Subscribing to My Blog

[Michael]

I know that a lot more people are reading my blog than actually subscribing to it. Obviously it's much more important to me that people are following my writing rather than just adding their name to a list. However, keeping a list of subscribers helps me gauge how many recursive readers I have and measure growth rate of the blog.

So what I'd like to know is if you are a reader of the blog, how come you haven't subscribed? Perhaps it is because I did a poor job making the subscription box visible and you just didn't realize it was a possibility? Perhaps you feel no need to because you are already on the forum and I post updates about new articles here? Maybe you just don't want more junk in your email? Or you just don't find the blog relevant or interesting? I'm just curious to get some feedback about this.

Right now the subscription emails are just a reminder that a new blog post has been released. But in the future I hope to send out more cool stuff. Possibly some parrot trivi, games, or contests. Also if I can get enough subscribers I might be able to negotiate with manufacturers/stores to offer an online promotional coupon for my subscribers to try out their stuff. Basically, the more people that get my emails, the more encourage I'll be to do more in that sector.

I am curious if making a "subscribe but don't get regular emails" option would encourage more people to sign up? If you're not signing up because you don't want frequent emails about blog posts, would creating the option to sign up but not get blog post emails make you want to sign up?

Basically I'm just trying to gauge interest and see if it is worth putting the extra time into programming a subscription management panel for users to be able to control what kind of email updates they receive. I'm willing to put the work into it if it will improve sign up but if it's not meaningful to you, then I'd prefer to spend my time doing other things. Thanks for the feedback.

[Azure Hanyo]

I wouldn't, but only because I can look up pretty much everything I want to right here on TPF...

[Michael]

That is quite understandable. Could you help me figure out what kind of incentive I can provide to encourage people like you to subscribe (even if opting out of emails) because it helps me gauge interest. I've been thinking of making a little contest something like offering a prize (a clicker, bird toy, whatever) at random to one of the people who subscribe in the next X (week, month, whatever). Would that help? Or sending something interesting in the emails that you cannot see on blog/forum?

[Azure Hanyo]

That is quite understandable. Could you help me figure out what kind of incentive I can provide to encourage people like you to subscribe (even if opting out of emails) because it helps me gauge interest. I've been thinking of making a little contest something like offering a prize (a clicker, bird toy, whatever) at random to one of the people who subscribe in the next X (week, month, whatever). Would that help? Or sending something interesting in the emails that you cannot see on blog/forum?

Hmm, I do like that idea! In this case I think I just might join the blog, but then I am stingy and free things make me giddy. Freebies aside, the "secret emails" just for followers of the blog is an interesting concept, but then if I didn't want emails from the blog to begin with it would defeat the purpose, know what I mean?

[HyperD]

I'm already subscribed.. It is a slight redundant as I check the forums every day anyway but it does act as a reminder if nothing else. I have a filter setup so all emails from the forum an blog get diverted out so it doesnt interfere

If you want that sort of count then can you not count unique IP visits? Obviously dynamic IPs mess with that but if you combine it with cookies too? Still wont be 100% but I would have thought pretty close? I am not sure how much trouble that would be to setup though...

Another idea is to force registration to view content, maybe if you are registered you get a preview a few days before non registered people? You definitely dont want to discourage people by not allowing access at all without registration....

[Michael]

Cookies/IPs are considered temporary identifiers. Normally not more than a 24 hour period. So they can be used to keep a session going but after a few days you really cannot count on the IP not changing or cookie not getting deleted. I'm at a point right now where I have relatively few subscribers so it doesn't encourage me to provide much more subscriber features. However, if it's the lack of features that is holding people back then I can work on it. That's why I'm here right now trying to gauge interest.

I can't really think of a required registration section (except for comments which go through forum anyway) that would be good to have but not interfere with usability.

[Ben]

To be honest I did completely miss the subscribe button. Maybe its because I tend to read the main body of text then close it down.

Perhaps you could add a subscribe link on every post? Just a small thing at the end?

[Giantmoa]

oh, ha, never saw the subscribing option but thats mostly because I haven't really taken an in depth look at your blog yet, besides reading an article here and there and watching some videos. Besides that, I don't like subscribing/following things much at all (maybe this is why twitter and I never worked out...) which is why this forum is very useful since you post about the new articles and I can easily access the ones I wish to read. you could have one of those counting things that records the number of views your blog gets, but that doesn't really help your cause, does it?
sorry, but I'm at a loss to think of an incentive that would get me to subscribe (unless you said pretty please) since the forum already gives me the perfect way to watch your blog

[lzver]

I'm already subscribed. So I can't really add much here.

[Natacha]

I have enough coming in my email, I don't want an email each time something is posted.
Would it be possible to have a weekly update email? Once a week is definitively more tempting than anytime something is posted.