Full Feeds Or Excerpts For Blogs ?
Here’s a response that another blog thought was too long to publish.
Rather than fight their system, I posted my response here, with a link to the original post and welcome your comments.
Tim & Titel,
Your comments are well taken, but they are just you telling me what’s in it for you. As the owner of 14 blogs in our network I can say without people reading on my site, getting me a visitor and a page view that I can show to advertisers, I’d be unable to continue to spend what I have to spend to keep 14 blogs going.
It may be great for you, but it won’t make the blog or the blogger any better off if you read the feed without clicking thru.
I have over 100 feeds in my reader and I click thru to the ones whose excerpt make me want more. That’s what it’s for.
People wanting to read my hard earned content, written on my time for free is not my idea of a friend.
It’s selfish, at it’s root. I find more content, ads that lead me to more good things, free reports, etc at each bloggers site that isn’t in their feed.
I also gain from those that comment. Their sites are often better than the blog I started out on.
Get over yourselves, click thru and expand your world out of a feed reader. Get the whole experiece.
If a blog wants to feed it’s readers for free and volunteer their content and time for no compensation, that’s their business.
If I’m not going to gain anything from my time, I’d rather be golfing, rather than fighting to feed my readers with good, quality content.
Here’s what I and thousands of bloggers think about those who want to read full feeds and complain that we won’t provide them…
” Some will, some won’t, so what, so who’s next “
That’s why there are thousands upon thousands of blogs, so each reader can find what they want.
I wish you well and wish you would participate..which you can only do if you click thru and comment.
In reality, bloggers who feed your habits with full feeds are really depriving you of the real experience of blogs - PARTICIPATION !
Shame on them.
Have a great weeknd and come visit the Carnival of Marketing.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
Mike, I followed the conversation here from my feed reader, so proving your point can be wrong. I don’t agree with your views on building blogs that are self-centric, though understand that the blogs you describe will drive more revenue from advertising at least in the short term. But many blogs [and John Jantsch's is typical of what i mean] are not there for side revenuse like advertising. Their intention is to drive revenue to the actual business, or to build confidence, or to be of service, the advertising income is secondary. Long term values will out perform short term gains, but you’re right, it is about the conversation. Though participation still occurs without ads, and in the comments via feedreaders. BTW, I have adverts in my feeds, though until I switch blog software, I haven’t got the link to the comments that John has. So it was a simple click through for me to get to the Duct Tape blog and see the comments [as well as the largely irrelevant advertising]
Adrian
That’s the great thing about blogs, Adrian. You and I can converse, agree or disagree, thru the comments that are available on this page.
I’m pretty sure I’m right about the fact that without clicking thru to the page, you’ll never share in the full experience a blogger has to give you.
You as a graphic kind of New Zealander should agree with that more than anybody.
You might even like the graphic about the Carnival of Marketing that my wife made for me.
The graphics you create will do the reader no good in a feed reader and feed readers should be the bane of your existance.
Saying John’s not trying to monetize his blog is, well…silly. If he wasn’t trying to make money, why would he sell ads, link to his books, put Yahoo contextual ads between his post and the comments and do all the other things he did to try to earn money.
Granted, he and his cohorts don’t do a good job of monetizing, nor do they build community, but they are there and therefor should do a better job.
I allow comments easily, answer every one and welcome differences of opinion here and hope to never change.
Nor will I ever change my mind about full feeds versus excerpts. Nor will I ever try as hard as they do to make commenting as insignificant as it seems over there. They have no idea about the community of blogging, as evidenced by their sterile commenting rules and regulations and their lack of response to comments as a whole.
I will give you, as a New Zealander, one thing…Michael Campbell is one of my favorite golfers and I was thrilled to see him get a major under his belt last year.
Please stop by often and I welcome your comments, whether we agree or agree to disagree.
But in this world of interuption marketing, the world is moving to RSS, away from the pathetic attempts of email marketing spam, and to a degree away from the monetisation of google ads. They’re in my blog much as they run on John’s and most everyone’s. But that’s not why the blog is there [to host the ads]
If the targetting of the ads is good enough [what's this post got to do with coil binders?] maybe with enough throughput there’ll be enough click through to make the ads worthwhile. But once again, I am adamant that the adverts are not the point, the conversation in the blog is the point, even when it’s a one sided rant without comments, it’s a conversation waiting to start.
Commenting happens in feed readers, full feeds are vital, but to splogs it’s anathema, just pepper the replies with keywords, RSS your hints and hope for hits and then ad revenue.
Open and full communication without agendas based on income only, that works.
Without people clicking on the blog, thru the feed reader, blogs will wither and die.
No ifs, no ands, no buts.
Without the full effect of the blog, the design, the graphics, the colors….we might as well all just text message each other.
Thanks for coming by, thanks for adding your voice to the conversation and thanks for being mature about our agreeing to disagree.
That’s how a blogger adds to the community at his/her blog.
Read it and learn…not weep, all of you who have a blog and don’t respond to the comments, who don’t bring your readers screaming and kicking, if need be, into the conversation.
Anybody who wants to read full feeds instead of visiting the blog, well, you might as well pick up a newspaper.
There will never be any full feeds coming from our network of blogs, mainly because of all the splogs out there who grab your feed and claim it as their own content.
Excerpts are the only way to combat that particular form of vermin and I can only wait til it happens to those who are silly enough to allow it to happen.
Peace.
[...] ally not…full feeds are really just a slow death for a blog” Mike also writes on his own blog: “I’m pretty sure I’m right about the fact that wit [...]
Carnival of Marketing is Up for 13 Feb
Magic Hour CommunicationsLouis Gudema is hosting the Carnival this week with seven selected and vetted marketing posts. And while there check out Michael Chaffin in “Emotion Generators and Why Stories Matter”. ### Was this helpful? Do comment. Consi…
Mike, this isn’t a conversation, I rant about my thoughts, you obstinately restate your position and how it will never change. That makes two of us ranting in the wilderness of the internet, potentially with a readership of two.
most blogs are already dead, unless they can make the leap to become A listers or are relevant enough to make use of the long tail.
Adrian,
You’re right about two things :
1) This isn’t a conversation - that’s true because you cannot follow along, nor can you accurately answer any of the objections.
2) I’m not changing my position - no need to when I’m right.
Here’s a tip for you from someone who’s sold well over $35 million worth of product - Trying to please everybody is a fools proposition. Trying to be everything to everybody is the fast lane to the poorhouse.
A business has to know what to sell it’s product for to be able to conduct their business. If you let the customer price your product/service, you might as well buy your ticket for the ride to the poorhouse.
I know what it takes for the 14 blogs we operate to survive - if I cannot get the return I have to have, I’ll do something else besides pro bono writing.
You’re welcome to try to give away all you know and do for free….as for me and my house, we’ll do it differently.
If I can’t stay in business, due to a lack of profits, I won’t be there to sell you what you want at the price you want to pay.
You have to participate in my future as I participate in yours.
Do any of these mean anything to you or am I wasting my time trying to teach you something you’ll never get ?
One important point about feeds vs web is that quite honestly many pages are ugly.
In my rss reader everything is nice and simple. There is no clutter, and everything is easy to read.
I agree that a reader reading via an RSS feed isn’t participating in the whole conversation, but it also doesn’t prevent them from doing that. I tend to click through from my newsreader if the article is interesting enough. However I rarely know by the title or first paragraph if the article is really interesting or not.
Another issue that seems to be of concerns is advertisers. The choice is have people click through to most articles - and leave faily quickly (Like I tend to do with partial feeds) or only click through on articles that *really* interest them. If the advertising is relelvent, the second group would likely be far more profitable for the advertizers. Quality over quantity.
I’m a reader of DTM, and I was happy to see John switch to a full feed. Too early to tell for sure, but I bet I’ll be going to his site just as often (if not more) then when it was a partial feed.
Hey John,
Thanks for adding to the conversation.
I appreciate your comment and hope you’ll saty around and keep adding to the community here at Simplenomics.
That’s one of the problems with the whole DTM network, no sense of community, because the bloggers don’t continue the conversation…most of the time. Comments seem to scare them and it seems like they want to give out info, but not receive any. Kinda like a billboard…you know, a blog without comments.
good post.
i was wondering about this very issue, since i have a partial RSS feed. Thanks for putting it so succinctly.
Glad to help.
Leave a Comment