problogger.net— After some informal polling, here are the most often cited reasons why readers of your blog will unsubscribe. Via ProBlogger.
Feb 28, 2007View in Crawl 4
This is the worst for me. Quantity, quality, and price - you can only have 2. It seems so many of the "quantity" bloggers are sacrificing quality to the dogs.
I'm surprised that "too many posts" was the top reason for leaving, followed by "too few." I wonder what the perfect balance is -- one post a week? One a day? Three a day? One an hour?My guess is that it varies from blog to blog. Some places, like Boing Boing, readers want lots of updates, since it functions as a workplace-diversion blog for a lot of folks. On other blogs, like Violent Acres, readers are probably content to wait a few days for a more throughly-crafted essay.How do authors go about determining the number of posts their readers expect?
will people start digging me down please? I usually say something that pisses everyone off although i don't try to. Some reason I'm being digged up a little and i almost feel offended.
Personally I think that sites like Digg can get away with 100+ a day, since most of them I don't care about so they get skipped over, and I can happily click "Mark all as read" and not think twice. Sites like.. Lifehacker, ProLost, FXGuide - where the content may lead me to do something (Play with an application, or compositing technique, or generally read into something more) would be very annoying if there's too much content.With Digg, when I click on an article I'll probably quickly read the content, possibly comment, then be done with it. With ProLost I might start After Effects or Shake and fiddle for a while, go and search around for more similar tutorials/articlesI'd guess the more specialized the content (Take my ProLost example, which is basically only about compositing, and compare it to Digg, which has a wide range of content, most of which won't appeal to one single reader), the less posts there should be..Although, I don't really see why too many posts would be a reason to unsubscribe (Aside from Digg-levels of new items, where reading "All new items" can be very annoying)
Depends on the subject.. A photography-oriented feed really should have images in it, where as a feed on command-line applications probably shouldn't..Subject-fitting images can make it easy to quickly scan though a lot of items, unfitting images will just look silly
Formatting also has a role.I dumped engadget because the things took up the majority of my google reader and had little content.I dumped Consumer Reports because I'd get 5+ result at times of the same thing.I'll dump any feed where the noise ratio gets out of hand.God amazing how in three months though google reader has completely changed how I use the web.
humanrobotMar 1, 2007
Cuz they don't know what's going on!!!
erinspiceMar 1, 2007
This is the worst for me. Quantity, quality, and price - you can only have 2. It seems so many of the "quantity" bloggers are sacrificing quality to the dogs.
markdr123Mar 1, 2007
Well am I really supposed to believe that my RSS readers are subscribing because I don't have images in my feed?
upsidedorkMar 1, 2007
I'm surprised that "too many posts" was the top reason for leaving, followed by "too few." I wonder what the perfect balance is -- one post a week? One a day? Three a day? One an hour?My guess is that it varies from blog to blog. Some places, like Boing Boing, readers want lots of updates, since it functions as a workplace-diversion blog for a lot of folks. On other blogs, like Violent Acres, readers are probably content to wait a few days for a more throughly-crafted essay.How do authors go about determining the number of posts their readers expect?
netzdamonMar 1, 2007
will people start digging me down please? I usually say something that pisses everyone off although i don't try to. Some reason I'm being digged up a little and i almost feel offended.
Closed AccountMar 1, 2007
Personally I think that sites like Digg can get away with 100+ a day, since most of them I don't care about so they get skipped over, and I can happily click "Mark all as read" and not think twice. Sites like.. Lifehacker, ProLost, FXGuide - where the content may lead me to do something (Play with an application, or compositing technique, or generally read into something more) would be very annoying if there's too much content.With Digg, when I click on an article I'll probably quickly read the content, possibly comment, then be done with it. With ProLost I might start After Effects or Shake and fiddle for a while, go and search around for more similar tutorials/articlesI'd guess the more specialized the content (Take my ProLost example, which is basically only about compositing, and compare it to Digg, which has a wide range of content, most of which won't appeal to one single reader), the less posts there should be..Although, I don't really see why too many posts would be a reason to unsubscribe (Aside from Digg-levels of new items, where reading "All new items" can be very annoying)
Closed AccountMar 1, 2007
Depends on the subject.. A photography-oriented feed really should have images in it, where as a feed on command-line applications probably shouldn't..Subject-fitting images can make it easy to quickly scan though a lot of items, unfitting images will just look silly
Closed AccountMar 2, 2007
Formatting also has a role.I dumped engadget because the things took up the majority of my google reader and had little content.I dumped Consumer Reports because I'd get 5+ result at times of the same thing.I'll dump any feed where the noise ratio gets out of hand.God amazing how in three months though google reader has completely changed how I use the web.