Thanks to everyone who has added their thoughts on why they unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed. There have been 109 comments left on that post so far and some interesting recurring themes have emerged.
I’ve attempted to categorize them below. Obviously with 103 opinions (and most people giving multiple reasons all in their own words) I’ve had to make some judgement calls in classifying comments left. Some of the categories below have overlap but I think you’ll get a pretty good picture of what motivates people to unsubscribe from RSS feeds.
34 Reasons Why People Unsubscribe from RSS feeds:
- Too many posts (the post levels are too overwhelming) – 37
- Infrequent Posting (or the blog is effectively dead) – 29
- Partial Excerpts Feeds – 25
- Blog Changes Focus (too much off topic posting) – 23
- Too many posts that I see elsewhere (Redundant, Repeated or Recycled News) – 19
- Uninteresting Content – 16
- Irrelevant Content – 13
- The Blogger’s Ego – Too much self promotion – 11
- Low Quality Content – 11
- Too many posts that are too long – 10
- Negative blogging – 7
- Feed Errors – Especially when a Feed Reloads the latest 10-20 posts every time – 7
- Offensive Content/Personal attacks/Discrimination – 6
- ‘infomercials’ (too much selling) – 6
- Blog Titles that Don’t Tell what the post is about – 5
- No or Poor Formatting in posts – 5
- My own interests as a reader change – 5
- No Longer Useful or Valuable – 4
- Too many links in the text and not enough content – 4
- Advertising – 3
- Inconsistent writing (style and focus) – 2
- Too Many Grammatical Errors – 2
- Found other feeds that are better – 2
- Too Narrow a focus – 1
- Too much repetition in topic – 1
- Pushiness of Blogger – 1
- Blogger Doesn’t Respond to Comments – 1
- No Images in the feed – 1
- Lack of Confidence or Opinion – 1
- Lack of a sense of who the blogger is – 1
- Too much clutter/extras at the end of posts – 1
- Talking Down to Readers – 1
- Too many quotes – 1
- Change of Primary blogger – 1
A few brief comments (I wouldn’t want to have a long post now….):
The Frequency of Posting is obviously a big factor with 35% of respondents saying that too many posts was reason for unsubscribing and 28% saying that infrequent posts was reason to delete a feed from their reader. Interestingly, the ‘infrequent posting’ vote was perhaps a little less than last time I asked a group of bloggers this question. I suspect that with advancements in Feed Readers that inactive feeds don’t bother as many people as they did previously (ie Google Reader has a mode where you simply don’t see a feed unless it’s updated).
The Partial Feeds Vote got off to a slow start but gained momentum as the comment thread grew. 24% of respondents said they unsubscribe from feeds that are partial or just title feeds.
Off Topic Posting and blogs changing direction/focus is an obvious annoyance to many (this one surprised me slightly) with 22% of people giving it as a reason.
Content – I found it interesting that the quality, relevance and nature of content came down the list. Things like the form and frequency of the feed dominated the discussion while the actual content itself came in as secondary importance. Perhaps this was skewed slightly by the way I asked the question and by the first responses (I suspect that some people were swayed by the issues that others already raised).
Interesting, too, how many of those list items seem to come back to the personality / persona of the blogger…
Why are too many posts a problem?
Everyone has their own reasons, but in my case its limited online time (2-4 times per week in evenings). I work in IT and after staring at computers all day, often the last thing I feel like doing when I get home is sitting in front of another computer! Even after just 3 days absence the number of unread posts can pile up, and its tempting to just “mark all as read” so I can get on to the e-mail, which would have also piled up.
If you’re online for private purposes every day, or can read blogs at work, then excess posts are easier to keep on top of. I suspect this is not the case for most.
Darren – as usual a great job. I would add that sometimes people unsubscribe because the subscribers interests have changed..;)
Cheers,
D
p.s.your blog is the one I send people to the most, when they ask me how to really really understand blogging
[…] Darren’s survey shows that almost 11 percent of the people unsubscribe from feeds due to infrequent posting. Yes it would bother if you had bookmarked the blog to check for new content regularly. But why on earth would they be bothered by infrequent posting when they don’t have to do anything to check for new content on that blog? […]
Really interesting as usual. This one made me chucke: “The Blogger’s Ego – Too much self promotion – 11 “. I guess this must ring painfully true in some peoples ears. ;)
I must say Darren, that you provide so much valuable insight to the blogging world – I really really appreciate reading your blog.
It also spawned an idea of mine which I will unabashedly promote here. I decided to make a small survey, building on your idea of the Ad Sense earning surveys. Feel free to check it out, and if you give it a small push it might acutally produce some interesting results.
Anyway keep up your outstanding and inspirational work!
Great post Darren. Extremely interesting. I personally don’t like posts that are too long to read. Too many posts, not enough hours in the day to read them. :)
Hoo…
It’s suprising to know that too much posting is a turn off to reader. Looks like I have to tone down my frequency… duh…
I’m interested in hearing from people what constitutes a long post. Also, when is it ok for posts to be long? What if the blogger only posts 2 or three times a week or once a week if its a really long post? For me, this is my biggest concern.
Number one is so true. I have subscribed to feed that now have 100+ posts in Google reader and I don’t know when will I have the time to read them all. Maybe I will unsubscribe rather than reading them. Bloggers should post less in any given day naturally leading to higher quality of posts.
[…] 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog: Darren had asked the question, Why do readers unsubscribe from your blog’s feed? and he tabulated the answers in the comments. Much of the answers are unsurprising but the top two reasons are too many posts and too few posts respectively. So the answer there might be to post just enough entries to keep people coming back and just few enough to keep from overwhelming them. I have found proof of that hypothesis in that the daily updates of plugins and themes on weblogtoolscollection.com works best in single consolidated posts. Other important factors included off topic posts, partial feeds and finally good content. I love Scoble’s comment on that post. There is a lot to be said for “do what you love, put stuff up you’d love to read, and the rest will fall into place.” (No Ratings Yet) Loading … […]
[…] I just read an article called 34 reasons why readers unsubscribe from your blog. It seems that one of top 10 reasons why people stop reading a blog are frequent changes in focus. I really didn’t know that… Hell, going by my own reading habits, I subscribe to a bucket load of blogs that are as random as they get. But I guess not all people like that. […]
i freakin love gizmodo, but i can’t keep up with all of their posts. i’ve almost unsubscribed a few times.
34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog…
Thanks to everyone who has added their thoughts on why they unsubscribe from a blog’s RSS feed. There have been 109 comments left on that post so far and some interesting recurring themes have emerged….
[…] Han g�r det i en kommentar till Darren Rowses postning 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog d�r han listat ett antal sk�l f�r varf�r l�sare v�ljer att sluta att prenumerera p� RSS-feeden p� en viss blogg. Jag har kursiverat de saker som f�r mig personligen att fimpa en feed. […]
34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog…
34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog posted at IndianPad.com…
[…] Darren Rowse listed too many posts (the post levels are overwhelming) as the number 1 reason why people unsubscribe from feeds. I can attest to this because I’ve unsubscribed from many feeds, not because I didn’t enjoy them, but because I didn’t have the time to keep up. […]
Honestly, I unsubscribed from this blog because I found that there were just too many posts for me to keep up with, and they got a little redundant after a while.
It might appear from the list that content is not emphasized, but I think the frequently posting problem is only a problem because the frequent posts are not interesting or just a link to something else. I don’t see how you can post 4 or more times a day and actually have good content and/or not regurgitating the same news. The only ones on the list that aren’t content related are partial feeds/feed errors.
Not sure I can fix my partial feeds on wordpress.com
[…] En 34 razones por las cuales tus lectores cancelan la suscripción a tu blog: Darren ha hecho la pregunta, Porqué los lectores cancelan la sucripción al feed de tu blog? y como consecuencia ha tabulado las respuestas dejadas en los comentarios. […]
THANKS for reformatting all the info Darren
[…] Die restlichen 22 Gründe lesen. […]
[…] (source : Problogger) […]
[…] 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog – I have to say I was pretty shocked to learn that the #1 reason is “too much posting”?? Too much? […]
#1 reason is “too much posting”??
What is it ?
anybody has any idea ?
[…] De pe Gandeste.net (un blog foarte interesant!) aflu despre rezultatul unui studiu privind motivele pentru care o persoana se dezazboneaza de la RSS-ul unui blog. ProBlogger a alcatuit o lista cu 34 de motive. Este important de studiat o astfel de lista. […]
[…] Your RSS readers are unsubscribing- here’s why. Filed under: Uncategorized — recar @ 9:31 pm Your RSS readers are unsubscribing- here’s why. After some informal polling, here are the most often cited reasons why readers of your blog will unsubscribe. Via ProBlogger.[news] [technology] [software] […]
[…] Robert Scoble, niet de eerste de beste, laat een reactie achter op een bericht van Darren Rowse die weer eens een theorie verzint op basis van iets wat voor hem werkt (lees: heel veel geld oplevert). ‘34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog’. En Robert zegt daarop: I don’t believe any of these reasons. I do all 34 things and I have more than 100,000 subscribers, according to WordPress. […]
A with most theories: the opposite theory also seem to work fine. ‘Do the never’ like Seth Godin says… although: that’s another theory :)
[…] I logged into the wordpress admin panel, and saw a link that caught my eye. Eventually I made my way to ProBlogger, where he compiled a list of 34 reasons someone might unsubscribe from an RSS feed. Some of the items on that list got me thinking. […]
[…] Darren Rowse where is lists 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog. […]
Iora – Too many posts. I’ve had it myself where you feel inundated with posts from a particular site that you start to think it’s time to unsubscribe. However there’s a reason why you subscribed in the first place so unless any of the other elements aren’t in play, too many posts should not be the sole reason to unsubscribe.
From “post everyday” in most “how to blog” posts to “too many posts makes readers unsubscribe from your feed?” That’s a big leap and ends up being rather confusing, if not even misleading. I can almost see people already worrying if they post too much – or too little, and changing what they currently do, based simply on this survey.
The questions, especially #1 and it’s opposite #2 should really have been qualified. How many is “too many?” How many is “too few?” I would have found it more useful if the question was qualified by asking something like “how many posts do you consider to be too many/too few? 1-3 posts/week/? 4-6, 6-8, more than 10 a week, less than 5/week” etc.
As it is, the questions and their answers are almost meaningless, because what constitutes “too much” or “too little” is relative. It also depends very much on the subject matter of the blog. A tech blog that posted infrequently would be left in the dust in no time. I concur with Robert.
Besides, if presented with many posts to read don’t people simply select those they wish to read and leave the rest??
[…] 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog (ProBlogger) […]
[…] This blogger, for all his readership, is paranoid. Read problogger.net’s 34 reasons why readers unsubscribe from a blog. […]
[…] 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog […]
[…] By the way, Darren Rowes’s article on “34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog” listed infrequent posting as the number 2 reason why people unsubscribe blogs. I better increase the frequency at this blog. […]
読者がRSSフィードの購読をやめる34の理由…
昨今はRSSリーダーも普及し、ブログを読むためには欠かせないツールになっていま……
[…] 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog (tags: blogging bloggers audiencedevelopment content) […]
[…] 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog Interesting because I’ve thought about this a lot (for example, what is the threshold for the number of days you will wait to keep a subscription until the author finally posts an update?) […]
[…] Darren/ProBlogger: 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog […]
[…] • Problogger just released a survey of reasons why people unsubscribe to feeds. Just about 25% of respondents said that it’s because of partial feeds. Right behind too many posts and not enough of them. […]
“I don’t see how you can post 4 or more times a day and actually have good content and/or not regurgitating the same news.”
There are great blogs out there that post worthwhile, original content at this rate. That’s because they spend their time blogging, not self-promoting. That’s also why you’re probably not familiar with them.
Adding to what Trent has said, some blogs actually have multiple authors producing unique and great content throughout the day which could easily push post counts up to 4+ per day (Example: Boing Boing).
I’m not sure I understand the issue of the blog reposting the last 10-20 posts. This is something that’s out of our contol, no?
Totally different reaction to ‘infomercials’ (too much selling) — When will a standard emerge to help distinguish the commercial / selling oriented feeds from non-commercial? With how strong RSS seems to have taken hold, it seems we will need some standards around usage type.
Yes, like some other people, I’m a little surprised that people would leave because of too many posts. I post several times a day on a couple of my blogs and my subscriber list still continues to grow.
I also subscribe to a few blogs that post frequently and although it can be overwhelming at times, I simply scan the headlines until I find something that interests me.
Well, different strokes for different folks!
I guess I am one of the few that doesn’t care how many people subscribe to my feed. Honestly, I have never checked and probably never will. Blog feeds to people are like straw in the wind.
I write a food blog about my experiences in restaurants in the Phoenix metro area. I love finding great restaurants and putting out the information about my “find” to anyone who wishes to read it. If they do, great! If they don’t, then that is great, too.
My blog isn’t a hostage situation, however, and if I were to wring my hands or lose sleep every time someone unsubscribed from my feed, I would probably be a fingerless insomniac.
[…] Problogger에 재미난 설문조사가 있어서 올려봅니다. 주제는 어떨때 RSS 구독을 취소하느냐 인데요. […]
Cool list, thanks. I see you’ve also joined the Cool Kid’s Club (a.k.a StumbleUpon). There is hope for you, sir. -j
[…] I hope a post a day isn’t too frequent This article by Darren Rowse suggests 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe From Your Blog. First on the list is too many posts. I am currently subscribed to about 100 blogs and I have unsubscribed to blogs based on several of these, including too many posts (#1), infrequent posting (#2), and partial feeds (#3). I personally don’t like partial feeds the most–that would have been my number one answer. […]