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Questions for Bloggers and the Readers Who Love Them, Part 2

On the heels of a post from the other day questioning my fellow bloggers’ work flow, I’m curious to hear from readers about their … well, reading. A few questions:

  1. Are you reading your favorite sites the old-fashioned way (i.e. visiting the actual site each time you want to see if it’s been updated) or are you on the RSS bandwagon? If not, why not?
  2. If so, how often do you check your feed reader? I’m obsessive and I’m also in front of a computer at least eight hours every day, which both add up to the unhealthy combination of checking my feeds about a thousand times daily.
  3. … and if so, do you read most/all of your subscribed blogs within your feed reader (i.e. Google Reader, Bloglines, etc.) or do you actually click to visit the site?
  4. Do you gravitate towards short posts, long posts or both? To be honest, I have my days where I just can’t be bothered to read anything longer than 200 words or so. It’s nothing to do with the author or the content. It’s usually just a matter of having too much to read in a given day and being overly selective.
  5. Do you provide “donation clicks” to your favorites bloggers, meaning do you occasionally click their AdSense, Yahoo, etc. ads to drop a few cents into their travel coffers? I used to, but don’t anymore. Believe it or not, this actually hurts the publisher/blogger. Google/Yahoo/etc. track the performance of clicks. And publishers whose ads do not perform or convert well (i.e. partially due to “donation clicks”) will be paid less over time for future clicks. Sad, but true.

Tune in next week for “What’s your favorite backpack color?”. Gripping blog content, exclusively from Vagabondish.

Mike Richard
Founding Editor
Mike Richard has traveled the world extensively since 2008. He's kayaked in Antarctica, tracked African wild dogs in South Africa, and survived a near-miss great white shark attack in Mexico. He loves the great outdoors, good bourbon, and he (usually) calls Tulsa home. He also enjoys speaking in the third person.

5 Comments

  1. 1. RSS all the way. It’s so much easier and not as time consuming than checking all 20+ blogs I keep tabs on.

    2. I use Opera’s built in RSS reader, so as long as I have my browser window open, it automatically check every 5-30 minutes.

    3. It depends on the site. Some sites I prefer reading in the feed reader, some sites I prefer reading in the original site, as I also want to read the reader’s comments.

    4. When I post about newsbits or quote other sites, I usually get lazy and just type in a one line comment. When I write about my experiences, it can get pretty long.

    5. No, unless the ad is something I’m really interested in.

    Reply

  2. 1. RSS. I have 315 feeds in Google Reader, and a few that I only read in Opera’s reader. Several I subscribe to in both.

    2. I couldn’t tell you how many times I check my feeds each day. I’ll say this, though: I spend more time at the computer than Mike does.

    3. I scan the articles in the reader. If it looks interesting, or useful, enough, I click on through to the site.

    4. I like posts that are interesting. Length isn’t really a consideration; although, there are times when I’m bothered if there isn’t enough meat to a post, and times when something short is good for an e-escape. It really depends on the focus of the post.

    5. No! No donation clicks! I fear the mighty Google!

    Reply

  3. 1. RSS. 65 feeds.

    2. Fairly often I guess after my morning scan I normally catch them pretty much as the come in.

    3. I scan through marking as read those that don’t interest me and then refresh and start reading through what’s left.

    4. I subscribe to a few personal finance blogs and have found lately that I skip by many of the articles I used to read, probably mainly because I’m just cleared my debt but also they can get quite repetitive and are often long but generally size doesn’t matter :) I do sometimes star long items to read later though.

    5. Sometimes but now I’ve heard that I’ll stop.

    Reply

  4. 1. RSS, 70 feeds
    2. I’m reading them almost every waking moment ;)
    3. I read most of them within the feed reader, unless they have extended bodies that require clicking on the page.
    4. I’m not so concerned with length of posts, as long as they’re not waffling. If it’s long, but it’s all well written and relevant, then great.
    5. Nope.

    Reply

  5. As sad as it seems – I do not RSS anything. I know, I know… I’m old school and prefer to check in on everyone on occasion and sometimes I slip up and manage to miss someone. Still – I’m trying to detach from this wired world and RSS as crazy as it may sound seems like one more way to be me attached and addicted.

    a
    http://www.adrienne-is.com
    http://www.gadling.com

    Reply

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