us? It doesn't mean I'm a fan of whatever song my sample is being used in, but it's not important whether I like their music. It's not like the person who's making a song that's taking our vocal sample is making it for me. They're taking it to make something new and different."
Don't be a sampler just to be a sampler. We want to hear something fresh from you!
Posted by: Dee Rambeau | February 09, 2005 at 07:29 AM
My Yahoo! reports back active users (defined as active in the past 30 days) when it fetches your rss feed...
Posted by: don | February 09, 2005 at 05:28 PM
Add a unique image to each post and you can track that way (for RSS clients that display images).
Posted by: nathan | February 10, 2005 at 05:58 PM