Do You Fake Your FeedCount?
There are a few people who fake their blog’s FeedCount. They do it either because they don’t want their visitors to know that their blog is a new one or because they want to make their visitors feel that their blog is popular.
Faking your FeedCount may help you increase your RSS readers as some people prefer to subscribe to a blog only after they find that it is already being read by many people.
My personal opinion was to not display the FeedCount until the blog reaches about 100-500 readers, but I have been thinking recently whether to fake my new blog’s FeedCount or to not display it until it has a few hundred readers.
What is your opinion? Do you fake your FeedCount?
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Posted on December 12th, 2007 | Category: Blogging |
Rhys
December 12, 2007 at 11:34 pm
I wouldn’t. If you’re planning on selling adverts on your blog, then it can be construed as fraud or misrepresentation.
If I advertised on a blog that had faked it’s subscriber counts, I’d demand my money back.
Michael
December 12, 2007 at 11:36 pm
I currently have around 50 RSS subscribers but I don’t plan on displaying my feed count until I reach 100 or so. I don’t think that anyone should fake their RSS count, I personally think that that is wrong.
Abhijeet Mukherjee
December 12, 2007 at 11:48 pm
John…you are a problogger…which means you earn your bread and butter through it,its your business…and a business succeeds in the long run only if its done ethically…..faking feedcount is certainly unethical because you are giving wrong info to your readers who are actually your customers….and to be honest it came as a shock to me when you said you have been thinking about it….such an experienced blogger thinking about such means to increase blog popularity!!…comeon John…you already have such a popular blog and you can always use it to market your new blog….you can easily get some decent traffic.
Vikram
December 12, 2007 at 11:57 pm
That would be a dumb move really, coz now a days there are several ways to know how popular a blog is and a reader is smart enough to understand if the feed count is legit.
Also if you are doing this to impress advertisers, they are quite savvy and would see through this fraudulent count!
Keith Dsouza
December 13, 2007 at 12:02 am
Well I do agree with you that many people fake the feed count. I currently don’t display my own feed count. I am still waiting for it to cross the 500 mark before I can do that.
JohnTP
December 13, 2007 at 12:09 am
I also don’t like the idea of faking the FeedCount. If a reader finds out that the blog they read were faking their FeedCount,they would surely unsubscribe.
It’s best to not display the FeedCount until the blog has about a few hundred readers.
When I said that I was thinking of faking my new blog’s FeedCount, I meant it as an experiment for a short period to see if it would really increase the RSS readers.
I had chatted today to a blogger who had faked his FeedCount, and he told me the reason he was doing it. So I was thinking to give it a try for a short period.
I have not done it yet and wanted to know what others think about it, hence this post.
Thank you all for commenting
Dean Taplin
December 13, 2007 at 12:46 am
Agree with the comments from other readers. Just don’t bother showing the feedcount until it reaches a respectable number.
There are other ways to indicate whether a blog has readers, such as number of comments posted, etc.
Adam McKerlie
December 13, 2007 at 1:20 am
My thoughts are torn on this matter. On the one hand its unethical and if you get caught people will unsubscribe and not come back to your site.
On the other hand, I have noticed that people tend to “jump on the bandwagon” when they see a high number of subscribers, so there is incentive to fake the count.
It really just comes down to whether or not you’re willing to risk it.
David Culpepper
December 13, 2007 at 2:01 am
Ultimately it would be very bad for a bloggers reputation so I wouldn’t do it. I can certainly see the advantages to doing something like that but the risk is too high for me.
Ankesh Kothari
December 13, 2007 at 2:55 am
Have you ever subscribed to a blogs RSS feed just because you saw that it had a few thousand subscribers?
All a fake subscriber count will do is make visitors spend 3 more seconds on your blog.
But you could achieve the same - if not better - results and keep them longer using other much more ethical social proof ideas.
One of them is just contacting a few top known experts in your industry and ask them for a testimonial. It’ll do much more for you than faking feed count.
Pearl
December 13, 2007 at 3:14 am
I’d heard people did that but how can you even find out if someone was faking their feedcount or comments? I guess anything is possible and I think it all depends on your own ethics and conscious really! Like anything else in life, and like all good good things come to an end, all bad things come to an end and one needs to think of how they will handle it and survive if they are caught!
And the backlash from advertisers isn’t gonna be pleasant either! So, why blog for a short term thrill?
Tal Siach
December 13, 2007 at 3:51 am
I am against!, I’m sure it can help a lot by increasing the chance for someone to subscribe your blog rss. However,if you truly respect your readers and your writing you shoud probebly not do it! First it starts with faking the feedcount then you making other shortcuts such as url redirection and more. But like my father always says “Everyone should do what best for them”.
Steven Snell
December 13, 2007 at 4:36 am
I think it’s dishonest personally. If readers find that they’ve been misled I can’t imagine they’ll be likely to trust again.
Skellie
December 13, 2007 at 6:11 am
I agree with Steven — faking any aspect of your site or your reputation is dishonest.
All it would be taken to be found out would be somebody right clicking on your feedburner image and looking for the source — which would probably happen pretty soon after people began to suspect your subscriber count was too good to be true.
In other words, I don’t think very highly of it. That being said, I can understand wanting to experiment, but I just don’t think it’s worth the risk to your reputation (already very solid).
Tay - Super Blogging
December 13, 2007 at 7:14 am
Honesty, I don’t see why you’d think of doing something like that. It’s basically lying to your readers and advertisers and can count as fraud. I see you sell advertising space here, and if someone saw your feed count and wanted to advertise because of it, that is pretty much like thievery and is quite dishonest - there is NO good reason to fake your feed count, IMO.
JohnTP
December 13, 2007 at 8:48 am
I have never faked the feed count on this blog and will never do it.
I was talking about experimenting with faking the feed count on my new blog for a short period to see if it really helps increasing RSS readers (and not to impress advertisers). It seemed to have helped the blogger I had chatted with yesterday and so I thought of giving it a try for some time.
But now I won’t be doing it after reading all the above comments.
Thank you all for your comments
Brown Baron
December 13, 2007 at 8:57 am
Would never do it. I was actually one of the stubborn ones who displayed my count even when it was at zero heh. Using someone else’s feed count is not the way to establish your name. Great post buddy.
Michel Fortin
December 13, 2007 at 9:06 am
Personally, I wouldn’t. But let’s be clear: we’re talking feed count only, here. For example, on my blog, I have “total subscribers,” which is combination of feeds, email subscriptions to the blog (by a third party, like GetResponse or Aweber, and not by feed services which actually include email subs in their feed counts), and other sources.
Amit
December 13, 2007 at 10:55 am
I beg to differ! Although i don’t recommend using a fake feed count but believe it or not - IT DOES HELP!
I have a question to all the people who have commented against it - How many times it has happened to you when you visited a popular blog the first time, noticed a high feed count of say 10000, and asked yourself -
“Why the hell i haven’t subscribed to this blog? 10000 RSS readers means the blog is definitely worth subscribing!”
For people who still don’t agree - what was your reaction when you first visited TechCrunch or Mashable & noticed a high feed count like 400k or 500k?? Didn’t you subscribe?
When you visit a blog for the first time, in most cases, what happens is that you read just two or three articles, & then you look at RSS count, & if the RSS count impresses you, you subscribe. Isn’t it?
Fake feed counts DEFINITELY makes a huge difference in the initial days. If you find that a blog has 100000 RSS readers, 75% chance is that you too will subscribe to it. But if a blog has 100 RSS readers, these chances are reduced to 25%, or even less. Don’t you agree?
I know most of you will still not agree. Would you believe that I have managed to get hold of 700 RSS readers in 45 days? Yes! My blog is just 45 days old & I have RSS readership that keeps fluctuating between 400 & 700.
I’m hoping to get some strong replies to this comment of mine
I’m open to comments!
David Bradley
December 13, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Rather than fake your feed count you could create a button to display the average number of daily visitors on your site, like the old fashioned stat counters used to do. Now, I’m not suggesting you try to deceive anyone but you could put the button next to your RSS icon and if someone were to misconstrue the visitor count as somehow being related to the feed then that’s their problem
db
David Bradley
December 13, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Oh, by the way, it’s quite easy to display the genuine feedcount for many sites
db
Pavan Kumar AR
December 13, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Same idea of me too… not to display it till it reaches 100+…
Liz Strauss
December 13, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Autenticity and transparency.
Chris Garrett
December 13, 2007 at 11:53 pm
Size isn’t everything, I would rather have an honest, engaged and small audience than a huge, fake or indifferent audience. Never fake, far better to be ignored than fraud
JohnTP
December 13, 2007 at 11:58 pm
Thanks everyone for the comments.
Darren
December 14, 2007 at 3:43 am
not worth the risk. it’s so easy to tell when someone’s faking it and getting caught could be the end of your good reputation.
Shankar Ganesh
December 14, 2007 at 2:25 pm
Yeah, fake it; lose credibility. Period.
Colin King
December 14, 2007 at 6:16 pm
It all comes down to trust. If I can’t trust that the number of subscribers shown is true then how can I trust anything you say. For example a product review.
Before I subscribe, I have a look around the site, read 4-5 posts. If I like then I subscribe. The membership number, for me as a potential subscriber, is meaningless. I hardly ever look at it or even notice it, it is an ego booster for the site-owner.
I am already a subscriber here, I didn’t know your subscriber count until I, because of this post, looked for it. If I found out that was fake - byebye Johnny - simple as that.
Ronald
December 15, 2007 at 3:34 pm
If the readers knew it is fake, they wouldn’t visit your blog again and will says “hey man, you’re a conman” Lols…
simon
December 19, 2007 at 12:19 am
i would not fake mine… btw how people fake it?
Jason Slater
December 19, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Ultimately, mis-leading readers with false counters will probably backfire. In fact, getting too tied up with stats can also be a bad thing - it’s probably better to focus on good quality content and actively participating in the blogging community (e.g. commenting on other’s Blogs and offering help and advice). That doesn’t mean that stats aren’t useful - they are and they offer valuable information for showing a sites growth - it just doesn’t necessarily need to be made public. I removed all my public feed count information so I didn’t get too hung up on them and instead focus my efforts on writing good quality posts.
But each to their own!
Jas.
http://www.jasonslater.co.uk
Suburban Oblivion
December 20, 2007 at 8:01 am
If I found out a site I visit was faking their feed count, I would unsubscribe, end of story. If I can’t trust you, I don’t want to read you.
Anthony Lawrence
December 31, 2007 at 9:20 pm
Lordy no!
I can’t believe you’d even ask
Lowongan
January 10, 2008 at 8:54 am
I won’t do fake on my feed count. I’d rather not display it until it reach min 100 count. But, in my first time, i already displayed my count even though it still 0
Nikita Knysh
January 23, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I prefer spending my time for legal promotions and trying to write content that’s worth reading. I blog not for monetize in nearest 6 months but to improve my blogging skills and communicate with my readers. I want to have actual stats… If I fake my feedcounter how do I see how many real people read me?