Online Videos - The Ultimate Online Video List
Increase Blog Rankings - Tips for your blog
WP Auctions - Fee Free WordPress Auction Plugin
Ink Cartridges - Why do they cost so much?
What People Eat - Food and Cost Comparison
How Many RSS Readers Does It Take To Make A Blog Popular?
Gaining popularity {and authority} seems to the number one driver for bloggers worldwide to continue blogging, as there is a lot of money to be made in it. The measure of popularity today more or less depends on the number of RSS readers you have.
So, Exactly how many RSS readers does it take to make a blog popular?
I have been showing my RSS reader count since the day I discovered Feedburner, from the lone figure of 5 I now show anywhere from 500 - 600. Does that number make me popular or an authority? I would like to think that it does, till a certain point.
The RSS Measure
I’ve asked a number of fellow bloggers as to how long would they wait till they show their RSS reader count on their blog. Most have said to wait till 250 or even 500. I’m not as prolific in blogging as some of the other tech and new web startup bloggers, but then again I’m a one man operation. I have recently hired two co-authors to help with the growth and expansion of this blog. As do most of the other top blogs in this genre.
There are some blogs that don’t even show their RSS reader count, so nobody really knows how much they are read via RSS. Does this affect their popularity or authority in anyway? I don’t think so.
In today’s social media dominated traffic spikes, which could literally make you a star overnight, RSS reader counts fluctuate regularly. I had 127,000 unique visitors to this blog in October, that hardly had an impact on my RSS count. This could be due to the short attention span that social media users have while surfing via sites like Digg and Reddit. StumbleUpon users tend to stay longer.
Gaining new RSS readers can be quite hard for some, and quite easy for others. So when do you exactly show your RSS reader count? As far as I’m concerned, if you feel like showing your 10 dedicated readers, do so.
I used to think that at a certain time having 250 RSS readers would be the coolest thing, now at 500+ I’m aiming for 2,000 to be comfortable with my blog. Until then I’m not settling down. Probably by the time I reach that figure I’ll be aiming for 5,000!
In conclusion
How many RSS readers do you need to be popular? I think once you hit 500 you can consider yourself to be, but that figure will be changing to 1,000 soon as the blogosphere grows.
Make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed 
~ 13 Comments so far...have your say ~
Type your comment below ↓
- AuctionsBUY This Blog!This blog is up for sale. If you are interested to buy, you can place a bid... - more...Bid For A Review On My Blog - VIILaunch your product, or get a review of your own website/blog or anything e... - more...Banner SpotAbove the fold 728 X 60 leaderboard banner, seen on all pages. BIN for $50.... - more...
-
I Twit, You Follow
I am one of those 500-600 subscribers. You have a great blog here.
In my article on 35 Guaranteed Ways to Increase RSS Subscribers, I state that you should have at least 100 subscribers. I started publicizing my count once I hit 150.
As to how many RSS subscribers do you need to be popular, I don’t know. I guess that I am impressed with anything over 1,000. However, I am not sure if this means you are popular. I tend to think that 1,000 shows a lot of popularity.
Thanks for subscribing Fred.
It’s a tricky thing to base popularity on RSS readers, that’s why I keep wondering how many do we really need?
I’m proudly displaying my 15 RSS subscribers, because I know how valuable even ONE subscriber who visits often is, as compared to thousands who don’t ever read your feed.
This comes from years of email marketing experience, where my focus was always on finding (and delighting) the 20% to 25% of email subscribers who responded to my messages, instead of chasing huge lists of 50,000+ addresses with basically unresponsive subscribers who automatically filtered your notes into their junk folders.
Want to boost my RSS reader count by a massive 6.6% today? You can do it by subscribing - but hurry, when I get to 100 readers, you’ll only be able to make this 1% higher!
All success
Dr.Mani
www.MoneyPowerWisdom.com
It’s very dependant on the niche. For you, I think 500-600 is good sine this niche is heavily over-saturated. Does it make you an expert? Certainly someone to listen to, but no John Chow or Darren Rowse. This is of course just going by subscriber numbers. your content may very well be more valuable than Chow’s, but since you weren’t one of the first, or a marketing guru, your numbers and readership aren’t as high.
For my blog (Automoblog.net) it’s about sports cars, and I teeter between 800-900 RSS readers. It puts me above many other car blogs, but certainly no Autoblog or Jalopnik. Perhaps for the same reason. It seems with my niche, you’re either really high or really low in readers, yet somehow I’ve made it right in the middle. Thing is, you have more loyal readers than I do just because the nature of your site. My articles are very factual and rarely creative, unlike yours, so I have little room to innovate.
For me if I touch 250, I am over the moon already because I never ‘push’ for that and the readers subscribe voluntary. I have three blogs over 200-270 and I am one happy blogger.
When I see a blog much worse than mine and has over 500, I know they are cheating already. Just that I do not know how they do it.
interesting RSS plug..lol
I am hovering around 50 ^_^
*proud*
At least 885 I’d say…
@lilian - A lot of people like bad content, just look at Techcrunch
hehe
@johncow - I beg to differ
I wouldn’t publish my number if it was below 100 (which it is). I also feel that RSS numbers do not show whether a blog is popular or not. I would say word of mouth and number of links would be a better representation of your popularity. That being said anything about 500 readers is impressive in my books.
I have around 50 RSS subscribers and plan to begin displaying my RSS subscriber count proudly once I reach 100. But, it isn’t like I’m trying to hide it, if you want to find out almost all the information you want about the kind of traffic I see, all you have to do is visit my advertise page.
[…] How Many RSS Readers Does It Take To Make A blog Popular? - Everybody Go To Examining Blog Trends: Magazine Style WordPress Themes - Kyle’s Cove Gmail Gets Colored Labels & Chat With AIM Users - ShanKri-la […]
I would say 500+ I’d be happy just to get that much.
I think every RSS reader is valuable. According to my latest count, I have about 25-30 readers and I appreciate every single one of them because I know they actually READ my content.