Top Knitting Blogs With Public RSS Stats
Having looked at knitting blogs with lots of links and traffic, the last stat stop is RSS.
Not everyone visits a blog directly. Life is busy and reading a feed saves time. It’s not unusual to find a blog with average traffic having boatloads of subscribers.
When knitting blogs were first gaining ground, Bloglines ruled. Today, not so much.
The most accurate count now is provided by Feedburner, a free aggregating service owned by Google.
If the majority of your fans keep in touch via feed readers, consider displaying your success. It will encourage more readers to give your blog a second look.
We humans are predictable creatures and are instinctively drawn to a popular site. We don’t want to miss out. Seeing social proof that others already like you makes us want to join too. We might subscribe for a couple weeks to check you out and we might stick around much longer. Either way, you win more eyeballs.
If your current subscriber count is consistently above 100, it’s to your advantage to broadcast that success. If your number is above 400, make sure you display it towards the top of your sidebar, what newspaper folks call above the fold. That big of a number is guaranteed to encourage more subscriptions.
Convinced and want to be included below? Activate the Feedburner feedcounter on your site then drop me a note. No minimum reader count needed to participate. Given the current low number of knitting blogs with public RSS stats, I’ll be adding to this list as soon as I’m contacted, rather than waiting for a yearly update.
Top Knitting Blogs – RSS
| Site | Feb 19, 2009 | Today | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wendy Knits | ? | |
| 2 | Now Norma Knits | 1945 | |
| 3 | Turtlegirl’s Bloggy Thing | 971 | |
| 4 | Knitorious | 953 | |
| 5 | JessaLu Knits (and Spins!) | 288 | |
| 6 | One Crazy Fiber Lady | 254 | |
| 7 | Chappy’s Mom | 230 | |
| 8 | My Knitting Machines And Me | ? | |
| 9 | Lalala… | 141 | |
| 10 | knittsings | 115 | |
| 11 | Knits With A Silent K | ? | |
| 12 | The Knitting Doctor | ? | |
| 13 | Christ, coffee and knitting needles | 26 |
|
| 14 | Leslie Carroll’s Original Knits | ? | |
| 15 | Needles of Steel | ? | |
| 16 | Knit*Six | ? |  |
| 17 | fly honey | ? | |
| 18 | marie fly fly | ? | |
| 19 | Anna’s Yarn Mansion | ? | |
| 20 | Lazy Knits and Purls | ? | |
| 21 | Knittin’ and Lovin’ It | ? | |
| 22 | Yarnbombing | ? |
Update
If you are new to Feedburner and you see a count of 0 when you activate, or you have recently gone through Feedburner’s update process for established accounts and half your readers have disappeared, DO NOT PANIC.
It will take Feedburner up to a week to get everything stabilized. I went through the update process last week and “lost” half of my subscribers for 3 days. It sucked to stare at the low number, but Feedburner got everything back to normal on its own.
For those with established Blogline readers, you have at least that many Feedburner readers. All Feedburner does is go out and count on any given day how many people who want your feed, be it through Bloglines, Google Reader, or any numerous other feed services, have their computer turned on and can be pinged. This is why Feedburner totals fluctuated daily. Some of our subscribers have the audacity to actually turn off their machines when not in use. Don’t they realize we hate seeing our subscriber totals play roller coaster?
What I recommend is to wait a week after creating a Feedburner account before publicizing your feedcounter. That way, your count will have stabilized and best reflect your current standing.
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February 19, 2009
16 comments
I never even knew about that chicklet. I just activated it on my blog and was pleased to see the number 🙂
I’ve added you to the list above. Congrats on all your subscribers!
I just activated this as well! I’m not exactly sure that I have enough readers to worry about it, but we’ll see.
I don’t currently use feedburner to monitor my feed, I suppose I should have been, so I just activated it and put a chicklet on my site but I’m not sure it was the chicklet you meant lol.
Yeah I found the feedcount thingy you wanted, it’s 0 for me as I didn’t have a feedburner account, I’ve always just gone off my web stats directly on my server as I can see how many times my xml files have been accesssed. I am not putting the counter on my site as it’s technically a new feed and says 0, but I did add the nice add to google reader chicklet which is nice, in the old days I had the bloglines ones.
pixie,
Don’t be disappointed.
Your actual count is no where near 0 because it takes a week for Feedburner to make the rounds of the web to find all of your readers on all of the different feed reading services.
I went to Bloglines and see you have 279 subscribers. You have at least that many Feedburner, since all Feedburner does it automate the going-out-to-feed-sites-and-counting process. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if your actual Feedburner count is twice your Bloglines subscribers.
I think I put the correct chicklet on my blog — I’d never heard of a chicklet before today. ; )
I’m always gobsmacked to see I’ve made one of your lists. ;o) Thanks for doing this! I always knew using feedburner would pay off someday, hehe (I signed up for feedburner about three years ago after three blog moves in six months)
I referred to the counter as the chicklet, since that is how I’ve always seen it. I’ve been given a heads up that Feedburner calls it the feedcounter. Sorry if I caused any confusion.
The small orange RSS square is great to have on your site for readers to click and subscribe, but it doesn’t provide a public count. You need to publish your feedcounter on your site for me to add you to the list above.
Thanks for the heads-up on the Feedburner chicklet. I’ve been using Feedburner since I started blogging but didn’t know about the chicklet or the upgrade. I’ve been enjoying your various blog statistics, and only wish I were in the Knitblog Class of 2005. 😉
I think feedburner is broken. I have added my blog to it but it seems that even after 3 weeks I still only have one reader… me. Google Reader says that I have 13 readers. What am I doing wrong!?
Something is definitely not right. I’m no Feedburner expert so all I can suggest is to log into your Feedburner account and find the link for tech support/ask questions. Let them know roughly how many Bloglines readers and Google Readers you have and the fact only 1 or 2 are being counted. In the Google support forums for Feedburner you might also find discussions of others with your same problem. It could be a known issue that is being worked on.
I wish I had a better magic answer for you.
Yay! I think I’ve got it!! I had the same problem as MamaMay — after three weeks, only 1 or 2 readers. I ended up deleting EVERYTHING having to do with feeds from both Feedburner and my blog. I let it “rest” for a day or two, then started a new. Hope that helps someone.
Got it fixed! Seems that I started my feederburn when they were doing some sort of maintenance and because of it it wasn’t entered properly… just had to delete and redo…
So I have about 30 readers…
I’m so glad you guys found a simple solution to why Feedburner wasn’t counting correctly. It will definitely help others with similar hiccups.
So what date was this last updated?