Displaying RSS Subscriber Numbers: When Is It Beneficial?
Mar 18 2008 
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A lot of bloggers have their number of RSS subscribers displayed somewhere on their site/blog. Usually it can be found somewhere in the header or at the top of the sidebar. Some of us see this and wonder: when is it beneficial to show your RSS subscriber stats? Should you put it up from day 1? Should you wait until you have 30 subscribers? 50? 100? 200?
I’ve read many articles that say putting them up too early, when your numbers are low, can cause readers not to subscribe. I guess they’ll see you for the unimportant person that you really are! But all jokes aside, why subscribe to someone just because their numbers are high? Does high RSS numbers somehow validate how worthy you are as a blogger?
For those that have their RSS subscriber stats on their blog, when did decide to put yours up? At what number do you think it’s beneficial for others to do the same?
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I don’t show my subscriber numbers on my site, not because I’m ashamed of my reader numbers, but because I want to avoid the sheep mentality.
I only want readers to subscribe to my blog because they like the content that I put out, not because “everybody else” does…
Readers like that are of little value to you. You end up being unread in their feed readers and your work become little more than a statistic.
I do not want 5000 people who do not read or look at what I produce. I would be much happier with 50 people who actually had an interest.
Agreed. I don’t show mine, mainly from the idea of being embarrassed :-) Ok kidding, there is no benefit unless someone wants to just add you since everyone else is. It is all about content. I would rather have half the readers if they all get actively involved in commenting and truly liking the content.
@Paul OFlaherty and Chris Miller – True enough I don’t want people to follow just to be following. You don’t think it at least makes your blog “seem” valuable enough? Is it possible that subscriber numbers can sort of confirm your value to some extent, thereby making it beneficial to display?
@Cordiva.. they can “confirm your value” to some extent. However I truly believe that the best way to do that is by putting out good content that your users actually comment on and talk about.
10 users doing that is more valuable than 100 doing nothing except being another statistical value. :)
I started displaying my feedburner number a little bit ago when the daily feedburner dance stopped dropping it below 100. I did it partially because that was a milestone I set for myself and partially as an indicator of “importance” and I use the quotes advisedly. :)
I agree with Paul that it ultimately it doesn’t matter – having 100000 users doesn’t make your content better or worse and good content will ultimately win. But when people come to a site they look for clues as to the authority of the site – some clues come from how they found it, was it a link from someone they respect? A top link in the search results? Clean and nice site design? All these things are tiny but they add up to how much attention they’re going to pay. I expect that the RSS sub number is a part of that equation. I don’t know when it starts to have a positive effect – probably for everyone it’s different, but I believe it does have an effect, even if it’s a small one.