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Andrey “Rarst” Savchenko —  — Web — rss-feeds, subscribe

RSS icon placement

How wrong I was.

I am really used to RSS icons in the top of sidebars. It’s so fitting and prominent place for them. And Wordpress theme I used for this blog already had it there. Only had to tweak and add to that RSS stuff. I wish someone invented software that makes alarm when I do stupid things.

After month or so I’ve read somewhere (on research run) that “below post” is great place for ads. Not like I run lots of ads but that may work for RSS feed, right?

Ri-i-i-i-ight. Want to see what adding subscription links to below of posts did to my subscription numbers? Red dot marks the day.

rss_graph

In five following days number of subscribers increased almost by five times from stable level it had for weeks.

Lessons learned:

  1. Do not project personal habits to whole Internet.
  2. When publishing think like publisher, not like reader.
  3. Research and experiment beat habit and default options.

On other hand it did no good to my skribit suggestions page. It’s a pity because I like the idea and now have to decide should I hack it dead for the same reason - my likings doesn’t mean my readers like it as well. And readers take priority (or I’ll end up without any). :)

Or maybe there is some other magic spot that would work for it? Tell me in the comments if you have any ideas about that.

And I am going to go read huge compilation of RSS tips really carefully to punish my dumb (at times) head.

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6 Comments

  • Calvin Yu #

    Rarst, I'd prefer you'd keep the Skribit link :p. I saw your suggestion about the FeedFlare on our GetSatisfaction page, but haven't had a chance to respond. I'd like to work with you and see if we can make it more effective. Calvin

  • Rarst #

    >I’d prefer you’d keep the Skribit link :p. Obviously. :) I think widget could perform better than link, but you remember my opinion on your widget - it's faaat. :) Waiting for v2. >I saw your suggestion about the FeedFlare on our GetSatisfaction page, but haven’t had a chance to respond. I’d like to work with you and see if we can make it more effective. I made simple flare for myself and included it in my feeds, here is url for its code https://www.rarst.net/skribit.xml Feel free to mail me if you need opinions or whatever but I am not much of flare coder - only read feedburner docs a bit and used simple example from it. And I could really use a good ideas on how to make people suggest... You guys should brainstorm it or something. :)

  • Ben #

    Wow, 5 times is such a big increase! I will consider doing the same thing on SEO Horror and see what happens. Thanks for that experiment Rarst!

  • Rarst #

    Ben, you have your feeds in comments block which is nearby so I don't think effect is going to be as prominent. :) Still worth a try - this taught me to think that there is no space not deserving feed link on a page. btw what's your thoughts on skribit? :)

  • Ben #

    Skribit looks interesting...I didn't know about it before! I think it's a clever idea to share suggestions about possible blog posts!

  • Rarst #

    Yeah, it feels like backwards RSS... Instead of pulling content from site readers are pushing suggestions to site. Only RSS became somewhat popular at last - took it years. So it pretty much promotes itself. And with skribit I am having trouble to have readers use it. :(