Get off your RSS

January draws to a close (already!!) and it is time for me to own up. I’ve been experimenting on you. Sorry about that but, on the bright side, it’s not like some weird alien abduction involving probes and brain washing.

In fact, if I’m honest, it’s only really occurred to me these past couple of days that I’ve been experimenting.

I’ve been posting to this blog for a very long time and it’s fair to say, and indeed I did say it, that my blogging mojo was slowly eroding. To try and see if it was just laziness I decided that I’d try and post every single day for at least the month of January, and then see how I felt.

This is contrary to most of the advice and reassurance I was given, which largely boiled down to the fact that I need only post when I wanted to and that the lovely, smart, beautiful people who read this blog would be quite happy.

Quality not quantity they said.

Pfffftttt, I said.

Which brings us right up to date.

Putting aside the part of me that writes all this for the sheer fun of it, I turn to my stats. Surely with a more regular stream of content, my stats would be on the rise? I may it stands to reason, doesn’t it?

You’d think.

It hasn’t. Not one jot. My average (130 visits a day) remains as it was throughout all of last year. Flat, static, constant.

Mind you, I don’t actually know how many people read the posts via RSS (dear people who make clever website stats thingies, can’t I get ONE single via of all the consumers of my content?). I’m an avid RSS user myself and I know how often, on average, I actually click through to read a website

So I’d like to extend my experiment a little. For today only, could I trouble you, dearest RSS reader, to click through to the website? You don’t have to leave a comment, just load up the website if you read this post.

I’ll post before and after stats, so come on people LET’S MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!!

Comments

  1. *faithful RSS reader clicking through* 🙂

    I really must do something similar with more regular content. I think I’m getting blog-jaded…

  2. I’m an Rss’er. I only click through to make a comment- but I’ve read every one of your Jan posts ,although since we’re all fessing up here, I did skim read the one you wrote about your phone as I’m the sort of person who uses her mobile phones for calls only (and that’s only when I remember to take it with me…)

  3. I read by RSS. However I haven’t been reading you lately because I like to comment on your blogs and have mainly been reading on the move (iPhone) or when eating lunch. So pick blogs to read that I wouldn’t comment on. Mainly work stuff.

    I still plan to read the 14 or so I have stacked up. However if I’m really behind on my blogs, I tend to skim everything.

    I came to this post by MikeTDs twitter. So I’m not sure where the count counts.

  4. Aha, I’ve got through AT LAST!

    I’d entertained vague thoughts of posting every day throughout January, but clearly the wheels came off THAT wagon before I’d even put the key in the ignition. (That’s what drivers do, yes?)

    However, I do seem to be Tumblr-ing every day, if that’s any substitute.

  5. I read by RSS too, and it’s a bit of a pain in the ass commenting from NetNewsWire on my iPhone, which is where I do most of my reading at the moment. I only tend to comment these days if I’ve got something REALLY interesting to say, or if I’m tipsy and think what I’m going to comment is funny (it usually turns out not to be).

  6. Oh you comment whore, you! 😉

    Actually, I’m sort of cheating with the RSS thing because I look at your stuff in GReader and I’ve got a FF extension for it – Better GReader – which means I can click through to your site in a frame within GReader. But I only ever do that for people’s sites if I want to leave a comment …

    Wish I could have forced myself to post every day in January. I’ve come to to a total standstill!

  7. >click<

    What the hell is this? This doesn’t look like google reader… it looks like some sort of ‘other website’. So strange, yet the words on it are so eerily familiar…

    No.. I must simply be imagining things.

  8. Bloglines gives you another 49 subscribers. I usually click through, but I’ve been busy this month and often take several days to catch up. I always read though, as you know.

  9. Bizarrely, I tend to see the site both in “Real Format” and in RSS through Google Reader (which is why I didn’t bother commenting yesterday on this) depending on where I am at the time.

    Current Job has a nasty habit of blocking blog sites (and don’t even attempt owt on blogspot) which is where the RSS feeds and Google Reader come in handy.

  10. Thank you all!

    Stats from yesterday suggest that an extra (on average) 60 people visited the website, which fits with some of the figures I’ve seen around who subscribes to my feeds.

    I wasn’t expecting this many comments either, but apparently my audience is puerile and can’t resist any excuse to make a bad (a)RSS(e) pun. 😉

  11. Not only do I normally read through Bloglines but also I have my numerous Blogs on a constant backlog so I’m commenting on Sunday instead

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