100+ Feed Subscribers in 10 Weeks! How to Count Them?

The SEO 2.0 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 it’s hard to find out.

When SEO 2.0 reached the first 100 you could tell by looking at the most popular feed readers though.

Do You Subscribe to this Blog? Raise Your Hand!

There were 91 subscribers at Google Reader and 9 and Bloglines. In case you subscribed using any other service it’s invisible.

I used Netvibes for instance for many years. I could only find out that someone subscribes there by asking them to raise their hand or say “yeah”!

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?

Remember Feedburner?

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.

I hated Feedburner. They basically steal your content and send all your data to the Google mothership.

Besides they looked ugly and 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 level of the original tool.

Is there another method to determine the number of feed subscribers? I need something without programming. I’m so busy lazy!

Yes. Once Google killed Reader there was a short time frame during which numerous readers were created but most gave up ever since.

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 but power users still use them and those are the users that really matter. 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 will reward them. Who is 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 best of 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 you could choose one of these rewards:

1. Small banner for free advertising of your SEO company at SEO 2.0 for at least 3 months.
2. One guest post at SEO 2.0 with a topic of choice.
3. 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!