How Strong is your Subscriber Rate?
FeedBurner offers a great analysis of your feed stats for free. Certain readers however can be dependent on having new content, or even a reader checking their email that day.
Looking at my feed subscribers right now, there is a total of 54. Thanks to FeedBurner, I can see where exactly they come from. First, I’m going to look at Outlook 2007 as a reader, and how over the last 30 days my readers have used it. I’m pretty sure for them to counted as being “subscribed” for that day, they must open Outlook for it to get the new content.
Readers using Outlook 2007 range from 2-12 in the past 30 days. When the number is low (anywhere from 2-4, even 5) I know it will be increasing the next day as people inevitably read their email. When it’s on the higher side, I can count on it dropping. People don’t check their email everyday? How do they live? 
And example of some blogging strategy is yesterday’s lack of a post. My reader count had dropped to 51, and most people would be thinking, “Oh no! I have to write something! Get on Digg! It’s going to plummet!” but I looked at my Feedburner stats instead. I say only 2 Outlook readers and knew I’d be fine, and I really didn’t have the time anyways.
The next reader I’ll look at is Firefox (2.x.x) Live Bookmarks. This is the single most fluctuating feed reader I have, and I would assume it behaves the same for others. It hops around just like the total it contributes to. My best example is back in February when I was getting a combination of Macsurfer traffic and WLTC traffic my feed peaked at 112 subscribers. 92 of those were FFLB. FFLB is a really weak subscription, as they count as “subscribing” very easily.
Using these things in deciding to post or not (usually the best option is to always post :P) or even just sitting back can really work if you have a big schedule. You can still work full time and do many other things while blogging and still grow and be successful. Automated posting always helps too
Leave a comment
Nathan
June 13th, 2007 at 7:27 AM
I have already used automatic posting on my blog and it helps a bit =P
For the record, I use FF Live Bookmarks. I’m quite new to blogs and feeds etc .. so keeping it simple
L3ggy
June 13th, 2007 at 1:13 PM
Lol Connor you right, they have gone up. I use safari rss. It’s hot :P.
Naresh
June 13th, 2007 at 4:45 PM
I didn’t know Outlook could do rss! Thanks, even though that wasn’t the point of this article.
Side Note: Didn’t google buy FeedBurner for $100 M?
Connor Wilson
June 13th, 2007 at 4:49 PM
Yep, It’s been official for a while and rumored for some time before that. Well, we pretty much know that it was $100m, but they won’t say how much *officially*.
Andy
June 13th, 2007 at 5:06 PM
Automated posting, is that when you set a post to publish at a particular time?
I’m not surprised FFLB fluctuates so much, I’d expect a fair few people subscribe and lose the link in a sea of bookmarks, I do that sometimes :p
Connor Wilson
June 13th, 2007 at 5:08 PM
Yeah, that’s automated posting. Great little tool in WP.
L3ggy
June 16th, 2007 at 4:55 PM
Lol WP is for noobs. Make you own blog system like i have. :D. Anyway back to coding now im ahead of Andy
Connor Wilson
June 16th, 2007 at 5:59 PM
Yes, you’ve spammed your way ahead, congratulations!
cherries
June 23rd, 2007 at 4:42 AM
71 readers now!
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