Posts Tagged ‘Readers’
From 1000 subscriber to 400 and so on? How does that happen, and why?
- Why does my Feedburner subscriber count fluctuate so much?
- Are people unsubscribing and subscribing as much as my Feedburner counter says?
- I notice your Feedburner counter goes up and down each day – why?
- My RSS Subscriber Counter Goes Down Every Weekend – Why?
This week, Hendrik from California Blog and DonkeyBlogger (now part of duoblogger) asked me how, and why his feedburner count goes up and down. Since I didn’t knew the exact answer to this question, I went and did some research on this matter.
Here’s how I found the answer to this question:
I found the answer quite simple via google: (check the link in the last paragraph)
“When we report a subscriber number, that represents the total number of individuals who had the feed requested on their behalf on that day.”
Most of these subscribers fall into one of two groups:
- those using a stand-alone feed reader
- those using a web-based feed reader
In the case of stand-alone feed readers, that user has an application running on their computer which activates the feed repeatedly throughout the day. We look at characteristics of those requests, and differentiate between repeated requests from the same person (as indicated by regular polling intervals, consistent IP addresses, and common user agents) and different requests (where one or more of the previous data points vary).
In the case of web-based feed readers (My Yahoo, Google Reader, Bloglines, Pageflakes, etc.), those services retrieve the feed repeatedly throughout the day, but do so on behalf of multiple people. Almost all of these services report to us how many of their users are subscribed to the feed. At the end of the day, we tally up how many stand-alone feed readers are subscribed, and add them to the web-based users. The end result is the total subscriber number we report. (I’m leaving a few details out; check the link below for a more complete answer.)
The fluctuations are almost always due to people using stand-alone computers who don’t turn their computer on, or don’t load their feed reader on a given day. If their feed reader doesn’t ask for the feed that day, we don’t see them, and consequently don’t include them as a subscriber.
Finally, for a more comprehensive look at the various components of a subscriber report, there is a post on this found on Labnol. I have to say; it’s from 2006 but you can’t say it aint informative. It also makes some important comments on “Reach”.
I came across Melvin’s blog and I really like it. He made a post that was entitled “Why Teens Should Try Making Money By Now.” Melvin is the owner of Melvinblog which is a blog about making money online and various other subjects.
In this post Melvin has talked about his personal experiences with making money online as a teenager. He shares with us why people question him and don’t understand why he blogs. He has also posted a list of spectacular reasons as to why he does this. You should definitely check it out!
I found this post very interesting because I am also a teenager trying to make money blogging. I can relate to this post that Melvin made. I am only 19 years old believe it or not 
. Internet marketing and blogging is still very new to me, but in just this short period of time I have learned more then some have in their lifetime. All this knowledge I share with my readers and I am still learning as I go. You can never know too much when to comes to pretty much anything…there is always something out there to learn.
The thing I love most about blogging and internet marketing is that everyone can do it. Most 16 to 23 year olds do not own their own business. I am 19 and I do own my own business and that business is my blog. I think that if teenagers had the knowledge to know that they could do this, more teenagers would be getting involved in this kind of thing.
As I am still a teenager, I want to know how many other teenagers out their own a blog. I want to see just how old my readership base is and where you guys come from as to compared to myself.
If you are a reader of my blog, then I ask you this question…
How old are you and what are your thoughts and opinion on teenagers making money online?
Contact Us
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Hendrik
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| Twitter: | @Hendricius |
| Skype: | Hendricius |
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Mark
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Top commentators blog
As you might have noticed I have now installed a top-commentators plugin on my wordpress blog. The plugin shows the people that commented most as a widget. What might sound like a SEO-horror for old time SEO experts is a nice way of getting visitors on your blog.
The top commentator plugin rocks – if there is anyone telling you the opposite – take out a fish and slap him twice. But why do people find your blog just because of this plugin?
It’s very easy, the key to all SEO these days is getting links to your blog. Bloggers are always searching for dofollow blogs where they can comment (dofollow means there is no nofollow attribute on hyperlinks). Nofollow is a SEO killer – your backlinks do not get credited if it they have the nofollow attribute. Consequently you will be in the need of dofollow links. The top commentator plugin provides such links.
So, to sum it up – Bloggers are searching for dofollow blogs where they can comment to get more links to their website. But, you are not mainly targeting those (you will need a nofollow-free plugin for wordpress to do so) you are targeting the ones that are searching for “top commentators” + blog (not sure about the exact code, if you know it, please let me know, thanks). Those people will find your blog there and are eager to write comments. The reason for that is simple – the top commentators are hyperlinked without a nofollow attribute. That means, if your blog is relatively popular they are getting an authority link! That’s exactly what people are looking for – free dofollow high page rank links. Nonetheless, don’t search for high page rank links – page rank does not matter. It only indicates the time that is required for your site to get indexed by google.
So, using this addon will attract new people to your blog. Make sure you reset the statistics every month, because that way they are forced to comment every month. They will come back and every page impression means money for you.
So, let’s get started – download the top commentators plugin. Unzip it, open your FTP application and place the content of the .zip in your /wp-content/plugins folder. Go into your “WordPress settings”, go to “plugins” and enable the top commentator extension. Next step is to go into the “Design”, “Widgets” and then drag the plugin onto your sidebar. Voila, you got it installed and working.
My top commentator settings
The next step is the correct configuration of the plugin. Use the settings I used. You can find them in the picture on the left, and yes,I think they are best. Reading my article you should by now agree on that.
You could perhaps set the time until the counter gets reseted a little longer, but that depends on you. I like my visitors to return every month, nonetheless it might be a little unfair for your old fan-readers who are subscribed and commented for months. Decide yourself which value you want to place there. Make sure to make the links nofollow-free. Again, the bloggers are searching for your blog to get top dofollow links – no nofollow links.
Some of you are probably rolling their eyes and say: “OMG NOES – MY PR WILL GET LOWER!!11!”. Yes, the Page Rank of your forum posts will not be as high anymore. Nonetheless – Page Rank does not matter, so don’t even bother about it. Quality back links do and you will get more of them with more people reading your blog. I will tell you something: Google is known to check the incoming links to webpages, whenever they do so they also occasionally send Robots to those sites. That means, linking to other pages will get all of your pages indexed better and faster. Outgoing links do as well matter for SEO, that’s for sure. Google loves blogs and user generated content, that’s why they also love the top commentators. Trust me – it is a good strategy. See this blog and you will notice that high-pr sites have the plugin installed as well. If you have some time I can only recommend you to do some commenting on those blogs. Most of them are old, valuable blogs – especially valuable in terms of link juice.
I found out about the next method on Hugo Santos blog. At the end of the month he is writing a post which contains the names of the users who commented most in the last month. It as well contains a link to their websites. That’s very fair – the users are getting a permanent one way link from your blog and also get a well-deserved thanks.
In a nutshell, I don’t see anything bad in the top commentators plugin for your blog. I only see benefits, it is a very good way of getting organic traffic and readers to your blog.