Big Bloggers Are Desperate For Subscriber Count
There is this retarded thing around blogosphere which bloggers are getting obsessed about. That is the Subscriber count. I am very sure when feedburner came out with there system, the goal was for bloggers to get sort of an idea of how many people read their blog. But now number of subscribers has become so important, some bloggers are taking their strategies to an extreme. They would do just about anything to get another subscriber.
You guys heard of the system called Aweber right. Yeah this is the email newsletter service. They actually can be combined with the feedburner stats to make your subscriber count look high. The concept of Aweber is nice, but with the way people are now abusing it is F**king ANNOYING. I loved reading Shoemoney’s blog. Heck this guy was the reason why I started this blog. My first design was inspired from Jeremy. Now I am annoyed by his blog. Every time I visit his blog I have to deal with this extremely annoying pop up that asks me to subscribe to his news letter. Ok one time is ok. But every time I go on his site I get that. If I don’t want to subscribe, then it should just ask once and never ask again. I am so frustrated with this popup that I have decided not to go on his site anymore. So there your chances of gaining subscribers might be costing you your old loyal users.
John Chow is an awesome guy. I met him at Izea and had a blast with him. I loved reading his blog, and I was a top commentator at his site too. My thing is I don’t subscribe to Newsletter. I subscribe to feeds, but I have to go to their site to comment and so on. Well there is this annoying pop up on his site also. I close it each time and it comes back the next time I go on his site. So John, I will not be commenting on your site again either unless I am really really desperate.
Following these big bloggers a lot of new bloggers are following this path also. I can’t remember the site I went on a few days back which I recently discovered. I got to the blog and saw the pop up. I exit out and now I don’t even remember the url. Great job on that pitch to get me as your subscriber.
By no means I am saying that Aweber is a bad service. I think email newsletter are a great addition to a blog. But keep it on your sidebar. If I want to subscribe, I would. But don’t force your readers. If you force them by throwing a pop up at them each time they visit then most likely they will leave. Like I did.
The choice is yours.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
Truly said Syed
Both of them, John and Jeremy have the same kind of pop-up box with request to join their newsletter when am already having myself subscribed to their feeds. And yes, sidebar is the best place to have that.
Sounds like there’s something wrong with your browser, as I do not get these repeat popups. Are you sure cookies are not blocked for those sites?
Also, I just read them in the RSS reader, no need to visit the website that way and no popups ever
I am very sure that cookies are not blocked. It doesn’t open in every new page once you hit cancel. But every new visit it shows me that popup
http://www.chrisg.com/ Chris Garrett’s blog also now has something similar which was not earlier. He is a great blogger, who does not need to have those things to gain readership, but still.. the trend starts once and soon every small blogger will have those pop-ups..
Pretty sad but it is true. I do have ideas of implementing newsletter on Balkhis in the near future but they will be limited to my sidebar. Not as a pop up.
More subscribers equals more money and these things do work
It might not have gotten you but it gets a lot of people
I have no doubt that it works. I just noticed that your site has it too. I understand more subscribers equals more money. But personally I don’t like the idea of these pop ups. All I am going to say is that Problogger have more subscribers that both shoemoney and john chow. And I am one of his subscribers. I do comment when I need to and I will not stop because he does not have any pop ups. You can get more subscribers by caring about your users also. Just a thought. Because the lame ebooks that each blogger now have to offer does not say any different that the previous ebooks by other bloggers say. So the technique might get you a few new subscribers but the question is how many of those actually are converting. Yeah you might be going for the numbers game. Thinking well if I have 40k subscribers and atleast 1% of those sign up to my affiliate offers it will be a lot of money. Well that is true you will get 400 leads. Or you can get 10k subscribers and have them loyal readers who love reading your blogs because they like it. You will get a much higher leads.
Do you think half of those commentators on John Chow’s blog are there because they like him. I will say not. If John Chow removes his top commentator plugin from his sidebar I will guarantee that a lot of those 60 comments a week people will disappear.
I admire Neil Patel in his efforts. He actually gets convo. going on his blog. He gets 100s of comments on his post and that is because he actually interacts with his readers.
Great notice. It is incredible how big bloggers are desperate and eager for more subscribers. They are breaking the margins and as you have stated, more and more they are becoming very spammy, coming to point where normal visitors can’t tolerate such things.
I totally agree with you on that one. Honestly, I was visiting Shoe’s blog regularly and I’m now visiting it A LOT less. Also, I’ve seen some “small” blogs using popups and this really annoys me…
But I guess the big guys see the benefits…ANd you can charge more for ads with more subscribers, that’s how the business work. RSS count is so overestimated and IT IS NOT a good indicator of traffic. Anyway…
This needed to be said and you have put it very succinctly. Thanks.
I’d classify this post as a “rant”. I understand your frustration with this practice. I don’t like it either.
Although, if a blog’s content has enough value to me, I don’t think I’d blacklist it just because of a popup window that I have to close before I can read their blog.
For me, I don’t think I would put a popup in my readers’ faces. I’d rather put a link in the sidebar with a special offer that would entice them to subscribe.
I have to agree with you these pop ups get really annoying.
I stopped visiting John Chow and Shoemoney long back as I do not get inspired by them any longer. For blogging tips, SEO advise, money making ideas there’re better second tier players. As you rightly said, I stopped visiting all sites where that dumb popup screen appears.
This blog Sucks! You dont give any helpful info whatsoever , its all filler articles , my opinion this is just eyecandy your a good website developer coder and nothing more, why don’t you actually help your readers by giving insightful info. Your posts bore me to death and I have only been blogging for 3months.
Fair enough argument you make Jesse.If my blog is not for you, then don’t read it. I think if you haven’t learnt anything from my past 385+ posts then you definitely can’t learn anything from thousands more to come.
I think this is a very unfair and rather arrogant comment. I think Syed gave a very polite and restrained reply to that comment!
Surely, we could without such comments on a reasonably sedate blog?
You do not have to read these blogs if you do not like them but why insult the writer? Just stop visiting the blog.
Its ok guys. Jesse is entitle to his/her opinion. I don’t take offense. And I don’t ban freedom of speech. I like to know what my readers think. If they think I am not doing a good job then I like to know it
Well said, Balkhis. Everytime I get to a new blog and see pop-up “ad”, I screamed, closed the pop-up, and said good bye to the site (not even bothering to look at the contents)
Which was I always turned down pop-up offers, no matter how yummy they are!
“This blog Sucks! You dont give any helpful info whatsoever , its all filler articles”
If you’ve read the tips that Syed’s made in the past, you’ll stop saying that and start thanking him
That is a fair point. I currently have an aweber popup – that only shows on a visitors first visit. However with my new design that I am launching shortly I think I will remove it as I have some great placement in the design.
I’m desperate for a subscriber count, and I admit it, but there are things I won’t do. I won’t allow popups or popunders because that’s irritating. Outside of my first contest, I don’t usually beat people up over subscribing to my blogs or newsletters, although I really want people to want to do it on their own.
I have noticed John Chow talking about his subscriber count on Twitter, and I’d have to admit that I wouldn’t be upset at 47,000 RSS subscribers. But I also think there’s a point at which one should thank the stars for their bounty and stop irritating the rest of us. In this case, we can blame Darren Rowse, because it was his study, then writing about it, which made the rest of the universe decide to do the same thing.
But not me; I ain’t going out like that.
I don’t know if I would blame Darren Rowse because he himself does not use it. I think there is a saying called practice what you preach. He does not do it on problogger.
He’s not doing it anymore, but he was doing it as an experiment, and then wrote about it: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/10/23/how-to-drastically-increase-subscriber-numbers-to-your-email-newsletter/
Well when I first started viewing this blog there was lots of great content unforunately there has been nothing helpful over the last few months. Could you please start providing more insightful content like tutorials or actual tips or tricks ?
Jesse, I will try to post more tutorials and tricks as I see them necessary. If you specific questions that you would like to ask and you want me to cover. Please send me an email with those and I will surely cover those
That is quite true that pop ups requesting singing up for subscription is really irritating; and I wonder why the established bloggers have to resort to this? It would be quite unnecessary I would think.
This is why I think email marketing is starting to slowly disappear due to people over using the technology. people hate getting email from everyone everyday
Yes very true. I mean there are only so many people you can actually subscribe to via email.
Just to provide some of my thoughts on this whole issue.
From a business owner, blogger or a site owner standpoint, we should definitely look for the best way to seek great results for ourselves.
Yes, I have to admit that I dislike (not hate) these popups but if it works well in terms of gathering subscribers for my site without hurting the traffic or number of readers that I get, I would use this kind of facility as well. Every move or change that a blog takes might chase some people off but if such changes can bring in a lot more new visitors, why not?
I would say that it all depends on the personal preference of readers when it comes to such issues. We can always leave these sites or stop using their services and move onto others if we dislike them.
For example, Balkhis, there are a few people that dislikes what you have been posting recently (not me, I enjoy life journals of entrepreneurs
) but I know you won’t change your posting style just to meet the expectations of the minority unless these complaints start to accumulate.
Just my thoughts though. Hope I don’t sound stupid here…
I don’t think any comment sound stupid Wayne. I am glad that you posted your comment here. From a business perspective, I understand that businesses do whatever it takes to get to the top. There are things that is called premier customer service in the business area. They try to get as many customers. But they value their older clients more. But I completely understand your points, and I see how they relates.
I totally agree with you on this one, even Problogger’s Darren Rowse emphasized this on his blog although I think that it is really annoying!
I too have noticed the popups. Almost every site that I visit in the make money online niche has some type of popup. Just when you think an annoying part of the Internet past is gone, someone figures out a way to rebrand that thing and profit from it all over again.
Shoemoney and John Chow are competing against each other. They always want to see who can have a higher feedcount.
Feed counter is good for make money blogs. The higher count you have the more money you will get.
I couldn’t read Jowns and Jeremies blogs for half a year already. They was interesting in 2007 but not in 2008.
I have to agree with you I hate these pop ups too. And for some type of pop ups, I have problem locating the close button and have to resort to a backward button and that’s when I decide to exit from the blog.
Peter Lee
Yes you are very right. Sometimes I have noticed that pop up actually freezes the whole screen because of too many things loading. Specially at John’s website.
Cant say I am desperate for subscribers, but it is fun to watch the numbers. It gives a good idea on how you are doing with content.