Can the feedburner counter be that important?
ByToday, ShoeMoney published an interesting post about a recent “mistake” he made. That mistake was to remove his feedburner subscriber count from his website. He was actually annoyed of people reacting to the ups and downs of his subscribers count, so he decided to remove it and it’s understandable. Now, it seems that since he removed that feedburner count, his stats have completly plateaued at something like 16,500 readers.
We’re all sheep
I actually never bothered putting the feedburner count on any of my website/blog, I thought it was pretty useless for people to know the amount of people subscribed to my feed. Now that ShoeMoney published this article and that I think about it a little more, I feel like I made a mistake too by not bothering. Why? We are all a little like sheep: we like what’s popular and want to be part of it. When someone visit your site and sees something like 100, 300 or 1000 subscribers, it’s easy to say: “Wow, that many subscribers? This website must be great, let’s subscribe too!”. Now I feel it’s important to take advantage of the sheep in all of us.
Be careful
While it’s great to show your subscriber count if you are over 100, I don’t think it’s a good idea below 50 subscribers or even 100 readers. Why? Well, you will get the opposite reaction: “Only 22 readers, it must be an average/crappy blog”.
It’s your call
I will definitely try to put the subscribers count in the next couple of days because I really think this can have a positive impact on a website’s credibility. In the end, it’s your call wether or not you should show the counter. Like I said, you have to figure out when it’s time to show it so it can have the desired effect and not the opposite. I think 100 is a good number, but it’s up to you!
21 Comments
July 24th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
My main problem with feedburner counters is that they don’t look like RSS icon. Setting them up near each other usually ends up lame looking, setting them apart… Makes two things do same = clutter.
Anyway I am on total of 12 subscribers between two of my feeds so I am not showing those counters any time soon.
July 24th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Yeah it’s good if you have a lot of subscribers to show off how well you’re doing but if you don’t have many subscribers it’s definitely a no-no. Good Point.
July 24th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Yep, definitely with a low level you should hide it!
July 24th, 2008 at 2:27 pm
really interesting thanks for this post!
July 24th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
No problems, thanks for commenting.
July 24th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
While I must agree with everything, I still don’t think that having a low feed may affect your blog. I believe that if you stick to what you’re blogging about, being focused and consistent with good content, it will just be a matter of time before visitors flock to your blog or site. I like to call it growing your people garden (tend to your garden and you will reap the fruits of your labour)
July 24th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Good way to see it, I totally agree that good content is WAY more important than your feedburner subscribers count.
July 24th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I am currently on 177 rss subscribers and I have it written on my blog only because I am part of blogging Idol this month. As soon as August 1 comes around it will come down and I will not be showing my subscriber count til I hit atleast 300 - hopefully 500 if I am patient.
July 24th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I guess we all have our own subscribers count we aim to reach before showing it!
July 25th, 2008 at 2:59 am
You are totally right in your assessment Ben, putting up that count is a great way to attract subscribers, and then the key to keeping them is is great content.
Thanks,
JR
July 27th, 2008 at 11:17 am
I share the same sentiments with you. If the subscribers are not substantial enough. Good content and articles are the criterion. Anyway nice info up there! =)
July 27th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Thanks!
July 27th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Yeah…I’ve heard both sides of this one. Some say put it up and let the readership see the growth, others say wait until you have readers.
I don’t know, I like to put mines up, but, maybe that’s causing problems? I think….when I don’t see the feed count, it must not be any good, or worth sharing lol… Maybe I’m the only one.
I think for me, I just want everyone to watch the growth of the subscribers, even though that doesn’t give a real metric as to how many are actually reading everyday.
July 27th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
As you have 50+ subscribers I don’t think it’s bad showing it. You’re totally right about the fact that the number of subscribers isn’t a real metric as to how many are really reading your blog. Take John Chow for example, he has 27,000+ readers but I don’t think these are all daily readers. Also, are all these 27.000+ readers “real” subscribers? Anyway…!
August 4th, 2008 at 5:22 pm
Even though you say were all a little like sheep and it might be best not to use a feed burner icon if you have less than 100 people becuase of the opposite effect i think that not true. think about it:
Great content, updated daily the viewers thinking i want more and what poor suckers for not knwoing of this place ill blog about it, post about it ect, ive had this people whos seen a good post have posted in forums about the unknown treasure. My blogs only 32 days old in terms of blogging (bought 1 year old domain). And i get around 50 visitors a day not great but meh 21 feed subscribers goes up and down and 62 free subdomain bloggers working with us.
I keep my feed burner icon there to remind the users to sign up and to signify that the site is read by others, i had myne there when it was 0,
Heck if your scared about having a low number get your friends to sign up, pay people to, do feed subscription exchanges and lie to make it count if your that worried. However, if the contents good then your going to get the readers they wotn go ” hey great content but look at that feedburner number im stupid thinking these posts are good” it wont happen
theyll sign up regardless and view on regardless my firestats and google analytics prive it 
(sorry long comment)
Tyrone Make as last blog post..
August 4th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Tyrone: I know, I know…There are a lot of ways of seeing it. I guess the first rule is always write good content and someday the rest will come. I still think showing your feed readers too early isn’t a good idea but you see, 21 readers isn’t bad at all! It’s not like 1 or 2. There’s obviously no problems showing your counter…keep me posted on how everything is going with your subscriber count!
August 13th, 2008 at 4:49 am
I agree,if you have good number of subscribers why not show it?
Blogger Templatess last blog post..How to add search form widget to Blogger ?
August 26th, 2008 at 10:07 am
We all seem to be in a great rush to increase the count to show it on the site…Its directly related to the revenue that your blog may generate thro adverstising …More feed number the better money
zks last blog post..Dot Com Pho with John Chow and Toronto Bloggers
November 9th, 2008 at 5:15 am
I’ve gone back and forth with this. I see both sides, but ultimately, I think you should just whatever you “want”. test it each way for a month if you’re concerned, and see how much difference it made (compare).
Cheers!
Jay
November 9th, 2008 at 5:17 am
@SuiteJ: Yep, I wrote this a while ago and still don’t know what to think of it really!! Joe is making an experiment this month, he’s hiding the chicklet to see if it makes a difference so I’m waiting to hear from him.
January 5th, 2009 at 5:15 am
The trouble is as soon as you set a ‘target’ level your blog feed sub numbers bob just below it. I’ve been waiting to go over 100 for 4-6 weeks now, it’s killing me. (If anyone wants to read a blog about investing, go subscribe with me, heh
)
I guess it’s like a watched pot never boils?