RSS Troubles – Do You Have Them Too?

You know I’m rather quite annoyed with this RSS feed here. They say it’s good to display your RSS feed but what happens when your RSS feed falls off the map? Well that’s where mine has been for the last 5 days, I was so proud of my RSS feed getting to 3000 and now it’s nowhere near that.

I’m reminded by what Alice Seba mentioned on her blog. Something to the effect of, “Focus less on the Feed and more on your business.”

Sure an RSS feed is great to show social proof and that people are actually interested in YOU and your business. It’s also great for advertisers as well. But do you think it’s an EGO thing?

RSS Feed To me I think it’s way more important to develop a relationship with people that come along to the site and create products that are valuable to the customer. If you haven’t noticed yet I’ve also been focusing on the site itself and added my picture to the sidebar today.

The funny thing is, my traffic is up due to following the advice inside the Blog Mastermind program, so I have more visitors coming along who I can possibly connect with. Plus, RSS is not mainstream at all it is mostly those who are a bit more “techy” than others.

What’s that RSS number really worth?

Does it increase my income? … Maybe a smidge.

Should you be impressed with how BIG my RSS number is? … I don’t think so, I think what will impress you is what this site has to offer you.

I’m now officially done spending time on this RSS number, I will not look to feedburner for help. I’ll just let it sort itself out like it normally does.

What do you think?

Vera Raposo

Bert - yes, it is all quite annoying.

Catherine - yeah that's why I moved the RSS feed down on the sidebar but I'm sure I'll put it back up. I was even tempted to remove it but have left it.

Ed - I like the pretty red box. :)

Blogger Source - it's true, there are other ways to judge your success.

Business Logos - you are very right and that's pretty much why I've left it there. RSS is a valuable tool and I love it, I just wish the numbers wouldn't fall to less than half, it about gives me a heart attack. lol. Thanks for your comment.

Jason - I am certainly not an RSS expert by any means but it's a very valuable tool for traffic to your site. I have it set up that when you subscribe to the RSS here it alerts you via email every time 5 posts have been written, that brings my subscribers back to the site as well. Plus like what Business Logos said above, if you don't want to visit a ton of websites in one day you can scan the information inside your RSS reader which makes things alot easier. It amazes me the content we are exposed to each and every day. I use Google Reader.

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Jason Smith

In 2009 I need to investigate the usefulness of RSS as a business tool and for SEO beneits as I have woefully ignored the whole RSS frenzy.....

Business Logos

RSS is a valuable tool it not only can extend your audience but in many ways it satisfies a need your existing audience has. Most of us do not have time to visit 100 websites a day to check the blog posts/news/movies/weather whatever, but we can scan the RSS headlines and click through on items of interest. Saving significant time. I bet without RSS you would lose more of your audience than you care to think about.
While I agree the number may be meaningless, that does not negate the value of the RSS feed IMO :-)

The Blogger Source

Once you've achieved a certain level of respect numbers don't seem to be important.

Ed Roach

I don't concern myself with it at all. It's there for those who wish to partake, but I ignore it mostly. I like the pretty orange colour though :)

Catherine | Natures Sunshine Store

I agree with you. its not on how many digits the number in your rss feeds... its on how the people who visit your site enjoy their stay and the business they are doing with you.

Bert England

quite often I have seen sites where the RSS feed didn't work or the site wasn't updated anymore . Only seeing update dates like 5 days ago or 2 weeks ago, when you where used to see 5 hours ago is annoying from a visitor point of view.
As owner of a site/blog running a RSS feed I always include my feeds into my myYaoo account to check if everything works OK.