In the last two days i have seen the number of subscriber’s to BloggingTips drop from around 300 to 200. Day to day, the number of subscribers is gonna go up and down but i was a bit concerned with a drop of that amount.
The confusing thing is that traffic has increased a lot in the last week. I check my stats semi regularly anyways but after seeing this drop i compared webalizer with google analytics and awstats. Traffic from google is still extremely low (BT is still very new) but pingbacks have increased and the number of comments to posts is about the same. Regardless, this still doesn’t explain such a decrease in subscribers.
Have a look at my feedburner stats below :
The only thing i can think of which would cause this is the slight change in focus in posts in the last week. I have written a lot of hosting, design and coding posts in the last two weeks and perhaps this isn’t the type of posts a lot of subscribers were looking for.
Anyways, not to worry. I’m keeping the number of subscribers displayed here and i’ve no doubt the number of subscribers will increase in the near future.
Please leave a comment if :
- You have unsubscribed from the BloggingTips feed. Please be completely honest – i really do appreciate feedback for this kind of thing. Good or bad, feedback will help me improve the blog:)
- You have ever seen a big drop in subscribers to your blog in the past. Did you know what caused it?
I’ll post another update about my feedburner stats next month – it will be interesting to see how where the feedburner rollercoaster takes me! 
Kevin
I subscribed a while ago, but just use the title thing in Firefox (I don't know what you call it). So all I do is go through my the titles of the blogs I have subscribed to, if the new title interests me I go and take a look on the actual site. So I think the titles of blog posts are extremely important and that the crux of the information is in the first part of the title otherwise the important information is cut off.
I think your blog has a lot of information and will continue to subscribe.
Feedburner is weird, I also see large jumps and drops in subscriber numbers every few days. Sometimes in the 10-20% range.
As you also mentioned, Google Analytics does seem to undercount. I user several other trackers as well to get an across the board average.
I just pasted your URL into my Google Reader when I found your blog. Do those numbers count?
http://www.dailyblogtips.com/manage-feed-count-fl…
I hope this helps.
I unsibscribed because these monetizing-sites are becomming a dime a dozen, and I don’t need a blog telling me how to do simple things that common sense and a quick glance in a README will tell you.
As soon as I start seing many posts that state obvious things or rehash old things, I lose interest.
I’ll add you back, see what happens..
Hey, just wanted to let you know I've now subscribed
I subscribed to your feed! So thats 220 readers now. Incidently, 220 is my lucky number! Haha just kidding.
I have the same question as Jules, does adding directly via google reader affect the feedburner stats?
i know that feedburner sometimes changes the algorithm it uses to calculate subscribes and this can cause some very large jumps.
Well my blog is fairly new (started in febuary) and I'm around 230 rss subscribers, i haven't experienced a drop like that, but I know it is very possible it will happen one day.
I subscribed to your feed because I like the posts, the writing style, the topics and the overall feel of your blog, I'm still a subscriber, and will keep reading your blog.
thanks for the feedback guys.
It really doesn't bother me if people just access the site directly or via a feedreader – i was just surprised to see such a drop in two days.
I have noticed my readers seems to be jumping about to. I hope you get this sorted out soon.
Happy Blogging
Tom LeDree
I regularly have big drops in subscribers. I run a celebrities blog, so my explanation for these fluctuations may not apply to your blog, but they might give you some insight.
Example:
I write a post about a certain celebrity and include some brand new pictures of the celeb. A fan of the celebrity comes across my blog and links to my blog in her/his blog/forum/fansite. Hence, I get a lot of traffic from this site. These visitors are highly targeted (-> fans of celebrity A). They like the post and subscribe to my blog in hope to get more of celebrity A. But after a few days they unsubscribe again because they're not interested in celebrity B, C, D, etc.
The same happens if you rank high with a specific keyword (or topic) on Google which might just be a sub-niche of your blog. Example: people who are looking for blog template tweaking tips will soon lose interest if there are 10 new posts about hosting and maintaining a blog.
That's the reason I try to stick to a certain pattern of category/topic rotation on my blog, so every sub-niche interested reader/subscriber will get his/her desired topic covered.
Wow, what a long comment.
Not finished yet. Got something to add. I think having subscribers up to a number of under 500 won't give you stable facts to reflect your subscriber base. My theory: the frequency of those fluctuations will decrease proportionally with the growth of your subsribers, because numbers will be more stable then.
OK, now I'm finished
I think you're probably right about your recent posts having a techy focus. I'm still subscribed to your feed, but I can imagine non-technical people who are more interested in blogging tips getting a little confused, or frustrated.
I've done that before with other feeds I was subscribed to. They started to wander a bit, and after a couple of weeks, I got frustrated, and dropped them.
I still like your blog! I don't mind a techy focus however – because I want to learn things and I'm techy minded but self taught so there is alot I don't know or haven't been aware of. Also have been out of the loop for a while.
I guess really the fluctuation could be anything. People come and go. If it continues to go down: worry. If not, well, just keep doing what you do.
"I have written a lot of hosting, design and coding posts in the last two weeks and perhaps this isn
thanks for the feedback guys – i really appreciate it
i am trying to cover 'blogging about blogs' type topics here however as has been said, this kind of thing is covered a lot in other blogs already so i want to cover tech areas more because so few blogs are actually giving tips to people about the backend of blogging. Also, i have been getting a lot of emails from readers asking for help with their blogs and these questions are all tech, hosting and domain related.
I do not want this blog to be for complete newbies but i do want to help them as well as write articles targeted towards bloggers who are a bit more clued up.
It is hard finding the right balance sometimes
I wonder why you don't make a subcribe to my feed for the competition
i think $100, free hosting, zunezag.com will attract so many bloggers to participate.
I think the Feedburner number fluctuates so heavily because it represents the number of people who visited your site via RSS the previous day. So if someone has your site in their RSS reader but does not login to the reader that day (ie Saturdays/Sundays) then you will see a dropoff. This is what John Chow states in his eBook, Make Money Online, on page 25 where he is talking about not showing the RSS count when its small.
Great site though…keep up the awesome content!