Does Digg even need a Bury Option?

April 30, 2007 | Comments (5) | Filed under: Traffic

I know, I know, this has basically been the all Digg weekend here, but I wanted to talk a little bit about something I’ve been looking into a lot recently, the Digg Bury option. As many of you already know, one my keys to promoting content from Bookmark Bliss has been great exposure on Digg. While Digg can bring you great traffic for a well written story, it also has a lot of side effects such as really putting a lot of pressure on your web server and bringing in a lot of sometimes angry traffic.

If you’re prepared to deal with both of these issues, however, Digg can introduce your site, product, or commentary to a broad range of readers and can really put your new site on the map. For two of the big Digg stories for us, 10 tools for a web 2.0 color palette and 10 lessons from 300 for Online Business, Digg traffic exponentially improved our exposure and brought us thousands of readers and hundreds of new subscribers.

Basically, Digg is a popularity contest. Depending on the your category, there is a formula for how many votes your submission must receive in order to be considered a popular article. This formula is obviously a closely guarded secret, so an exact method to becoming popular is not known. You can get a feel for roughly what it takes if you spend enough time on the site. For more information on how to reach the front page of Digg, there are literally hundreds of articles such as this one from Pronet Advertising that offer tips and tricks to help you accomplish that goal.

Recently, there has been some controversy at Digg over the option to bury a posted article. Any user on the site can recommend an article to be buried (aka removed) for the following reasons:

1. Duplicate Story
2. Spam
3. Wrong Topic
4. Inaccurate
5. Lame

Where the controversy comes into play is in the fact that none of these reasons requires any justification, and is completely hidden from the entire community. So, any user can basically bury any other post without any consequences or even the need to justify his reasoning. Potentially, a Bury Brigade could form to intentionally bury articles on a whim.

It is because of this that many regular submitters to Digg are becoming frustrated with the system. Many good articles are disappearing for no reason at all, and many articles that are well liked are vanishing as soon as they reach the front page. At times, it’s enough to make a person want to stop reading or contributing to Digg entirely. I was reading an article from Digg today, in fact, and when I went back to find it an hour later it was completely gone.

Danny at Search Engine Land published a great article on the entire bury issue entitled Digg’s Kevin Rose Fails to Stop the Bury Brigade. In the article he discusses the possibility of malicious users intentionally burying articles for poor reasons and the lack of consequences for doing so by the Digg administrators.

After researching the issues with Digg, and having a few of my own articles buried for no reason at all, I started wondering why Digg even needs a bury option at all. The very nature of their entire system is that people vote for things they like, or simply abstain from voting for things they don’t like. Sure, I would imagine the system can be gamed by friends promoting each others articles or people paying for Diggs, but like the NoFollow attrubute, the Bury option more punishes publishers that are legit instead of stopping spammers.

What has been your experience with Digg and being buried? Some articles I’ve found on Digg, and enjoyed have suddenly disappeared due to bury requests. I think the way things are now, their entire system is flawed and many sites are getting fed up. How much longer can Digg keep it up before their major contributor base starts to go else where?

Experimenting with the new Digg API

April 28, 2007 | Comments (5) | Filed under: Programming

When I first started out with Bookmark Bliss, one thing I really looked into was the different options available for embedding a Digg button within your posts. My previous experience showed me that users are much more likely to digg your post after visiting it, rather than at the Digg site itself. This means that not having a digg button could force you to lose out on many potential diggs. Initially, I tried using the Gregarious plugin, but had nothing but problems. Later, I moved on to the Digg It plugin and have continued to use it for the last few months.

Last week, Digg announced the release of the Digg API (Application Programming Interface) for webmasters which allows a little more freedom when dealing with their site. This announcement made me really happy because for a long time, I have really disliked all of the “digg button” plugin’s for Wordpress. The main reason for this, is that they are all extremely inflexible. For example, I was unable to find a single one that let me show the digg button if the number of diggs was greater than 0 and hide it otherwise. You could do that manually, but who wants that??

This was not really a fault of any of the plugin authors, but more a limitation on what Digg initially allowed you to do prior to the Digg API. Access was restricted to a very simple JavaScript based remote call that generated a pre-made button that you couldn’t modify at all. This is great in some cases, but I was really itching for some more customization options.

The new Digg API opens all those closed doors and allows you to build much more complex Digg based applications. You can check out the list of options by viewing the Digg API documentation. Already, there are several applications hitting the web that make substantial use of it. For example, there is a Firefox Digg extension and an application that creates a Digg video based television station. As you can probably imagine, Digg themselves are actively encouraging experimentation with their API by sponsoring a contest for the most innovative Digg API based tool.

I had a little free time this weekend, so I started playing around with the Digg API to see if I could come up with a better Digg button plugin. You can see the results of my first pass experiment on any post at Bookmark Bliss that has been digg’d such as 10 Tools to Help you Select a Web 2.0 Color Palette or 10 Lessons Frank Miller’s 300 Can teach you about Online Business.

If you checked either of them out, you might not immediately notice any change. For now, I’ve completely removed the Digg It plugin and replaced it entirely with my own plugin. My first step was to recreate the digg button (I’m close, but my fonts and colors are still a bit off) and my second step was to make it so that the button was not shown on posts with 0 diggs. I think I’ve succeeded with that part so far (as you can see, this post has no digg button). It is still buggy, but I’m going to continue working with it and seeing what I can come up with.

As I have time, I want to really flesh it out and make it a much more customizable button. For instance, I would love to set it up so that posts that have been digg’d, but don’t make the front page in the 24 hour time period, have the button removed. Also, I’d like to add options for sidebar widgets and tools to help you promote to your users that an article is currently in a race for the front page.

As soon as I’ve had a chance to test the plugin on my own site, and also to implement more customization and administration tools, I’ll setup a download here for anyone that wants to give it a shot. So far, I’m really impressed with what Digg has done with this API and I really think the sky’s the limit on new tools you’ll see over the next few months.

Now, if only more sites would do the same *cough*Stumble*cough* then we might be on to something! Let me know what you guys think of the new button and any ideas you might have for features to implement. I’m all for less manual work and more automated work, so a Digg button that is smart enough to know when to show itself would be a great tool in my book. Now whether or not I can get it there, that’s a whole different story

Software Review: Flash Video Player 3.7

April 27, 2007 | Comments (0) | Filed under: Reviews

The goal here at Bookmark Bliss is to help you improve your online business and every once in a while, I like to take some time to review services and applications that can help you do just that. In previous installments, we’ve reviewed BrowserCam, Guru.com, and Windows Live Writer but this time, I wanted to look into a software package that can help you build out a powerful video based website.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working with a friend of mine on a site designed to highlight his 3D graphic and video portfolio. The project is still under development, but one of the key features will be an area highlighting his 3D animation work. The goal, is to setup a mind blowing display of his talent, specifically designed for potential employers, and one of the most crucial aspects of this is online video.

In researching tools to help him accomplish this goal, I happened across one called Flash Video Player 3.7. FVP 3.7 is a full featured web based video player similar to the ones you see all over the place these days on everything from YouTube to CollegeHumor. Flash Video Player plays the popular FLV video format, which is becoming more and more of a standard for easy cross platform video. All you need is a Flash plugin (which according to Google Analytics 99.4% of Bookmark Bliss visitors do) and video can be running in no time. You can’t say the same for Real Media, Windows Media Player, or even Quicktime. In fact, a quick Google search can turn up dozens of scripts for converting from all of these formats to FLV.

The beauty of FVP is that not only is it just as powerful and feature rich as the proprietary ones in use on many sites, it’s also completely free to copy, distribute, adapt, and transmit for anyone using it for non-commercial purposes under the Creative Commons License. If you are planning to setup a commercial resource, Flash Video Player also has very low cost commercial license available for only 15 Euro’s (about 30 dollars US).

So far, Flash Video Player has been ideal for what my friend needs to have running on his site. It’s a very light weight script, and is very easy to manipulate and customize to suit your specific situations. Already built in are a whole host of customization options allowing you to modify something as simple as color scheme to something as complex as randomized playlists fed through JavaScript system calls. Basically, the Flash Video Player may be free, but it definitely has the toolset needed to compete with other more expensive packages.

Flash Video Player 3.7 has been around long enough to have been embedded in almost all of the different free content management systems. So, if your site runs Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, etc, there is a good chance some of the work in adding FVP has already been done for you with a plugin. Even if you’re writing your site from scratch, Flash Video Player is simple to setup and configure. We had no problems integrating it within minutes of trying it out.

If you’re thinking of setting up a site that requires video playback for your users, you might want to give Flash Video Player 3.7 a try. It can save you a ton of work in developing your own player and is powerful enough for a simple personal portfolio or even a complex YouTube clone like Clipaday (which is using FVP ).

FVP can save you a lot of hassle and trouble, which improves your business from day one. Definitely something to keep in mind the next time you need video in your business development projects. 

10 Minute Ideas for the Busy Blogger

April 26, 2007 | Comments (5) | Filed under: Blogging

I’ve found myself a bit under the weather the last couple of days and as always doing a little channel surfing while I missed out on work (Price is Right anyone?). Ultimately, I ended up watching a show on the Food Network entitled 30 Minute Meals. I’m not usually a random TV viewer (I prefer my TIVO) but the show gave me an idea for a post that I couldn’t pass up. Like any business, blogging has its up days and down days. Some days you have an endless supply of ideas while others you draw nothing but blanks. That’s life but as long as you’re prepared for the inevitable dry spells, you’re content won’t suffer.

One of the best ways to ensure you survive is to write articles in advance and queue ahead of your current day. Besides being able to think on your articles and extra day or two, you’ll find it much easier to keep up your posting schedule over the long run. In addition to keeping an advance queue, you should also stagger your articles to ensure your fresh and exciting content comes out at regular intervals keeping your readers informed and entertained as much as possible.

Sometimes this means filling in a gap or two with content that informs and excites, but is not an overly complex or deep article. The goal of 30 Minute Meals is to help you prepare food when you’re short on time. The goal of this post is the same. Here are some great 10 minute blog ideas that anyone can use to keep their site updated with fresh content every day. 

Linkout list

As blog authors, many of us read dozens of other blogs on a daily basis for sources of inspiration and to actively contribute in our respective communities. A linkout list is basically a list of highlighted articles in other blogs that you have found interesting and also think your readers might as well. It takes easily less than 10 minutes if you’re constantly reading and bookmarking other sites already, and can be a really informative way to introduce your readers to fresh content they might be missing. Examples: Link Roundup, Great things I’ve Read, A Bit of Linkage

Comment on big news in your niche

Sometimes big news can be a great area of interest to your readers. If something big happens in your niche, you can comment on it and bring it to the attention of your readers. You’d be surprised how many readers may miss news you think was almost too big to bother mentioning. Example: Google buys DoubleClick for 3.1 Billion

Re-introduce new readers to posts they might have missed

For most sites, a constant influx of new readers can mean many of them have missed out on all articles prior to them becoming a regular reader. Most readers won’t bother going back through your archives, so a great way to introduce them to stuff they might have missed is to make a quick post highlighting your best work from the past. Examples: Blast from the Past, Get reacquainted with an old friend

Follow-up on a previous post

Some posts simply demand an encore. If you post about your daily happenings on your site, your readers would probably love to know whether something has succeeded or not over time. Following up on a previous post can be a very simple way to keep your readers informed without taking up much of your busy timetable. Example: Experimenting with comments and subscribers

Eat some humble pie

Similar to the previous method of following up on a previous post, eating some humble pie involves following up by admitting you made a mistake. As you get older, you get wiser and something you post one week may turn out to be wrong later on. Admitting your mistake in a follow-up post is a quick way to turn out some content and can also earn you respect from your readers.

Post an interesting video or image

Posting a video or image can help make your point sometimes better then words ever could. Linking to images and video can be as simple as a matter of seconds but can provide great content for your readers. Definitely a great way to keep your blog full of content when you don’t have a lot of time on your hands. Example: World’s greatest magician

Summarize someone else’s post

Just because another site posted about something first, doesn’t mean you can’t have something meaningful to say about it. If someone posts an article you’ve found interesting, chances are your readers will to. It takes no time at all to introduce your readers to the original post, and write up a quick one or two paragraph summary of what it says and why it was interesting. Example: Learning from the best designers, 10 blogging mistakes to avoid

Create a cliffhanger post

If you don’t have much to say, an easy way to say something without really saying something is to do a cliffhanger post. If you know you have something coming down the pipe, but its not quite post worthy, you can whet your audience’s appetite by teasing them with what’s to come. It works for 24 why not let it work for you?

Poll your readers

If you have a question you would like your community to help answer, setting up a quick poll is one of the best ways to get it done. Letting your readers know about the poll and why you’re running it is equally as easy and can be done in no time flat. Example: Is SEO Easy?

Post a List

If you’re pressed for time, nothing beats the good ole list. If you’re like me, you have hundreds and hundreds of bookmarks already saved for your own use. Why not turn those into a post? The size of your list really determines the amount of time it takes to put together, but a quick list of 10-20 items can easily make our 10 minute time limit. Make a list, check it twice, make it live, and get on with your busy schedule. You know Digg will love you for it Examples: 9 start-up business tips, 5 Free Wordpress Plugins to help you Monetize your Blog

Participate in a Meme

A meme is basically the equivalent of an Internet chain letter but with many more benefits such as shared linkbacks from many different sites and the ability to stand behind a message in support. If you get tagged for contribution to a meme, you can simply do your part, pick a few new links, and move on. It’s a great way to show your support for your community, show your users a little about your personality, and keep your your site updated with interesting content. Examples: 5 reasons I blog, Do Follow the D-List

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head to help you come up with a post at 2:30 am when you only have 10 minutes to spare. Just like a 30 minute meal can be the difference between eating healthy or eating fast food, a 10 minute blog post can be the difference between an actively updated blog and one that is down and out for the count.

If any of you have other great ideas for 10 minute blog posts, let me know. I’ll try to keep a running list going as a resource for those days of lacking inspiration. 

Is there such a thing as too much daily content?

April 25, 2007 | Comments (18) | Filed under: Blogging

Digging through my Google Reader list of feeds last night, I noticed a few of the sites I visit regularly have a pretty insane posting rate. For example, Engadget easily posts 15 articles a day (although granted multiple authors) and John Chow sometimes posts 5 or more. In terms of habit, I would classify myself as a once a day feed reader. There are many sites I visit multiple times daily, but I usually fire up my reader in the evenings and go through most of the updates to blogs and news sites in a single sitting. I’m sure other people are different, but that’s the way I usually do things.

What I noticed yesterday, however, was that many of the feeds with really high update rates were not getting as much of my attention as the ones that update once a day or even once every 3 days. In most cases, I was either skimming quickly or simply reading the latest post and marking the rest as read, sight unseen.

On the other hand, most of the sites that release one or two posts a day I found myself reading all of the content and even taking the time to follow links and comment on some posts. I thought this was interesting and did a little searching to see if others had experienced the same thing. Sure enough, over at Problogger, I found a good post highlighting 34 reasons why readers unsubscribe from your blog. Guess what the number one reason is?

Too many posts.

So I guess it’s not just me after all. It seems like a strange issue to have with a site, too many updates, but it’s something to definitely keep in mind when starting. If you’re going to publish a feed that is updated dozens of times a day (like DZone) you might want to devote a very little amount of your web real estate to advertising your feed. If you’re starting a new blog and are enthusiastic and posting like crazy, spread your posts out so you don’t overwhelm potential new readers. It’s being conscious of these types of little things that can really elevate your site in the early going.

What do you think, is there such a thing as too much daily content? Have you ever unsubscribed from a feed because it was just updated too often? 

Link Roundup - April 24, 2007

April 24, 2007 | Comments (4) | Filed under: General

Every once in a while, I like to take a trip around our community and see what everyone has been up to. Bookmark Bliss readers are a diverse bunch with a wide range of expertise on many different topics. Here are some great articles from members of the Bookmark Bliss community:

1. Over at DevLounge they discuss some of the steps required for a more fulfilling website redesign. Great advice for anyone thinking of changing up their ancient layout.
2. Ever wonder what it takes to be a Highly Effective Blogger? Randa from Randa Clay Design can help you figure it out.
3. Shane from AskShane.org helps you to double your search engine traffic in 7 days and really, who doesn’t want that??
4. At NorthxEast, Collis demonstrates how they managed to take a blog from 0 to 2000 subscribers in just 12 days. A pretty impressive feat for any site and great tips for anyone just starting to increase their own subscribers.
5. Quartz Mountain demonstrates why anchor text matters and how it can ultimately improve your search engine placement.
6. With the success of John Chow’s blog, everyone seems to be targeting the keyword phrase “make money online.” Matt from NetBusinessBlog shows you that not only is it not the only keyword out there, but choosing it anyway will lead you nowhere.
7. Digital Web Magazine demonstrates 7 JavaScript Techniques that you should be using today. An interesting list for any web developer.

Well, that’s it for this roundup. If you’re a regular visitor of our site and would like to be considered for our next Link Roundup, you might consider subscribing to our news feed and joining our community. It’s the best way to let us know you’re out there so I can check your site out as well

Boosting your Alexa Ranking without using IE

April 23, 2007 | Comments (14) | Filed under: Ranking

Of all the traffic indicators and aggregators out there for your site, Alexa has to be the one I’ve had the most issues with. Not only is Alexa biased, but it’s also held in high regard with many online resources making it impossible to simply ignore. Probably my biggest problem with it is the traditional way in which it compiles traffic. In order for your new site to even register on Alexa’s radar, visitors of your site need to both be using Internet Explorer and also have the Alexa Toolbar installed.

This is a big problem in two major ways.  First, with every passing day, Firefox gains in marketshare. The last time I looked, Firefox and other non-IE browsers were accounting for just under 35% of all Internet traffic. If your site is visited by web savvy users, like this one is, you can expect that number to be even higher. For example, Bookmark Bliss is visited by more than 71% Firefox users. While Firefox addons are starting to pop up that help track statistics in the browser, very few users even know about them, let alone install them.

Secondly, users must have the Alexa toolbar installed, in order to improve your ranking with their visits. So, even if your visitors are using IE, what are the odds they’ve taken the time to install Alexa? Most likely slim to none, especially with the fact that many spyware and adware removal tools are starting to flag it as problematic.

These two reasons combined can make it very difficult for sites to rank well in Alexa without really taking off as a top end blog. Even Alexa themselves have admitted to these problems and the bias.

Recently, Mark from PotentMark.com alerted me to a post over at Entrepreneurs Journey entitled how to boost your Alexa ranking in one easy step. The author goes through several of the issues with Alexa and eventually introduces a widget you can install on any site to help improve your ranking. Since Alexa rank for this site is very poor (roughly at the 103K mark right now) I thought I would give it a try and see just how well it works.

In terms of organic Alexa ranking, our site hasn’t experienced much of a change at all since going live. If we see any significant movement, it will most definitely be attributed to the widget (which is now installed near the bottom of the black toolbar). I’ll be monitoring our ranking closely, and I’ll let everyone know just how big of an effect the widget has made, if any at all.

For any of you out there who are in a similar situation as us, new site with very little IE traffic, what steps have you taken to improve your Alexa rank? If only Google would release a traffic ranking for Analytics, then we’d all be in business and Alexa would become extinct.

It never hurts to hope

5 Free Wordpress Plugins to help you Monetize your Blog

April 21, 2007 | Comments (29) | Filed under: Advertising

Depending on the type of blog you run, there might come a point where you decide to try and earn some revenue from your traffic. Determining exactly when that time is, however, can be difficult. Some bloggers advocate that you wait until your userbase is solid before trying to monetize your articles while others recommend monetizing right away, so you don’t alienate your readers while trying to do it down the road. It’s a tough decision to make and can literally make or break a young blog…

I generally tend to fall on the side of the latter category. While I definitely see the logic behind waiting for your readership to solidify, as a reader myself of many blogs, I would personally rather see the site the author intends from the first day. Readers are creatures of habit. The way your site looks the first day they visit is what they expect for the most part every day. If your site has ads then, they won’t be put off as you tinker around and find what works best.

Previously at Bookmark Bliss, we’ve talked about some of the Wordpress plugins in use on our site and even some of the changes we’ve made to our plugin lineup. As we’ve progressed the last few months, I’ve also been looking at a lot of tools to help monetize a site and basically make the job easy on our end to test out exactly what works best.

Here are 5 Wordpress Plugins we’ve come across that can help you to monetize your blog:

Adsense-Deluxe
If your site makes use of Google’s Adsense advertising, Adsense-Deluxe is the perfect plugin to help you manage things easily. In fact, it works well with almost any advertising package including Yahoo Ads. The Adsense-Deluxe plugin is smart and knows the rules of Google’s terms of service which helps you ensure your site is always compliant. Adsense-Deluxe will even limit the number of ads shown on a single page at one time to make sure you never exceed Google’s limit of 3. All Adsense ads here on our site are displayed using this plugin.

WP-Ads
WP-Ads is a simple little plugin that allows you to create regions on your site and display ads in those regions with a simple PHP call. Bookmark Bliss currently uses this plugin to display our graphical banner at the top of the page, as well as the square graphic at the top of the black sidebar. It tracks how many times your ad has been displayed and even offers the ability to rotate ads with different frequency. A great, simple tool that can make changing your ads a simple task.

Text-Link-Ads Widget (download after signing up)
Text-Link-Ads is one of the newest up and coming companies trying to compete with the likes of Google and Yahoo for text based advertising. Just recently, Bookmark Bliss was accepted into Text-Link-Ads and as a test, we’ve been playing around with their system. You can see the results in our green toolbar under “Featured Links.” As of this writing, these ads have only been up for a day or so and we currently have no links. The Text-Link-Ads Widget allows you to simply setup in your sidebar a block that is synchronized with the changes you make to your profile at the TLA website. Very convenient and very easy to use for anyone thinking of working with Text-Link-Ads for their site.

WP-Amazon
If your blog deals a lot with products a great source of revenue can come from becoming an Amazon partner and directly marketing Amazon products that you talk about. Users are generally more inclined to make purchases after reading about a particular item and with the WP-Amazon plugin, you can set yourself up for a piece of the commission. What I really like about this plugin is that it integrates entirely into your Wordpress admin tools allowing you to very easily incorporate images, descriptions, and Amazon links directly into posts. WP-Amazon makes it very easy to show your readers exactly what you’re talking about and maximize your potential of converting a sale.

WP-OpenAds
OpenAds is a great tool to help you manage private ad sales entirely on your own. It provides many of the tools made available by large advertising companies and is completely free to download and install. In addition, it’s also really easy to start using right away. If you figured out how to get Wordpress running, you can figure out how to install OpenAds. Although Bookmark Bliss is not currently using OpenAds to manage our private ads, I’ve used OpenAds (aka phpAdsNew) dozens of times for both clients and personal projects and I highly recommend it. Wp-OpenAds is a great little plugin that I’ve tested a few times that allows you to easily configure your blog to run ads generated by the OpenAds system. For more information on OpenAds check out this great summary by Matt over at NetBusinessBlog. 

Well, I hope this short summary has introduced you to some new plugins you might not have considered previously. What other monetizing plugins have you guys used on your blogs?

Experimenting with Comments and Subscribers

April 20, 2007 | Comments (5) | Filed under: General

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been experimenting a bit with some of the features here at Bookmark Bliss. For starters, we’ve made a real effort to increase our subscribers by making our subscription options more prevalent in all our posts and by making our main subscription widget a little more easy on the eyes. We’ve also made a few changes on the commenting front. For starters, we’ve removed the NoFollow attribute from all our links and added MyBlogLog images to our comments. Our goal for all of these changes was to make Bookmark Bliss a friendlier place for new visitors and also make it as straight forward as possible for potential readers to subscribe to our content.

Now that all of these changes have had a chance to be active for at least a couple of weeks, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look back and see what kind of effect these improvements have made.

Lets start first with the subscriptions. Since announcing our changes, we’ve seen our subscription base nearly triple in just over 3 weeks. While I’m sure this has something to do with our site getting more and more exposure over the weeks I think a lot also has to do with our changes as well. Users can quickly subscribe to our feeds from any post here on the site and our welcome box at the top of the green toolbar makes much more sense to the tech unsavvy. Hopefully this trend continues throughout the rest of the month but it definitely appears we are well on our way to meeting and beating our April subscriber goal.

As for the comment changes, I am happy to report success on this front as well. These changes have not been active as long as our subscriber changes, but already we’ve seen our average comments per post jump from 2 to 6. Even better, we’ve managed to attract some great new readers whose contributions to discussions have made our site that much better. The one negative is a very slight increase in spam and a few more “linkbait” comments than usual. Nothing Akismet and I haven’t been able to handle easily. I rule with an iron fist when it comes to garbage comments and I have no problems removing them when they show up.

So overall, I think our experiment with changes here at the site has been very successful even in such a short period of time. I look forward to following this up again in a few months time to see if these trends have continued throughout.

For all of you out there who’ve tried similar changes to your own sites, whats been your experience with the results? What changes do you think we need to make here at Bookmark Bliss to make our site even more accessible?

Do you really want more subscribers?

April 19, 2007 | Comments (5) | Filed under: Traffic

If you’re a regular reader here, you know that one of my big goals for the month of April is to increase our subscribers here on the site. Already I’ve tried to improve our numbers by making subscribing more accessible and more eye catching. I thought I would take a quick moment though, and talk about things from the other side of the coin.

For a new site, do you really want more subscribers?

Improving the number of subscribers to your site can have many benefits. Obviously, more exposure for your posts and having your site “look” popular are two very big ones. On the flip side though, increasing your subscriber count may actually have a negative effect depending on the goals for your site.

Take for example your target market. If you target a technically savvy niche or blogging niche then subscriptions may be a very solid method of reaching your community. On the other hand, if your site targets a niche where the majority of your readers may not be web savvy, what are the odds they are using a feed reading application to begin with? In fact, promoting your feed excessively may actually confuse and turn some of these users off.

Another thing to consider is whether or not your actual site is important to your content. I have roughly 3 dozen sites in my feed reader that I check on a daily basis. Many of these sites, I scan their content quickly, maybe check out a few links, but in most cases never actually visit their sites. That, in itself, is the beauty of a feed reader. It’s like having a custom built newspaper that you can scan without needing to visit a large array of different sites.

What if your site really doesn’t stand out on content alone? The real content of many sites is not the posts themselves, but the comments and discussions that form as a result. To these types of sites, a reader via RSS is really not getting the full experience that the site has to offer.

One last thing to consider is your source of revenue. Most people do not take the time to actually place ads into their feeds, which is another reason many readers prefer a feed over the site itself. The problem with this though, is that people are getting your content for free, with no way for you to generate revenue. Take for example the site SEOBook.com. When I check out the site, it appears to me that their biggest source of revenue probably comes from the sale of their E-Book. In this case, they probably want to drive as much traffic as they can to their site and not to their feed. In their case, they simply publish partial feeds instead of full feeds which forces readers who want a complete story to visit their actual site. These are things you need to consider yourself. Every reader via feed is one less person looking at the ads on your site. 

Bookmark Bliss is just over a month and a half old now and it is really too early to tell whether or not subscribers are interested in our content. Our subscription numbers fluctuate so erratically, that it’s tough to tell how many people really are solidly subscribing. I think with our readership and our niche, publishing partial feeds or not publishing a public feed at all would really hurt us instead of help. My goal for Bookmark Bliss is to be a source of good information first and a source of income second so if a few of our readers read exclusively through feeds, that’s ok with me.

This is a judgement call on our part and something every site needs to consider. There is a different path to success for every new site and before you start to promote the hell out of your new feed make sure you’re doing so with your future goals in mind at every step.  Ask yourself, Do I really want more subscribers?