Why an RSS Subscriber is Worth 1,000 Links

I disagree, sort of.

RSS subscribers are important, and they are the ones that consume the quality stuff. But, I guess it depends on where you're at in the engines for your keywords. Personally, if someone wants to subscribe to my blog, I'd rather have 1000 quality links instead, from good sources.

It's like money. Most people who have money will say it's not as important as friends or some other quality-of-life metric. But, those folks who struggle every day for money to be able to live.... those people would rather have the money, and I don't blame them.

So, for right now, I'd rather have the traffic from 1000 quality links first. I'll get the RSS subscriber who will talk about me later, when I already have the traffic to support my site.

nate,

I am with you there. I strongly and respectfully disagree with Aaron.

If you give me 1000 links, that bring relevant traffic, in exchange for each one of my RSS subscribers, I wouldn't blink an eye. I would probably get back the same or higher number of subscribers through the links.

In many cases the quality of the idea does not matter as much as who said it. If a no name person launched Truemors would it have become popular enough to where I would have just linked to it as an example?

No names like me are lucky that not every A-List bloggers thinks in the same way. Thanks Rand and thanks Jeremy!

If good ideas are not very important, how else can you move from unknown to well known?

They are important... but they have a greater chance of sticking and spreading as you get to be more well known.

Look at sites like Techmeme and the most popular channels in your industry. What percent of the outbound links on those sites go to sites they have already mentioned in the past? In most well established industries that percentage is probably much greater than 50%.

Thanks for making it clearer. I agree.

Look at sites like Techmeme and the most popular channels in your industry. What percent of the outbound links on those sites go to sites they have already mentioned in the past? In most well established industries that percentage is probably much greater than 50%.

That was exactly my main motivator for starting a blog. The more your name is out there, the more people remember you. Nobody remembers who remains in the shadows.

I was introduced to your blog/ebook 3 years ago by an employee. I bought it for him and I was truly amazed you would be sharing that kind of powerful information for such a small price (not that you charge that much now). I had been running a very profitable affiliate business for two years, and it didn't make any sense to me to share that kind of information publicly. Especially for the price you were charging then.

Now that I see the great recognition that you, Rand, Jeremy, Darren, etc. have earned through the years, I finally see the light: You have great leverage, and pretty much anything you do will get noticed.

PS: I was wondering why I stopped getting you ebook updates long time ago. Looking through my old emails I found the problem. I had registered with a now dead email account: hamletb@verizon.net.do, IP: 200.42.216.89. Am I still elligible for updates?

Keep up the great work!

Is Truemors worth linking to regardless of who made it? I don't care who made a site, if it sucks, it sucks. I imagine Truemors has a very high bounce rate. One look at it and I'm frantically searching for the back button.

That was precisely my point James. Even hunks of crap are spread as though they are worthwhile if the person who created it is well known.

I'd rather have both, myself. :p

People who subscribe via RSS are the sort of people who will eventually link. So the commentors looking at it as an either-or are being too binary. Sure, if you could really convert every RSS subscriber into an authority link, we'd all be fiercely tempted. But an RSS subscriber iss more likely to create links to you in the longer term, and they e-mail stuff to friends and spread the subscription and notoriety. In the end, it's one flavor of linkbait.

"Sure, if you could really convert every RSS subscriber into an authority link, we'd all be fiercely tempted."

Actually he said an RSS subscriber is worth more than even 1,000 links are, but then again I guess Aaron only said that to emphasize his point a bit :-)

RSS has been a pretty good source of hits for my blog, the reason being that a lot of blog directories and search enghines are using RSS to update the content for the blogs.

I'm currently using feedburner but I've noticed that the subscribers it reports is often strange, as subcribers can have a pretty wild swing all of a sudden (e.g. in a day)

The value of a bookmark?
The value of a newsletter subscriber by email?
The value of RSS feed subscriber.
The value of an RSS feed that requires me to go to a page..
The value of an RSS feed that does not require me to go to a page.
I suppose going to a page is best for a sale.

I think 1000 is high, not the point, I think Aaron makes a good point, the architect of the site has to view the goal of each page and implement design features into the page to accomplish the goal.

There are long-term and short-term goals.

I personally still believe in having people subscribe and receive an email in their box, thereby they need to think and react a small amount each day.

Converting to a sale though, in the methodology of Aaron means they cannot read in their inbox, they must read onine.

Hard for me to do, I am in Togo, West Africa playing around, but with the new GPRS connections it is getting simpler.
Andy of HoboTraveler.com