Comments on: Scoble vs the average blogger

By: TheGreenMan

TheGreenMan — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 05:35:44 +0000

An analysis of my ad revenue shows that only 1% – 2% comes from regular readers who enter via the front page. Almost all ad revenue comes from people arriving at an archive page on the site via a google (etc) search.

Accordingly I have no problem with regular readers reading via RSS.

Feedback from regular readers who do click on ads do so specifically to contribute to the revenue of the site and presumably will continue to do so.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 02:16:47 +0000

110% with Mr. Stern. I’ve written this before, but anyone who uses an ad blocker to block the inline (I don’t serve popups, popunders, invues, interstitials… any of that stuff, just a few on the page ads – not that it matters) is not wanted by me as a visitor. That may seem like a crazy thing to say, but I consider it to be a matter of respect and to block ads is disrespect.

By: Tom Raftery's I.T. views

Tom Raftery's I.T. views — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 19:29:12 +0000

Full feeds or partial feeds?

There is a debate happening in some quarters of the Blogosphere right now on whether it is better to have full or partial feeds on your blog. There are reasoned arguments on both sides.

Chris Davis reckons that
the idea that you can separate conten…

By: Hadley Stern

Hadley Stern — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 11:30:01 +0000

As someone who publishes a blog of sorts I always find it amazing when readers complain about advertising. At a certain point if readers want quality content on an updated basis someone as to be, err, writing, that content. And that takes time, which, take money.

I always wonder what reader like John Redelfs does for a living. I assume he works. Would he be ok if I came and took his paycheck because I found paying him obnoxious.

The equation is rather simple. There will always be hobbyist bloggers, but there will also be sites, like this one, that are far more than blogs. In order for them to exist, advertising is needed.

By: The Blog Herald: more blog news more often » Blog Archive » Content theft on the rise: What now Scoble?

Wed, 01 Jun 2005 03:17:02 +0000

[...] t Scoble’s jihad against partial RSS feeds continues at full stength. Last Friday in Scoble vs the average blogger I highlighted one area that I personally here, [...]

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 28 May 2005 16:28:19 +0000

1300 full text feeds – Scoble probably needs to drop some so that he can actually do some work at Micro$oft anyway. As I commented on my own post about his toys-out-of-pram rant, it doesn’t make much difference to me what content he does or doesn’t get as I don’t read his M$ propaganda anyway.

By: John Evans

John Evans — Fri, 27 May 2005 16:03:12 +0000

On RSS ads, I note that Rok Hrastnik thinks they’re not part of RSS DNA. So does Dave Winer. I must say I find the ads from Jason Calacanis’s personal blog, which I view in Newsgator, as loud and tacky, like a brawl in church. I wouldn’t dream of clicking on them. Having now seen the beasts in action, I won’t be using them ~ even when I get 100 subscribers (How can you tell?).

Again, though, it’s horses for courses. Short tail stuff, maybe; long tail stuff, probably not. I suspect though that it’s inevitable and coming bigtime to an aggregator near you.

By: Jon Abad

Jon Abad — Fri, 27 May 2005 15:07:30 +0000

In reading Scoble’s reasons for dropping partial feeds, I think he made the right call. If someone writes something interesting, then noise will be made and he’ll hear about it. The man keeps 1300 feeds in his aggregator for crying out loud.

Re your choice to go partial, i think you should use the excerpt facility in wordpress to write better teasers instead of letting wordpress chop out the first few sentences. That would be helpful.

And re rss ads… the ones that i’m seeing aren’t very relevant but they’re also not very intrusive but restraint is not a quality that I assign to the webvertising industry. I expect rss ads to get much much worse and when that day comes, those feeds are out the window.

By: Darryl

Darryl — Fri, 27 May 2005 15:00:47 +0000

Duncan,

To be honest i’d use a greasemonkey script to filter them (i use bloglines as my feedreader) so you can put adds in your feeds as much as you want.

I don’t know where I fall with respect to the majority of your readers.

By: site admin

site admin — Fri, 27 May 2005 14:34:10 +0000

Darryl and John
It’s not something I did lightly, and the Scrapper issue was particularly bad for me. When it came down to it, I let my own behaviour be the judge, when I read content I’m interested in on partial feeds, I click thru, and that remains my challenge now in terms in writing style.

I’d be interested to know what everyone thinks about RSS ads? If I knew I could put them in, they’d get at least a little bit of revenue, it wouldn’t upset too many people, but more importantly would upset the scrappers, I’d reinstate the full feed tomorrow.

By: Darryl

Darryl — Fri, 27 May 2005 13:55:44 +0000

Duncan, I must admit that I was disappointed that you went partial text. I personally read less of your postings now than I used to. However, I do understand the need (or at least desire) to monetize the writing. Hey, if you can do it great. I use full text feeds but I don’t run any adds.

If you have compelling exerpts and don’t disappoint on the click-thru then it will probably work out.

It is also alot easier for an established blogger to go partial text than for a newcomer.

By: John Evans

John Evans — Fri, 27 May 2005 08:13:58 +0000

With the Herald you definitely want readers to click through because like a newspaper it’s a lot more than a few articles. My own blog, SYNTAGMA, is not fully monetized, but serves as a platform for my books, so I’m happy to publish full feeds. Horses for courses.

By: John W. Redelfs

John W. Redelfs — Fri, 27 May 2005 06:49:42 +0000

All I can say is that you had better make your headlines compelling, because it is a lot faster and easier to read the whole content on Bloglines than to click through, and the whole purpose behind RSS feeds is to make reading content on the Web faster and easier. If I want to go to a website, I’ll use my bookmarks.

I’m with Scoble on this one. Much of the reason I’m switching from Web surfing and email is to get away from the obnoxious advertising.