Feed Subscribers are Funny
FeedBurner is a great service that tracks the amount of users that subscribe to your feed. With a low amount (such as myself: 20-30) or subscribers, it will tend to fluctuate. Recently I had 29 subscribers, and it went to 20 then next day, but do 9 people really unsubscribe? It’s weird with the way it goes up and down. For example:
- Subscribers are not dependent on traffic
- Subscribers are somewhat dependent on posting
- Visits are completely dependent on posting
Subscribers are not dependent on traffic. This isn’t literal of course, because if you want thousands of subscribers, you should be getting thousands of visits, but on an average day here I’ll get 55-60 hits and 20-25 subscribers. So, when I don’t post (that later on) and get like 25-30 hits and still 20-25 subscribers, that shows that they are not completely dependent on traffic.
Subscribers are somewhat dependent on posting. Well, obviously! No one wants to read a feed that is always empty! Luckily here I post 8-10 times a week, even if I skip a day during the week 
Visits are completely dependent on posting. And this is proven when I don’t post and get half the hits. This is really how it should be, because with fresh content comes fresh visitors, and repeat visitors, and when there is no fresh content this is where your linking and word of mouth comes in. If you’re not posting new stuff, or doing something new, then the people that are coming in are the late readers and the people referred from emails, search engines, forum signatures, back links, etc…
So in the end I wonder if FeedBurner’s algorithm is messed up, if 9 people unsubscribe in a day, and on that day I posted twice, and one was actually an in depth and quality writing. Not something I’m totally worried about right now, however, as the free time department has been nonexistent with school/sports and clients. Then trying to squeeze a post in here everyday is pushing it! 
Leave a comment
Loren Nason
March 27th, 2007 at 5:25 PM
Good post but I haven’t yet digested it all.
I have noticed also if i don’t post enough my feed count will drop. But my traffic doesn’t call all from my feed I would say only 50% comes fromt the feed and the other is searc traffic.
What i do notice is that when I loose subscribers, I start to think why. Is it because my writing is crap, or they signed up during a 2 day stretch when i didn’t have anything valuable to say. This past week my count has gone from 160 -> 137 -> 177 so its weird. Also the numbers always drop on weekends then are back by monday or tuesday.
BTW - I can’t remember how i found your blog, but keep it up.
Loren
Rick Klau
March 27th, 2007 at 5:42 PM
Hey Connor -
Looking at your stats, my guess is that the variation is a byproduct of 10-15 of your subscribers using applications that may not be checking feeds everyday. If a feed isn’t requested by a particular application on a given day, then we won’t record it as a subscriber - that’s an important distinction vs. “unsubscribed”. Someone who doesn’t fire up Outlook 2007 on a Saturday hasn’t unsubscribed, they just apparently didn’t turn their computer on on Saturday. (Who are these people? Apparently some people take weekends off. Weird.)
So… I think a variation of a few people here and there - in your case, the variance seems to be a variance of 9 subscribers - seems to be about average. And if you ever want to dig in, you can always look at each day’s stats, and click on ’subscribers’ - that way you can see which apps are causing the spikes (or dips).
Hope that helps,
Rick Klau
VP, Publisher Services
FeedBurner
rickk@feedburner.com
AIM/Y!/Skype: RickKlau
Connor Wilson
March 27th, 2007 at 10:10 PM
That probably another reason why my numbers fluctuate, Loren. My SE traffic is very minimal. But I know that the same as you if I don’t post the feed #s will drop, but if I miss a day, they’ll stay the same, or raise one, like today.
And thanks for the reply Rick. I’m really into the stats of everything, so the FeedBurner panel is great for all my needs. There’s honestly nothing in there that I would add. I’ve even learned to interpret the Live Hits and what kind clients I’m getting to predict more or less the days to come.
Thanks again (second or third time, plus email?)
Tony
March 30th, 2007 at 12:49 AM
Just to add a bit to this - the FeedBurner subscriber count is the estimated number of people who have requested your feed on the previous day. As Rich mentioned some people’s application take some time off. Others (like my desktop reader) check the feeds every few hours throughout the day (FeedBurner tries to filter it out down to 1 count though).
Then you get different bots that check up once every few days. Fluctuation is natural and should be expected. Just watch your weekly trends and see which way the average shifts.
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