RSS Question

[sherman51]

I have asked around and found no answers to this.
If i was to set up an RSS feed on a website, does anyone no whether or not a person receiving the feed counts towards a hit on the site.
My question is generally more for a seperate idea i have for a site that would be a blog of sorts. If i was to try to sell advertising on the site down the road, i would use the number of hits i have as a basis for ad revenue. My concern is, if i have RSS subscribers, would it reduce my daily hit totals or not because they aren't coming to the site on a regular basis. Any one know the answer to this?

Alex

[Strider1973]

First I have to say that only very few people will subscribe to the RSS feed, therefore this will have only minor impact on the number of your visitors.

With RSS, the subscribers only get an abstract of your article. If they want to read the full article, they have to click on the link within their RSS reader and end up visiting your page, which will generate you a hit.

So the question is if your RSS subscirbers will visit your site

1) more often (because they learned through the RSS feed that you have a new article on your site) OR
2) less often (because they regularly visit your site to check if you have posted a new article

I would vote for 1), because after visiting your page three times without seeing a new post, they will completely stop visiting it...

So I would recommend to go for the RSS feed.

[Unknown Webmaster]

You can track the number people who read your RSS feed by using a service like Feedburner (free).

I think RSS feeds and newsletters are a very good thing to offer your visitors, since they allow you to grab hold of their attention, even when they aren't on your site.

If you are concerned about them "missing out" on your advertising, you can add "special" ads that will only appear in your RSS feed.

[Self Made]

First I have to say that only very few people will subscribe to the RSS feed, therefore this will have only minor impact on the number of your visitors.

I disagree with that, though I guess it depends on whether you promote your feed or not. I recommend promoting it, as you want to turn visitors into subscribers (same applies to newsletters).

With RSS, the subscribers only get an abstract of your article. If they want to read the full article, they have to click on the link within their RSS reader and end up visiting your page, which will generate you a hit.

That's generally untrue. It's the option of the site whether to provide a full or partial feed. I'd never provide nor subscribe to a partial feed: they're a pain.

[Melvinjames18]

I'll subscribe to the RSS feed, if I'm very interested in a website. I saw some websites have more than 100k rss readers.

[corpfan1]

I think the BOTTOM LINE, is the more you offer your visitors the better.

We live in a new world of the web - users want easy access, want things quick, want options, and want interactivity. The also want good trustworthy facts. Everyone is in a rush nowadays unless of course you are a Bears Fan - then you just want Cutler's ass whipped.

Good luck with your endeavors Mr. Sherman.

[Michael Martinez]

To answer your original question, regardless of whether you publish a full feed or a partial feed, if the advertising is not included in the feed you cannot (ethically) count RSS hits as part of the traffic that advertisers would have access to.

[thefarang]

First I have to say that only very few people will subscribe to the RSS feed, therefore this will have only minor impact on the number of your visitors.

I have over 1600 subscribers to my RSS feed. Most of my regular readers subscribe to it so they know when I've posted something new. I think your blanket statement about RSS feeds is based on limited observations.

I also have some non-poker related sites and my signups for a site that gets similar traffic as my main poker website has close to 900 people signed up for the RSS feed.

With RSS, the subscribers only get an abstract of your article. If they want to read the full article, they have to click on the link within their RSS reader and end up visiting your page, which will generate you a hit.

Again, somewhat misleading. You can publish your full articles or you can publish an abstract. I used to publish the abstract thinking that I was promoting more traffic to the site but most of the traffic was already familiar with my site and my conversions didn't increase.

So instead of making my users go through an extra step to read my content I published the full articles in the RSS feed and came up with some ways to advertise in the RSS feeds.