What Makes You Unsubscribe From my RSS Feed?
So who likes to see their RSS subscriber numbers go down? No one does, right? As a blog owner, gaining RSS subscribers is the ultimate goal. When the number of people subscribing to your feed goes up, it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling inside knowing that you no longer have to worry about your content reaching those people. If you have 500 RSS subscribers, you’re guaranteed that every single time you post a new article, 500 people will view that article in some form or another.
My Subscriber Number is Growing...Slowly
After I wrote my Why Social Networking Traffic Sucks article last week my RSS subscriber number jumped up to 12 (yes I know, a subscriber number that large is hard to imagine). From the time I wrote that article up until last night before I published the Improve Your Blog With a Customer Service Mindset article, my RSS Subscriber number had fallen to nine. I know it’s not a huge drop or anything, but being somewhat obsessive with things such as this, I decided to ask why you unsubscribe to my blog?
I’m asking the question based on the fact that before the social networking traffic sucks article, I only had six subscribers. After the article I had 12. From the time I wrote that article until the time leading up to the next article, which was about improving your blog through customer service, I had lost four subscribers. It really bugs me because when you subscribe to a feed, if the writer doesn’t write, you don’t receive anything in your reader, so no harm no foul. I could fully understand a drop in subscribers if I had just released a series of five articles that were crap. I makes sense, if you write crap, no one will read it, thus readers will unsubscribe to your feed.
My Question to You
If you are out there reading and were once an RSS subscriber and you’ve since unsubscribed, please take a moment to tell my why in the form of a comment. I would love to hear what made you unsubscribe and what I can do you get you back.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to the full RSS feed.
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Comments
I just wanted to let you know, I am still subscribed to your RSS feed. I’m currently using Safari’s built in RSS reader - and I don’t know if that ads to your stats - but I’m still here.
I don’t know why someone would un-subscribe to you, I think you write great posts.
So keep it up!
Posted on Mon Aug 13, 2007
That’s a good question!
My short answer is that going down from 12 to 9 is nothing. In my own blogging experience I have noticed that my numbers go down by a few subscribers every other day, only to grow again on the next.
A few days ago I announced reaching 103 subscribers. On the next day the number was 94, then 96, and on the third day it was exactly 100. Today, after two more days I am at 110. So you see how it goes: up, down, up, down, and so on…
I have been wondering the same question and actually what has come to my mind is that maybe Feedburner isn’t always up to date? If some subscriber for example doesn’t turn on his feed reader on that day I would assume that Feedburner will count that person as being unsubscribed (only to add him to your count again on the next time he goes online).
Another thing that I think might have an effect is the frequency of your posting. If there is nothing to serve in the feed, maybe some readers don’t fetch the feed and the count goes down because of that… This is however just guessing, but at least for me when I started posting every day, my figures smoothened a bit.
Then the question of why I unsubscribe from a feed. Here are my top reasons:
1) Too little activity. If the blog is updated less than a few times per week, I usually unsubscribe from it.
2) Too much activity. I recently unsubscribed from TreeHugger (actually it was the second time already) because it keeps feeding me with more articles than I can digest… After all, I’m not reading only one feed, but many.
3) The “More...” link. If you don’t offer a full text feed, I usually unsubscribe.
4) Hard to read text. Your text is good, but quite often I see blogs that have long sentences, no sub headings, no lists. Just text. The content may be great, but it requires too much concentration, so I unsubscribe.
5) Content that doesn’t feel interesting to me. Usually if I have subscribed to a blog the content is something that is interesting to me. But from time to time it can happen that I think a feed might be insteresting but after a few days I realize that it wasn’t. But this is the least likely reason for unsubscribing. 
Good luck with your blog, you’re doing well! It takes some time to build up the momentum but once you get there, going few subscribers down doesn’t really feel that bad. Going up however always feels great!
Posted on Tue Aug 14, 2007
Susan: Thanks for the comment! Wow! 70 subscribers to your blog and it’s only been live a month? That’s impressive...I’m jealous.
Yeah, maybe you’re right. Pageview and Visitor numbers are what I need to be focused on. Those numbers I’m very happy with. They are steadily rising each week, with little spikes here and there from places like StumbleUpon.
I probably subscribe too many blogs also, but I like it. It allows me to quickly look over the most recent articles of the sites in which at some point or another had something interesting to say. If I see an article in my feed reader that I like, I’ll normally click the link and visit the actual site so I can comment on it.
Brian and TJ: Thanks guys! I appreciate the continued support. Glad you’re still with me. 
Jarkko: You bring up some interesting points with Feedburner not always being up to date and people not turning on their feed reader. Never thought of that before, but it does make sense.
I definitely agree with all of your points as to why someone would unsubscribe although I don’t have a problem with someone posting less than a few times a week. I won’t unsubscribe for that. In fact, pearsonified.com is in my feed reader and hasn’t been updated in over a month, but I know Chris puts out great content so I don’t want to miss a new article once he finally posts. Like I said in my article, I figure it’s no harm no foul if someone doesn’t post a lot. If they don’t post, I never see it in my reader, so it’s not a bother to me to never see an article show up in my feed reader.
Posting to much however, that’s a different story. Like you, I’ve got quite a few sites in my reader and if they all start posting three times a day, I’ll have information overload.
Thanks for the well wishes on my blog. You’ve got a nice one yourself (I just subscribed by the way). Hope to see you around.
Posted on Tue Aug 14, 2007
I see that you’re using FeedBurner, I bet you’re reading the FeedBurner subscription page. I think most people read that wrong. It’s not a count of how many people who have placed your RSS feed in their feed reader, but a count of how many of those people open their feed reader and downloaded information from your site that day.
For example, I use FeedBurner on one of my client sites, they average about 90 users daily accesses their feed; but the high can be 200, and the low is generally around 50. So its not that 150 people unsubscribed from Monday of last week to today. But that on Monday of last week 200 of whatever number of individuals who subscribe to the feed—read and or visited articles from their feed; and today, so far only 50 have.
The subscribers via email is an accurate count of how many people who have subscribed to your feed via email; but the generic subscriber term at FeedBurner is just the number of people who have read or download your sites data via their feed reader today.
I for one open my feed reader, about once a month. It use to be daily, then it became as bad as email. So now I keep an always active feed on my desktop that checks 3 primary news sources, subscribe via email for sites that are very important (work related), then everything else, I read once or twice a month (not counting sites I visit daily). I haven’t unsubscribed from a site in a while, including yours, but I bet I’m not in your RSS statistics.
The great thing about FeedBurner is it let’s you know that 3,000 hits on your RSS is actually 250 people. But to the best of my knowledge, most rss readers don’t send a signal to the site that they are unsubscribing from. Unsubscribing, generally happens in a static state.
Typically with FeedBurner, you just want your daily averages to increase, but shouldn’t feel like 50 today is 25 less subscribers than yesterday. It’s like I tell my friends about email—"Just because you sent me an email yesterday, doesn’t mean I’ve read it. I might not check that account til Friday, or I may have checked it but only read messages marked urgent, or… or… or…
Feed subscriptions is pretty much the same.
Posted on Tue Aug 14, 2007
The feedburner count isn’t the number of subscribers you have, I believe it’s the number of people that have accessed your feed in the last 24 hours. Seeing the numbers fluctuate like that isn’t really a big deal, so long as your overall pattern is going up.
Posted on Tue Aug 14, 2007
allgood2 & Blogging Experiment:
Thanks for pointing that out. What you’re saying makes sense as far as the fluctuations go, but I’m still a little confused as Feedburner’s site seems to contradict itself. If you click the “information” button beside your subscriber number it tells you this:
Subscribers is an approximate measure of the number of individuals currently subscribed to your feed.
but then, right below that it says this:
FeedBurner’s subscriber count is based on an approximation of how many times your feed has been requested in a 24-hour period.
So...which is it? A measure of the number of individuals subscribed to your feed or an approximation of how many times your feed has been requested in the last 24 hours? It can’t be both, can it?
What about the Feedburner widgets that tell you a person has “100 readers” or whatever? Is that their total individual subscribers or is that simply how many have accessed the feed for that day?
Thanks everyone for chiming in on this.
Posted on Tue Aug 14, 2007
Hey Deron,
Your feedburner counter shows the latter of the two. The widget also shows the latter. Your feed count is the number of people (or bots) that accessed your feed for the last 24 hours. If you watch some of the big blogs, they fluctuate like crazy too.
Posted on Wed Aug 15, 2007
Hi Deron,
As others have already pointed out, don’t worry too much about fluctuations. Sometimes I find that my count jumps by a couple of hundred, especially around Sundays when most people are outdoors and not worrying about accessing their feed readers.
Posted on Wed Aug 15, 2007
That is most interesting.
I did not know practically any of that.
Thanks so much for that to Deron - now I know! :-D
Thanks y’all! It shall be very helpful!
Posted on Wed Aug 15, 2007
I wouldn’t worry about fluctuating numbers either. The feedburner stats only track traffic going through the link from day to day, not actual subscriber numbers. As long as you see a general upward trend over weeks you are in a good place!
Posted on Wed Aug 15, 2007
I’m in the same boat as you. I fluctuate between 15-30 subscribers each day. It’s weird. I’ve been stuck around there for quite some time now. It seems like a hard task to gain subscribers, but I’m not going to give up.
I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never subscribed to a feed before! I’m kind of confused about using Google Reader or whatever other options there are. But then again, the other my friend told me that with FireFox I could just subscribe by adding to my bookmarks and it makes a list for me that I can pull up. I’m still kind of lost :D
For me, I like going to the person’s website to get the full on experience. I just keep URLs of my favorite websites in a Word document and go down the list every so often and check the blogs out.
-Gregg
Posted on Wed Aug 15, 2007
Matthew, David, and Erik: Thanks for stopping by to comment. I’m glad that you all have pointed out that fluctuating numbers really mean nothing. I kept thinking, “what the heck am I doing wrong here to make people unsubscribe?” lol
Brian: No problem buddy. Glad I could write something of some use to you.
Gregg: Stinks doesn’t it? I guess all we can do is continue to plug away and eventually the numbers should grow. That’s my plan anyway, we’ll see how it turns out.
As far as being confused on the whole feed thing, you sound just like me a few months ago. I heard talk about RSS but it all just seemed way over my head so I didn’t bother with it. Instead, I was like you, I bookmarked everything.
Have a look at my article From Bookmarker to Obsessive RSSer. It explains how I used to be lost with RSS and how I am now with RSS . I think once you give RSS a try you won’t ever go back to bookmarking. Just takes to much time.
I still visit sites though. Google Reader simply allows me to quickly browse through articles quickly and if there is one I like, I still click on it and visit the author’s site so I can comment on the article.
Thanks for stopping by
Posted on Wed Aug 15, 2007
I think once you give RSS a try you won’t ever go back to bookmarking. Just takes to much time.
I just have to stand-up as someone who has gone back to bookmarking; and I must say its really just about what works for you. I had move to NetNewsWire, because I keep track of way too many sites, and it was a pain to manage them in Bookmarks. But for me, Safari changed that a lot. It’s not perfect, but allows me rapidly file items without opening another application.
So I’ve split things. My Safari Bookmarks Bar, has 10 folders, 8 of which I access almost daily. They contain news, tech, blogs, fiction, work, and entertainment. The other two are tools and utilities- a collection of bookmarklets, search and research sites. Most of the folders contain sub-folders, and I typically just open all items in a subfolder in tabs. I find this more attractive then reading everything in a news reader.
So I’ve relegated news reader feeds for sites that are just darn ugly or for some reason I can’t stand to visit them, even though they produce good content, to sites in waiting. In-waiting sites, are sites I think maybe good enough to move up to first tier (open daily in my web browser), but haven’t proven themselves yet.
The system works very well for me; but I also admit it was part of process of realizing that 75-85% of my work that isn’t telephone related happens inside my web browser. Once I acknowledge that, then it became a matter of minimizing background clutter. Do I really need Eudora open all day, even if it only checks mail every 2hrs? Do I need NetNewsWire open? Office?, etc., etc.
Boiled down to no not really. I set-up GMail to check my five primary work related email accounts, and one of my personal accounts. Freeing me to only open Eudora once or twice a week. In fact, I use iCal to just schedule it. It pops open Eudora while I sleep, cleans of the server for my plus 10 email accounts, filters and files, then gives me a report--just in case something important went to a lesser known account.
I started using tabs and actually visiting web sites I love, and even have a sub folder of news related rss feeds in a tab. I made sure this folder wasn’t directly in the bookmar bar menu, because otherwise its a major distraction.
Now, 90% of the time, I just have Safari, CSSEdit, BBEdit, and Transmit open. Quicktime, iTunes, FileMaker, and Preview or Acrobat open as needed; and NetNewsWire maybe once a month. I notice when someone’s been working to make their site look and work better, and I’m far more casual about being up-to-date. With Eudora ad NetNewsWire, everytime the amount of unread items changed, I’d be distracted and flip back over to the application.
Now, I just start my day reading, then occasionally open a new tab to check mail or visit a site. I’m far less frantic, and still manage to wade through tons of news per day.
Posted on Wed Aug 15, 2007
allgood2: Thanks for the very insightful comment!
It sounds like you’ve got one heck of a system going there. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said “...it’s really just about what works for you.” That’s what it really boils down too.
I absolutely love my RSS reader as I can quickly check the 70 or so sites I’ve got in there. I could never check all of those by bookmarking. But the tier system could work although I think it would be hard for me to change at this point. I like how you have sites “in-waiting” that are possibly good enough but have yet to prove themselves. Have I moved up to the first tier yet, or am I still “in-waiting?” 
I really appreciate you taking time to participate in the discussion here. Hope to see you back.
Posted on Wed Aug 15, 2007
I honestly didn’t took the time to read all the comments on your post (will do a little later, in a rush right now), but one thing that would be awesome would be to make your feedburner feed compatible with [I don’t know how it’s called lol], when you click on your rss link in your sidebar it takes you to a “regular” rss page, but you can change that and have it displayed “the feedburner way”, check my rsss feed on smartwealthyrich or freelancefolder, see when you click on the rss link, you end up on a page that has a “subscribe by e-mail” link, and links to feed readers, when I changed that my rss numbers went up a little
I’m still a subscriber (and a happy one)
Posted on Thu Aug 16, 2007
Hey Jon. I changed my feed subscribe page to render as a web page like you were referring to in your comment. I’ll test it out and see what happens. Hopefully I will see an increase in visitors as well. I already had my “subscribe by email” text box there in my site template, but I guess it never hurts to have it listed again on the actual subscribe page in case someone misses it on my site for whatever reason.
Thanks for the comment. I’ll keep you posted on if my readership goes up or not.
Posted on Thu Aug 16, 2007
I don’t know if you saw this on problogger:, but it is a post about why the RSS number fluctuates.
Posted on Sun Aug 19, 2007
Thanks Martin. Yeah, I actually did see that. Just saw it to late after I had already posted my article. Thanks for sharing.
Posted on Mon Aug 20, 2007
Yeh my RSS count dropped from 60 to 42 in one day. It’s difficult to understand how that works sometimes.
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
Hey Shaun. Yeah I understand it now, but before I made this post, I didn’t. I’m a stats junkie and like to see how I’m doing as far as traffic and subscribers and every time I would see my subscribers fall, I’d would think “What the heck is going on?” lol
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
RSS subscriptions are crazy. I couldn’t break that 10 person barrier and then with a popular series of posts it jumped to 48 and is now settling in the 30’s. I guess it just takes time and making good posts one right after another.
Write it and they will come!
Posted on Wed Aug 22, 2007
Shaun: Yeah, you’re definitely right about writing. You have to write consistently or all of you numbers, not just RSS will drop. But, it does take time and for most of us that don’t for whatever reason get instantly popular in the blogosphere, it’s a marathon, not a sprint, so you have to be willing to put your dues in.
Posted on Thu Aug 23, 2007
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My name is Deron Sizemore and I am a web designer, web publisher, blogger and serial internet entrepreneur living in Lexington, Kentucky.
Awww...yes, it’s a bad feeling huh? I’ve been there before when my subscribers went from 70 to 50 within 24 hours about a couple weeks ago for one of my sites. From then it’s fluctuated up and down… and now reaching almost 70 again. I’ve tried to understand it myself, but haven’t been able to make much from it. Sorry, I can’t help you there. Have you noticed if the number of pageviews went up or stayed the same? I’ve learned to not look at it too hard and maybe look at the rough estimate of how many subscribers you have weekly and judge from that. You’ll always lose readers, it’s the game of staying ahead of how many you lose.
Are you running Google Analytics? I use the stats of how many loyal/returning readers I have as a better judge on how the site is performing.... I personally subscribe to one too many blogs, and sometimes I prefer visiting the blog instead.
**I haven’t been subscribed to your blog till now, so count me in as a +1.
Posted on Mon Aug 13, 2007