The seo2.blog reached 100 feed subscribers after roughly just ten weeks of existence. At least 100.
How do you count them?
Unless you have a newsletter or “list” and they subscribe by mail you can’t find out directly.
When this blog reached the first 100 you could tell by looking at the most popular feed readers.
It still works thanks to Feedly!
Do you subscribe to this blog? Raise your hand!
When this post got first published other tools were popular. They are long gone now.
Yet the principle is still the same. You can simply look up who follows you on Feedly.
It’s usually the most prolific power users who use feeds.
Back then there were 91 subscribers at Google Reader and 9 and Bloglines.
In case you subscribed using any other service it’s usually invisible.
Personally I used Netvibes for instance for many years. The site went rogue a while ago so ignore it.
I could only find out that someone subscribed there by asking them to raise their hand or say “yeah”!
I literally did a humorous roll call here saying:
Come on! Somebody say yeah! Yippie, yippie yeah!
The people on the right say ho! The people on the left say hey!!!
Did you know that I also was a rapper once when I was young and wild? Unlike now where I spend all day in front of the screen?
So do you subscribe to my blog? Make sure to tell me why @onreact all over social media!
I may even add your “testimonial” to this post or my about page!
Remember Feedburner?
Yet we also had another tool that was able to count feed users across different readers.
It was called Feedburner and later got acquired and neglected by Google.
Thus I assumed that I got at least 120 or so.
How can you count them? Do you remember the good old days of “Feedburner”?
In the early years of blogging you would use that service to measure the number of subscriptions.
Even while the tool was still popular and the Google execs did not decide to let it rot after the acquisition it was a nuisance at best.
Yet I hated Feedburner. They basically stole your content and sent all your data to the Google mothership.
Besides they looked ugly with the antiquated content design.
Also sometimes I clicked on your Feedburner feed or found it in the Google results. I puked each time.
There are some Feedburner alternatives by now but they haven’t even reached the popularity level of the original tool.
I have used FeedPress to some extent for a few years but had some technical issues recently.
Fedblitz is another alternative for business users.
Both offer feed to email tools btw. to “create a list”.
Is there another method to determine the number of feed subscribers?
Yes there is.
Once Google killed Reader there was a short time frame during which numerous readers were created but most gave up ever since.
Then one winner took the market and keeps on thriving ever since! Feedly.
Feedly to the rescue!
Feedly – the service that used your Google Reader data to enhance it and make it more usable – has ever since become the standalone market leader for feeds.
Feeds have become less popular in general.
Yet power users still use them.
Why does it matter?
Those are the users that really make a difference.
They share, they link, they buy.
Feedly remains the best feed reading tool out there.
Guess what? Feedly shows you you how many people subscribe to your feed.
When you search for the SEO 2.0 blog feed you will see that I have “1k followers.” See screenshot above.
It’s right on top when you view your feed or other people’s feeds as well. Feedly allows you to
- Organize
- Subscribe
- Count feed subscribers
Anyway as I hailed my subscribers I reward them.
Who was the feed subscriber #100 then?
Tadaa! It’s Derek J Edmond of Cape Cod SEO!
The most striking fact was that in his public Bloglines subscriptions I was among the best of the SEO industry and blogosphere.
There was just one dark horse I did not know before, but a really good one. I recommended it the minute I read it.
OK. Derek, as my subscriber number 100 could choose one of these rewards:
- Small banner for free advertising of your SEO company at this blog for at least 3 months.
- One guest post here with a topic of choice.
- One issue of Search Marketing Standard (I got 5 of them as a contributor).
He could choose or refuse and became my subscriber honoris causa. Hip hip hooray!