Comments on: Travel bloggers—you’re doing RSS wrong!

By: Skott

Skott — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 03:15:12 +0000

Can I ask? How do I change the feeds of our website from excerpts to full posts?

thanks!

By: Jill

Jill — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:48:52 +0000

I’m so new to this whole RSS thing I’m a little confused. I get my RSS through Google Homepage and all I see are the titles of the posts…

Eh?

By: KiteZA

KiteZA — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 03:01:50 +0000

Just switched over from excerpts to full feed, because of this post.

The reason I originally had it on truncated feeds is because I’m an absolute sucker for statistics, and I didn’t know if I could get RSS feed stats for my blog.

Honestly, I still don’t, but I’ve decided that if any kind souls want to read it via RSS, I won’t make it more difficult for them.

By the way, if you do know of a way to track RSS feed visits/reads then do let me know

Thanks!

By: Laura

Laura — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 08:06:33 +0000

Oh, come on, it’s just clicking! We do hundreds of clicks everyday, why do people get so frustrated about it? Most bloggers that you would want to subscribe to are blogging to earn money. If their own readers are not willing to click and see the ads, then who? It’s cool to give away free stuff from time to time, but not all the time. Why do people just want to receive without giving anything in return?

By: Crissy

Crissy — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:50:02 +0000

While there are some blogs I have on my RSS feed that have excerpts, I rarely click to the page on them unless there is something really catchy about the title or the excerpt – so I’m not reading what they have to say and connecting with them often.

If you’re using an excerpt then you have to be writing every post like someone actively wants to click through to read the whole thing, a whole different level of follow ship. The person who will click through might be someone you’re better connected with, which is a good thing, but you might also be missing other opportunities to bring in new readers to connect with.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 14:07:52 +0000

Check out Google Reader, soultravelers3. You’re a member of — and a big contributor to the travel blogging community. If you frequent more than a handful of blogs, which I believe you do, I can only imagine how much time you could save by aggregating your reading through RSS. In my opinion, it’s worth the bother of learning and setting up. Once you’re there, you’ll wonder how you ever did without it.

By: soultravelers3

soultravelers3 — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 10:50:07 +0000

Interesting post! We’ve been traveling the world nonstop since 2006 and blogging about it and I must admit that i am still totally clueless about RSS.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:27:49 +0000

Thanks, Daniel. Sage advice — and something we might consider doing. I’m not at all surprised to find out that those who use RSS feeds find full-post feeds so useful. Thanks again!

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:25:55 +0000

Ironically, those polls don’t work inside of RSS feeds! I hear what you’re saying — exactly. And anything we can do to make the lives of our readers easier is worth doing — in our opinion!

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:24:46 +0000

Thanks for the comments, Fuzz. We subscribe to a great number of blogs, to. That’s why we’ve learned to not hold anything back from our readers — at the end of the day, there’s just such a proliferation of blogs out there they’ll find the ‘full’ feed they are looking for!

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:12:29 +0000

Hey Kate — I think it’s fair to say that we’ll maintain the status quo. Excerpts just don’t serve readers very well, to be quite honest.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:53:39 +0000

Excerpts suck – don’t use them, as a reader they drive me away from blogs in my RSS feeds.

that said – I understand that you need to monetize your content in order to continue producing it. I’d recommend text or display adds IN your rss content. See the feed for techcrunch.com. Even better in my opinion is how daringfireball.com monetizes his feed. He puts out 1-2 posts per week (not more or they will annoy) with highly targeted advertisements. For travel this could be anything from backpacks, to iPhone travel guides, or really anything you feel would be valuable to your readers.

The posts are conversational which reduces the annoyance level and generally prove to be more valuable to your advertisers with better click through rates and conversion.

I would imagine this method takes a little extra work to get started lining up advertisers, but ultimately it is likely the most effective method.

Hope that give you some choices for moving forward and remaining successful with the blog.

By: Dan - Voyagner

Dan - Voyagner — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:36:21 +0000

The poll isn’t working for me. Let me just say this, I don’t have a single excerpt only feed in my RSS and I don’t bother actually visiting to check for updates on those sites that don’t provide a full feed. It’s not a matter of principle, its just the internet should be Really Simple to use. You might think what is one click but why do Apple and Microsoft work so hard at reducing the number of clicks in their software. It’s not so much to increase efficiency as to make it easier to use.

By: Fuzz

Fuzz — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:36:00 +0000

I subscribe to this blog through an RSS feed and also subscribe to about 200 other blogs.

I think the key point to those bloggers who post shortened feeds that they need to allow something within those few shortened sentences or paragraphs for the reader to comment on. If there is nothing for me to comment on, I don’t continue to read the rest of the feed.

By: Adventurous Kate

Adventurous Kate — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:33:53 +0000

Oh, PLEASE keep the posts in full! I really do tend to skip most excerpted posts, especially when my reader is full. I feel your pain on the revenue end, but I really hope you keep them in full!!