Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
The subscription boom, it's not RSS
The RSS/Feed/Email debate has been raging for a while, in pockets of enthusiasm and then pockets of nothingness. This is pretty much how RSS works and feels to me and many others.Have you ever tried to explain to anyone who is not tech-savvy what RSS means? Do you even know what it stands for (no Googling)? I have tried and it's certainly not easy.I read an extremely interesting post on how to boost your RSS readers. [From here on in this post I'm going to refer to RSS and e-mail readers as subscribers.] The post made me think about RSS and Subscriptions and an example that I have in my repertoire - SA Rocks.SA Rocks was never very strong in the subscriptions department. I kind of used my Feedburner account but kind of didn't. I never tracked it and never followed it. I also used to display full posts in my RSS. I don't anymore but more on that further down.
The User
There are certain types of users and readers that will inevitably visit your blog.The Googler will search for something, find your blog, read it and most likely leave. There is the off chance that they will like what they see and either return or add your blog to their subscription list. The Stumbler falls in to this category too. Both types of users fall under the blanket category of the "Digg Effect" or "Slashdot Effect".The Seeker will actively seek out content that your blog offers, either like and stay or read it and leave.The Regular Reader falls in to two categories and these are the readers that we all like to gather on our blogs. These readers will bookmark your site and religious visit your domain or they will subscribe via RSS or e-mail subscriptions.
RSS - Who it's targeted at
RSS is for savvy users. For Techies who make use of Bloglines, Google Reader and Desktop readers that pull content from a site and display it in conjunction with other blogs or websites that a user subscribes too. Locally that market is tiny, minute and often non-existent for many bloggers and website owners. For this simple reason I personally believe that RSS subscribers are a nice to have, not a means to success.Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that you should completely get rid of your RSS icon, it's a necessity that every blogger must have. The last thing that any blogger wants to do is piss off a potential subscriber by not allowing them the choice to subscribe. But placing all your eggs in the RSS basket is going to leave your subscriptions cracked and flalling.
E-mail subscriptions and why they are the way forward
In my opnion (and this is merely an opinion garnered from my experiences) SA Internet users like e-mail, it is a familiar means to receive information and it is something that many people check daily, if not hourly. This is why I believe that if you are targetting subscriptions, e-mail is the way forward. It is convenient for the user and not intrusive or extra work for them. All they need to do is check their email and read your content.The goal with subsctiptions must be to gain visits to your actual website or blog. In this vain e-mail is a great mechanism to make use of. If people like your content, the chance is they will want more and click through to your site. This is not hard to do. Enter Feedburner.A while back (about 5 months ago) I decided to activate my e-mail subscription option on my SA Rocks feedburner account. It really is as simple as activating the option and placing the code on your site. Users enter their email address and are immediately subscribed to your daily feed, in their inbox, for free. I immediately (±2 weeks) saw a marked increase in my subscribers.Free is a very important word for me to use. I specifically choose it because of the connotations. Free means it's a bonus, it's something that you, as a blogger or content provided, are giving your reader. You are invariably telling them that they come first. They don't even need to visit your site for your content. Your number one priority is having them read, wherever, whenever. You are not only after their clicks, eyes and visits. This is important.But tell me something, how do your readers know that your subscription option is actually free? They don't. Why? Because everything else that they subscribe to in their lives comes at a cost. Newspaper and magazine subscriptions are not free, high end content and extras are not free, not according to local users. Our market is not used to free subscriptions. This is what CopyBlogger says in the post that I've linked to above. You need to make it obvious. Change the wording of your subscription title from "Subscribe via email or RSS" to "Get free updates daily" or "Daily updates in your inbox". I think this might work, even if it is merely a subconscious activation, it will still make a difference to the Googlers and Regular Readers who want to grab your content simply, easily and... for free.The other important thing that I learned through SA Rocks is placement. Placement of your subscription options is integral to the success of your subscriptions. Make your e-mail subscription box a priority in your template or theme. Be sure to make it stand out. There are loads of different opinions on eye-track priority; left to right, top to bottom, colours, flashing text (never) boxes etc etc etc. SA Rocks goes against the common concept slightly. Mark Forrester placed the email subscription in the top right hand side of the SA Rocks design when he handles the SA Rocks redesign. If we wanted it as a top, top priority we would have placed it in the top left of the header, but that is reserved for advertising.
The effects of this were immediate (one week). E-mail subscription began to boom on SA Rocks. Subsequently visits to the blog almost doubled. I'm not saying this reigns true for every blog or publisher, but it worked for SA Rocks.Below is a graphic illustration of SA Rocks subscriptions climbing from the Month of March 2008 to now. The increase is phenomenal.
Full Feeds vs Truncated Feeds
This is a debate that has gone on for a while and still has no conclusion. My conclusion is this: Who cares? Make your choice and stick by it. The complaints that you will receive will be from the Tech-Savvy group of users who are obsessive about feeds and RSS, not the average user who will visit your site or read your content via e-mail.E-mail subscription plays this debate out of the equation. What does it matter to a reader reading your content in their inbox, in full, if you have truncated your RSS feed or not? It doesn't. Furthermore I decided to truncate my RSS feed on SA Rocks (6 or so months ago). I had a couple, literally two, complaints about this but stuck it out and the visits to the blog were markedly increased.
Again this might not prove to be true on all blogs, but for me, it worked. Test out your users, ask them in a blog post and figure out what they want, it's the beauty of blogging, you can ask and have people respond.
The Extras
Remind your audience that your content is available via subscriptions. Spell it out in a blog post once every six months or so, remind them that the option is there. They might have become vigilant RSS users in that time and you can catch them now. This also serves as a helpful tip for new users visiting your site, the Googlers and Stumble crowd.Finally, don't forget to try and reward your readers for visiting and subscribing. Find a prize and give it out to your longest standing RSS or e-mail subscriber as well as your newest one.Subscriptions are important to your blog's continued success and longevity. Be sure to priorities these readers and this option.
Two blogs are better than one
I have been thinking about this for a while now. Whether it's better to focus on one blog or two share your attention between two.I run this blog and SA Rocks. I think that the two are mutually beneficial but conflict one another on occasion. It's a difficult balance but one that I think has been extremely beneficial for me.What you need to maintain two (or more) blogsYou need a clear definition of each blogDiscipline is essentialCreativity is a mustFocusGoalsA plan - this is the most important on that I think I missed out on. You need to have a plan for each blog and each post that you write. If you don't have a plan the blogs can begin to cancel one another out and overrun one another.The prosCross populationCross referencingAssociation linksPost ideasCross-blog debatesAssociated traffic (gaining traffic from SA Rocks as the author)Cross-promotionThe consCross population - try to keep your blog posts separate unless there is a clear and present need for them to link.Time constraintsMental drainContradiction - I've struggled with SA Rocks to keep my positive outlook on SA Rocks and maintain it on my personal blog. This could be seen as a pro and a con as blogging on SA Rocks has allowed me to stay away from negative topics on my personal blog.I would love to find out how many other bloggers run more than one blog and if you do, what problems are you finding?
Is Afrihost trying to take over SA ISP?
It seems to me that Afrihost is actively seeking out website and organisations to host. I just received an unbelievably irritating mass email from hellopeter (that I haven't had the time to unsubscribe from) telling all their users that they are moving to Afrihost after being approached.
Hmmmmm... makes me wonder. To be honest, I love afrihost (how's about some free hosting?) and since I moved SA Rocks on to their server I have had nothing but great service and little downtime, in fact, in the entire year so far I have had nearly close to 3 hours of downtime - off peak.So maybe it is worth trying if they are going to make the effort. Could Afrihost be the turn of cheap hosting in SA? Let's bring the blog back to SA!!This is an open call to Gian Visser, the CEO of Afrihost, to get a cheap, local alternative for blogs to make use of for hosting options.
Wordpress v2.3 - Tags, Posts and more
Last night with the gracious assistance of one Hartman, I upgraded SA Rocks to Wordpress v2.3.To be honest, this process is not simple for an ignoramus such as myself. It involves database backups, theme backups (which I neglected to do) and plugin deactivation. Sounds pretty easy, but when your entire blogs history is dependant on your capabilities you start to doubt those capabilities.But nevertheless I went forward with the upgrade. I was going to install Ultimate Tag Warrior to handle all my tagging on the various posts, but alas I was disuaded because the new WP has built in tagging capabilities.So here is my immediate impression of the new WP upgrade:1. Posts are easier to manage in the admin section. You can search by status, date, author, category or simply enter a search term. This I love.2. Built in tagging. This is a brilliant update that has been made. I love tagging and this makes it doable right there in your post editor.3. Plugin updates. These have become automated. Now before you get all happy about that, it simply means that you are automatically told when a new update is available for your installed plugins. This might not seem like a great improvement, but wow what a time-saver.I am having some issues with the tagging process on SA Rocks. For some reason when I publish a post with tags, the tags don't actually click through to anything buy an error page. Does anyone have any advice?Then the next stupid thing that I hastily screwed up was my categories. WP v2.3 offers you the ability to make your categories, tags. I wasn't 100% sure what this meant, and hell, I'm still not sure. But what I do know is that out of my carefully crafted 40 or so categories, I am now only left with about 6 (4 of which I recreated) after "converting" them to tags.Now that they are tags, can someone tell me what the hell that means for my blogging?That's my only major gripe with the upgrade. Otherwise I had a good guide through the process and happy with the results.A word of advice: Ensure that you back up EVERYTHING that you want to keep as is on your current blog before upgrading. I didn't save a copy of my most recent updates on the SA Rocks theme and I had to do some of them over. Not fun.
Is MyDigitalLife Tripling 10c Payment?
I have been hearing some kind of rumour regarding my post yesterday about MyDigitalLife (MyDL) paying authors. Yesterday I spoke of 10c per page view, now I hear that sometime next week any author will be receiving triple the payment per page view. That means that per click/pageview on any of your posts as an Author at MyDL you will receive 30c instead of 10c.This, as far as I know is still just a rumour. I am trying to get Townboy to speak up and make some kind of commitment either way, but nothing. If this is true that means a tidy little some of money for SA Rocks at MyDL next week.If you aren't an Author or even a member at MyDL yet then I suggest, just in case, you get to their site and have a look around. 30c per pageview in payment is not a bad offer at all, if it's true.
Locally Hosted SA Site Will Not Succeed
There is a very good reason for this I might add, it has to do with expensive and ineffective hosting packages offered.SA Rocks is now down due to exceeding of bandwidth limits. Brilliant. So what hosting organisations in SA are saying is they are happy to take our money but will only let our sites run up to 2GB per month of bandwidth. What rubbish.There is no promotion of success, no assistance to become a prominent website, it is as if hosts just don't want to see local sites succeed. Why, why is it not possible, what is wrong with this damn industry?I am now forced to either pay 9c per mb over 2GB, or host internationally, both are lose lose for me. Does anyone have any fast and effective suggestions?Update: My hosts have been extremely gracious and increased my bandwidth for the last days of this month. What nice guys/girls!
I'll Be Walking With SA Rocks
I have just initiated a movement to Walk The Talk With SA ROCKS! Check it out and join in if you are in or will be in JHB for the weekend of July 22nd. It's for a good cause. Lets get together as a [blogging] community and do something practical in the real world!
Last Weekend for Badge Submissions
The SA Rocks badge competition is coming to a close. There have been some great entries that will be judged and the prizes are still up for grabs.The competition closes on the 9th of April so make good use of your weekend and submit a badge! It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be great, it has to be South African.So support the cause and win yourself a South African Rugby Jersey or 6 Bottles of Stormhoek Wine or even a Stormhoek T-Shirt!To enter email your badges through to competition@sarocks.co.za!!
HOsting locally and feeling like a HO
I read the article that appeared on My Broadband and think it was a fair and equal representation of the situation of hosting in SA. SA Rocks is hosted locally but not necessarily because it is the best option. I chose to host it here because it is very tough to promote SA in the USA.I must however comment on this situation, as the original article does. Here is my comment: "It costs me a R100 a month, at the least, to host SA Rocks locally, what a ball ache. Stupid local hosts, ripoffs, mo-fo's."I feel like a Ho, I feel like I am being used and abused, but instead of them paying me, I am forking out the cash. I want to know, more substantially than an a single article, why it costs me, as a blogger, R100 to host here in SA? It is cheaper for me to be hosting 3 sites abroad than it is to host one blog.Surely there is some sort of intelligent life out there in the world of hosts and service providers that can see the blogging boom occurring here in SA? Surely they can figure that quantity is massive and thus if the hosting price is dropped it might be beneficial in the long run? having 10 bloggers at R50 a month is better than one at R100 a month. Half those exorbitant price for a while, do a test and see what happens. In that test period, make it known to bloggers and webdesigners that this offer is on. Go on, I dare you, take a leap of faith and see what happens?It takes on company to break the mold. The article at My Broadband sites a vicious circle of selfishness (in my opinion) that perpetuates this situation. Why doesn't one hosting company/service provided try something new and see what happens, you can afford it, I'm sure!
27 Dinner Time
It is almost that time again. The 27 Dinner!With about an hour to go, my 'speech' is still semi-complete and in a bit of a shambles, but I am hoping things will come together. After the Cape Town reviews one needs to be somewhat careful about talking at a 27 dinner. It's also not like the crowd is small. With over 100 people registered for the event there is much to be concerned about.I am simply going to try to keep things short, sweet and effective. I am also hoping to capture the crowds with my dazzling wit and incredible looks (uhu).If you are one of the lucky people attending I will see you there. As Mike mentioned in his post today, I am the dude with lots of facial hair and mostly likely to be sitting by the bar if there is one! Lets hope SA Rocks goes down well.
SA Rocks Badge Competition
I have just launched a competition at SA Rocks.Design a new SA Rocks badge and win a South African Rugby Jersey in time for the Rugby World Cup! If you feel like sponsoring or offering any other prizes please feel free to email me at editor@sarocks.co.za.Get on over to SA Rocks to check out the specs and the contact details.
Content theft
I think it's taking a couple of days for Technorati to pick up on this post and the inadvertent link, but someone has completely lifted a post from SA Rocks. To the point that they are using the photo which is hosted on the SA Rocks server.I am extremely grateful that Kidtivity enjoyed the post so much that they lifted it verbatim but I am somewhat upset at the blatant and shameless lifting of the content. It's not as if the post is 100% fresh and new, but at least sources were credited and references made to the appropriate sites. I have alerted the blog editor and will patiently await a response.The blog seems to be brand-spanking-new and has one post on it... not a very good way to start a new blog I might add; ripping off someone else's work. Is this really what some SA bloggers are doing? If so I am concerned. How many other posts have we all missed on blogs that slip under the radar?
Max rocks SA
Maximillian Kaizen has just posted the first of hopefully many posts to come on SA Rocks.This wonderful lady has a fantastic way of presenting a point and this post is no different. Rock on down now and check out the post.