Comments on: Do Full Feeds Increase Your RSS Subscriber Count?

By: Biodun

Biodun — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:47:30 +0000

Subscribers make up a large percentage of your loyal readership, it is in your best interests to keep them happy. providing quality content that they don’t want to miss.
Personally, I opt to use full feed and I only subscribe to those blogs that provide full RSS…

By: einfach persoenlich Weblog

einfach persoenlich Weblog — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:12:35 +0000

einfach persönlich Blog-Experiment mit Voll-Feed im März…

Mit Beginn des Monats März biete ich Euch den Feed meines Blogs als Voll-Feed zum Lesen. Als alter Exzerpt-Fan gehe ich zeitbefristet neue Wege und lasse mich überraschen. Wer nicht wagt, bekommt keine Erkenntnisse! In den letzten beiden Woch…

By: Fast Links Collection - Num 37 | MondoBlog

Fast Links Collection - Num 37 | MondoBlog — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:47:43 +0000

[...] I feed completi possono aumentare i vostri sottoscrittori? [...]

By: Friday Tea Time » TheMadHat

Friday Tea Time » TheMadHat — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 19:38:01 +0000

[...] * Missed this last week, but I thought I’d mention something I saw on ProBlogger and full feeds about Leon Ho’s 0 to 12000 subscribers article. I hate partial feeds. If the stuff is good I’ll read it…but I hate them. Full feeds everyone. [...]

By: Les flux RSS, vous les préférez courts ou longs ? at Fran6art, le blog

Les flux RSS, vous les préférez courts ou longs ? at Fran6art, le blog — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 18:26:44 +0000

[...] Henri, sur 2803.com nous pose la question…Est-ce que vous préférez lire dans votre aggrégateur l’ensemble de vos articles ou préférez-vous juste avoir les premières lignes pour vous faire une idée et ensuite aller lire le reste directement sur le blog ? Vos avis seront très intéressants pour nous autres blogueurs et nous aideront sûrement à répondre à certaines questions, comme celle que se pose Darren Rowse: “Est-ce que les articles complets vont accroître le nombre de lecteurs d’un blog?“. A l’opposé, est-ce que proposer une version tronquée de l’article va en faire fuir certains ? [...]

By: Rob Witham

Rob Witham — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 23:30:02 +0000

I use full feeds for my sites and rarely subscribe to partial feeds. Even if I like the site content it’s just too irritating having to click through for every article I want to read. If I wanted to click through to the site on every post I would just bookmark the site and visit it.

By: juzdongivaphuck

juzdongivaphuck — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 22:57:56 +0000

maybe it’s a stupid question but: how can i know if my subscribers view my feed as full or partial?
and if it’s partial how can i switch to the full one?
thank you so much. bye

By: Shane Pike

Shane Pike — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 18:31:24 +0000

Just anecdotally: I actually unsubscribed from your feed right after you went to partial feeds. I hung around for a few days, but hated clicking through every single message to see what it was really about.

Later something led me back to your site months later, and I re-added your feed. Beautiful, full posts again, and now I’m an avid reader.

I’ve seen over and over again that if you treat the user very well, even if it’s a short-term detriment, the rewards are almost always worth it. That’s how I view full feeds. Of course I want people to come to my site, but if they want to read it elsewhere, fine. It’s not costing me anything, and I have no doubt I’m getting more readers — readers who will link to me and spread the word to people they know.

By: Pamela

Pamela — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 15:03:45 +0000

I have unsubscribed to blogs that only have partial feeds and will continue to do so. Full feeds tend to say as a blog writer and reader I value your time and I thank you for reading my article whereas partial feeds tend to relay selfish stats and advertisement needs or issues instead of focusing on the reader and the content. Full feeds is simply good customer service. If the content is good then the readers will come regardless and an occasional advertisement post thanking sponsors is acceptable and understandable.

By: yee

yee — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 03:06:16 +0000

Interesting topic!

As in China,only a few people use rss readers,but nearly all of them prefer full feeds to partial.So i always think full feeds is the best way to keep subscription number.However,when my friend gseeker.com joined CW and used their official poor but unique feed,his subscription was still booming.Now his subscription number is over 3000 ,it’s very special for Chinese Blogs.

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 02:25:36 +0000

I prefer full feeds also as I use my PDA/Cell Phone to read RSS feeds. If a site doesn’t offer a full feed, I have to evaluate whether or not it goes into the list of sites I routinely keep up with manually, and precious few make that cut.

I think we’re going to start to see more people use RSS on mobile devices, and thus full content feeds will be more highly trafficked.

Why punish RSS readers and reward HTML readers? It’s just another format? One that perhaps requires new methods to monetize.

By: Geoff Wilson

Geoff Wilson — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 01:25:03 +0000

I subscribe to the DPS feed and find that I end up not reading a lot of the articles because I don’t want to have to click through. I stay subscribed because there is enough good content that I occasionally do want to click through to an article.

I would be much happier if it was a full feed. I find that with partial feeds, the content has to be an order of magnitude more compelling to keep my attention.

By: Jim Logan

Jim Logan — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:57:24 +0000

I have a preference for full feeds, it makes it much easier to read posts from my RSS reader than clicking over to a person’s site…which I still do, as I just did, when I want to make a comment or read other’s comments.

I have full feeds on my main site and a partial feed on another site I run.

One difference between full and partial feeds is people who hate partial feeds, really hate them. I lost a few readers of my main blog when I once played with partial versus full feeds. In one case I received a nasty email from an “ex-subscriber” who “quit” my blog when I went to partial feeds…I’m probably better off without that reader :-)

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 00:43:59 +0000

It’s a very interesting topic for sure. Personally I think the full RSS feed is the only way to go, and when I recently did a study of the Top 100 Technorati Blogs, I found this is the most common practice in the blogosphere. You can see the study at:

http://www.onlinebulletin.net/commentary/the-rss-debate-full-vs-partial-blog-feeds.html

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 23:42:16 +0000

I do not like partial feeds. I was just thinking about this today as I went through my morning Google Reader routine. I prefer full feeds for so many reasons.

Users: Prefer full feeds
Site owners: Prefer Partial feeds

Advertising is the name of the game. Unless it isn’t and all you are looking for are readers (paid ebook/rss feed subscribers?)

By: Leon

Leon — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 22:21:51 +0000

Darren, thanks for bringing this topic up.

Dave, I would argue that full feed will not give you a negative impact, especially not on your advertisement revenue, unless you sourced some CPM based ads. I have done some close measurements when I switch from partial to full feed. My Adsense revenue didn’t drop, but CTR increased. Logically it may be caused by the subscribers coming from RSS feed do not eager to click ads. They are after the content, not ads.

The population that click ads are coming from search engine searches. (This statement can turn into a post itself)

By: Saman Sadeghi

Saman Sadeghi — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 22:08:16 +0000

I have often thought about moving my feeds to partial to drive traffic to my site, but I know, as a user, I prefer full feeds!

By: Siddharth Thakkar

Siddharth Thakkar — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:42:08 +0000

Hi Darren,

As a reader, I love full feeds. I generally read blogs on Bloglines (on my BlackBerry)/Google Reader (on my notebook) and hate partial feeds, especially if I am on Bloglines. Full feeds give me the opportunity to scan through all the content that has been posted by blogs/newspapers of my interest and I would then have to visit the site only if I want to comment on it or go through the blog archive. Saves a lot of time.

I’d hate to see partial feeds on many blogs I frequently visit, and would usually e-mail the blogger about this as I am completely in favour of full feeds as a blog reader.

Content theft is a sensitive issue, and I don’t think that partial feeds is really the answer to stop content theft.

I agree with you that different blogs could have different styles and hence the blogger could choose between full and partial feeds as per their niche/style.

Also, as Dave pointed out, for some bloggers it is essential to have traffic on their site rather than the number of subscribers. Since we cannot exactly say what increases your subscriber count, one could experiment with both strategies and see what’s more important – traffic or subscribers and then choose a strategy.

At the end of the day, as you rightly pointed out; content is the king. Provide great content, and you’ll have subscribers.

I am happy though that you publish full feeds on ProBlogger!

Cheers!

Siddharth Thakkar

By: fcodc

fcodc — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:06:48 +0000

I’ve had positive results with partial feeds with no notable subscriber flux whatsoever.

I am also in agreement with Dave’s thoughts on partial feeds, especially since readers are more likely to join in on the conversation when they’re in the actual post page.

By: Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 20:52:48 +0000

Darren, I prefer partial feeds, actually, as long as there’s enough information in the partial feed for me to be able to ascertain whether or not I want to read the rest of the article. I also agree with you — and disagree with Justelise — that having a full feed makes it trivially easy for people to steal your content. Really, though, as we get better RSS readers and as the entire blogosphere ecosystem evolves, I imagine that the partial versus full debate will be irrelevant.

Also, worth pointing out is that for some sites, having more RSS subscribers and less traffic could be a negative, something that those bloggers would rather avoid than anything else. Some sites are designed for on-page readers, and even with advertising in the RSS feed itself (cf. Feedburner) it’s still a lot harder to monetize that content than it is on page (as you know, with your wealth of advertising here on this site!)