The site has been around for over two years now but I have always abstained from publishing full content RSS feeds for two selfish reasons (or you can call them fears) outlined below:
1. Since RSS Subscribers get to read the full blog content inside their newsreaders, they would never visit the actual blog site - the fear was that lesser pageviews would impact the advertising revenue.
2. An ever bigger threat was from blog plagiarists and MFA Sites who would steal the blog content and reuse it on their own sites. It takes just too much effort and time to deal with content thieves.
But as an experiment, last month I switched from partial feeds to full text feeds and the results have been beyond expectation both in terms of growth of RSS subscribers as well as revenue from blog feeds [see graphs].
Growth in RSS Subscribers - Digital Inspiration added more than a 1000 new subscribers in less than a month - thanks to full text feeds.
Revenue from Ads inside Feeds - Not saying the exact numbers here but the revenue generated from full feeds in the last month was more than the combined revenue of previous months. This is clearly a result of migrating to full content feeds - more ad impressions were generated translating to increase in revenue.
Not just the commercial aspect, regular readers are now more keep to participate in the blog discussions and the level of engagement has increased as well.
Now that I am a serious proponent of Full content feeds, let's look at couple of more reasons that in favor of full feeds than short summary or teaser feeds:
» Most subscribers are annoyed when they have to click an extra link to read the full story. Unless you're an A-list blogger like Scoble or Om Malik, a majority of readers won't take the pain of clicking that "Read full story.." link.
» We all face those rare moments when our blog site is unavailable due to a server crash or network outage. Subscribers can still read your articles offline or inside their feed readers.
» Regular readers, who visit your blog via RSS feeds, are very likely to stay away from the advertisements because of the "Adsense Blanket" effect. They are aware of your site layout and know well what portions to avoid.
» If you break a story or write something interesting and engaging, RSS subscribers would still come to your blog pages to read comments left by other readers or write one themselves. Partial feeds may not excite them enough.
» Not everyone lives in a 24x7 connected world. They like to connect to the internet, download interesting stuff and read them offline without shooting the ISP bill. Full feeds are an ideal choice here.
Not convinced yet ? If you are still not willing to make the switch to full feeds, atleast write a feed with a good summary text that gives a complete idea to reader about the underlying blog post. Never use the options like "Show first 200 characters" - they can create meaningless sentences.
Related: Use RSS Feed Plagairism to your advantage
Reader Comments
I am all for full feeds, mainly because when I am in reader's shoes I like to read full feeds. I have put down my thoughts on my blog - http://ifacethoughts.net/2006/10/03/full-feed-petition/.
Written on 8/12/06 6:50 PM
Initially I did have summarised feeds. However, research indicated that users and fellow bloggers do not really like that. So I moved to full feeds, especially after http://www.fullfeeds.com/
Good post.
Cheers!
Written on 8/12/06 8:12 PM
I agree. A summarized feed can be rather annoying coz often the reader can't tell if the article is worth his while or not by just the summary. So not only does he have to click an extra link but he may be disappointed even after he takes the trouble to do so. Glad you've opted for the full feed way.
As for Adsense, I never see any ads on most blogs in any case as I use the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox. I still stand by what I wrote to you some weeks back: your site search doesn't work if one uses the Firefox/ASdblock combo. Is this intentional? :P
Written on 8/12/06 8:47 PM
Eh? Really? Never occurred to me that full text feed's a good thing, perhaps I should try too then.
Written on 8/12/06 8:56 PM
Really *really* glad you've seen the light, Amit!
Written on 8/12/06 10:05 PM
I switched to full feeds on my site the day i found myself getting irritated with short feeds given by many bloggers and news agencies and i did not want to impose the same torture on my readers :).
Written on 8/12/06 10:12 PM
You hit the nail on the head. Full feeds are the superior customer service experience. :) Providing partial feeds is dictating to your readers how YOU want them to read the site. Full feeds put your readers in control.
Written on 8/12/06 11:32 PM
I had a similar experience and came to a similar conclusion:
eLearning Technology: Why You Should Provide Full Feeds (especially on Blogger)
Written on 8/12/06 11:49 PM
I agree with full feeds making a greater impression upon a reader than a partial feed.
But Amit, I do not know how much you can attribute the spurt in the number of subscribers to your turning to full feeds. For one, nobody who signs up know if it is going to be a full feed or partial feed. And two, the existing readers are very unlikely to have virally advertised your turning to full feed.
I would presume that the increase in subscriber-base is probably due to the increasing media-attention DI is getting, which the blog definitely deserves...
Written on 9/12/06 12:29 AM
Anand: actually, what you are forgetting is that influencers won't talk about partial text feeds as much as full text feeds. Why? Look at my link blog for a hint: it's a lot easier to find interesting stuff in full text mode. I also like rewarding people who treat me well by linking to them often. I definitely link less often to people with partial text feeds.
Written on 9/12/06 1:12 AM
Ah, so you changed layout of your site. I am all for full feeds for all the good reasons you sited, but I think you can consider yourself A-list blogger (and great marketer). And your titles are very descriptive, so I can make my mind without even looking at summary.
Though, if I remember correctly you yourself advocated partial feeds earlier. Even if not, your reasons for full feeds - while genuine - do not address concerns which you highlighted earlier in the post. Is there any way to avoid or minimize damage, or are you saying that damage is worth because of increased subscriptions and revenues?
Lastly, my Bloglines doesn't show pictures in the feeds for this blog (it does for others), so I have to come to website for those posts. Is it intentional, or something wrong with feeds here?
Written on 9/12/06 1:17 AM
Great article. I definitely prefer full-text feeds as a reader, and I use full-text on my blog, too.
Written on 9/12/06 2:22 AM
Your analysis makes no sense! Why would offering a full text feed lead to more subscribers? A user isn't going to know whether a feed is a summary feed or a full-text until AFTER they've subscribed, so the fact that you switched had nothing to do with your sub growth.
Written on 9/12/06 4:58 AM
Just the mention of full text feeds in the Techmeme feed got me to your blog...which I'd never had reason to visit before now.
Written on 9/12/06 5:41 AM
I am glad to know (via scoble) that you have switched to full feeds. I had requested this feature before.
Now that it is availaible, I will sibscribe and follow your blog with interest.
Rishi
Written on 9/12/06 7:45 AM
Sorry, you haven't convinced me. Scoble and I have debated this very subject on stage at the Blog Business Summit too, and the fact is that an OVERLY SHORT summary feed is annoying (yes, 8-15 words is too short) but an overly long feed is too annoying too. I hate suddenly coming across a 25-40 paragraph article in my feed reader: my desire is to skim information and then dig down when I find something I want.
As a result, I offer partial feeds on my major blogs. On my business blog, the feed typically has the first 2-3 paragraphs of the article, and on my AskDaveTaylor Q&A blog, you get the question, but not the answer.
In both cases, I present sufficient information that you can make a fast, intelligent decision whether to jump to the remainder of the content without me shoving the entire article (which is often rather long) into your reader.
Written on 9/12/06 8:45 AM
Full RSS feeds makes more sense to me and I hate when I have to switch applications to read the content. But I would certainly prefer to have a choice on whether I need partial RSS feeds or full RSS feeds from a site. When that becomes standard that would enable a better user experience.
Written on 9/12/06 9:17 AM
FULL FEEDS ! Indeed !
GREAT article Mr. Amit :) couldn't argue more or agree more ;)
Written on 9/12/06 9:24 AM
I'm surprised it took you so long to realize that full feeds are vastly superior to partial feeds - especially if one of your goals is to sell something to a feed reader.
Written on 9/12/06 11:14 AM
>Why would offering a full text feed lead to more subscribers?
Because people who offer full text feeds are more likely to get linked to, which will mean more visitors. Also, if I discover a person is only offering partial text feeds I'm very likely to unsubscribe from their feed after trying their feed out for a few days.
>but an overly long feed is too annoying too.
Dave: in Google Reader this is ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE anymore. You can provide a 50,000 word post and I can click "J" to go right past it. An ultra long post is far less annoying than a partial text post. Why? I hate clicking over to read posts.
Written on 9/12/06 12:16 PM
Thanks for the tip.
Written on 9/12/06 2:01 PM
>Scoble: You can provide a 50,000 word post and I can click "J" to go right past it.
Maybe, but I use Google Reader and one of the reason's I hate full RSS feeds is because if the article is longer than 'one screen' then there can be a very long pause while it loads which I find annoying even if I hammer 'J' on my keyboard a hundred times. You probably don't notice the pause Robert as you're busy reading the long-winded article!
Anyway, I have finally (grudgingly!) decided to offer full RSS feeds now after reading this thread as I don't think it is fair to force my LOYAL readers to have to use two applications if they don't too. So what if I lose some ad revenue? At least they are the people reading my posts everyday, which is more important to me.
This has turned into such a long comment I'm going to cut and paste it into my blog as a post! Feel free to subscribe now if you haven't Scoble - I'm assuming that's the only reason you haven't up to now btw ;-)
Written on 9/12/06 2:25 PM
Great article. Full feeds are definitely the way to go, especially if anybody is reading your content in an aggregator on a mobile device without a net connection!
I wrote an article on this a while back that you can check out here:
Truncated RSS feeds are like foreplay without sex. Damn frustrating.
Written on 9/12/06 5:27 PM
Interesting read. I never thought of this way. Thanks for sharing.
Written on 9/12/06 6:53 PM
I prefer normally full feed and once I launched my blog with full feed I am getting some visitors.
Written on 9/12/06 7:52 PM
Was there a change in participation as well in terms of comments. I have also added your feed as live bookmarking along with other dozen ones that I read on a regular basis.
Written on 9/12/06 10:45 PM
I wouldn't be commenting here if your feed only had partial content.
It's a BIG PITA to click that extra click!
Written on 11/12/06 2:54 PM
I am all for full feeds. I switched to full feeds on my blog, http://digitol.blogspot.com after i read this article. visit my blog to read comparisons on Flickr vs Photobucket, GMail vs Yahoo vs Windows Mail , Blogger vs Wordpress etc.
Written on 11/12/06 6:18 PM
I addressed this same issue last week:
Should I From Full to Partial RSS Feeds?
If RSS readers aren't willing to click once to get the full post, then the post is obviously not interesting enough.
Written on 12/12/06 12:43 AM
The medium is the message. After working years on my CSS, HTML, graphics, PHP, do I want my "content" read out of context, the life stripped out of it? No. On the other hand, most of you didn't bother to build a site--you're probably using free templates on a free server where they will eventually banner farm your ass. That's what you get for being cheap asses.
RSS is a perfect format for robots that don't get visual cues, search engine robots especially, and the few geeks with murky souls still enamored with typographically challenged bare-bones RSS readers.
Written on 13/12/06 6:21 PM
Have you explained on your blog how to use Adsense for feeds feature. today i found that this feature is unavailable now in beta blogger.
And also i want to know whether you have made any hacks for Beta Bloggers?
please dont mind, if my questions are repetitions of some others questions, as i am a new blogger, i just want to know the things. i am a regular reader of your blog.
thanks for your informative articles.
Written on 20/12/06 8:32 PM
I agree to this. If someone doesn't publish full feeds, it looks very obvious that he is trying to act a little smart. And consumers don't like this in the era of free services.
Written on 23/12/06 4:28 PM
Hi Amit
I use SharpReader to read your blog. You are saying that revenue from adds inside feeds has grown but I don't see any sort of ads in your feeds. Is anything I am missing?
Written on 2/5/07 7:18 PM
Pankaj - Feedburner ads are generally geo-targeted.
Written on 2/5/07 7:20 PM
I read feeds on my handheld. I check the feed first using firefox/sage, and if it isnt a full feed, I dont even bother....
Written on 5/5/07 12:30 AM
Ive always provided partial feeds from my blog but after reading this ive decided to chance and see what difference it makes. Ive always expected to see a dramatic decrease in the traffic to my site if i did this but we will see!
Written on 14/6/07 9:47 PM