Why We Switched to Partial Feeds
Just before Christmas Carps did an excellent post on the Content Pyramid, it went viral and picked up loads of traffic and views:
Which is great, until you check out the number of views and the number of clicks:
So through our Google Reader subscribers it got 46,705 views, but only 260 clicked through to our website. Now if we were running CPM banners in our feed then it would have been perfect! Sadly, we weren’t 
We’ve been toying with the idea of monetising davidnaylor.co.uk and it was astounding at what a low click through it got, this works out as 0.56%! Unfortunately DaveN doesn’t have the option to put Google AdSense in his Feedburner feed because Google can’t seem to figure out how to link user accounts properly, so somehow DaveN has wound up being connected to an ex. employee’s account! So in order to monetise subscribers the only way is to get them to click through to the site and then click on ads. So we changed the blog to partial feeds, and the difference has been interesting. Let’s take DaveN’s recent post about Strikepoint for example:
Ok so it is just an average post, but this is for the past 30 days, it has 3,501 views and 414 clicks, then if we take a look at Google Reader, specifically:
It has had 446 views in Google Reader and 14 clicks – this is CTR of around 3.14% – which means by switching to the partial feed we’ve probably increased click through to the website by 561%! So if you ever wanted to argue for enabling partial feeds, then there is your evidence!
Anthony 1209 days ago
http://shapley.euAs a result do we not lose out in terms of scrappers that link backt o us and potentially subscribers who dont like partial feeds?
DaveN 1209 days ago
@ant nope // we are getting more traffic and page impressions
Bill @ Edward Rayne 1209 days ago
http://erayne.comIt’ll be interesting to see how this change works out for you. I have always been under the impression that switching to a partial feed would lead to a loss in subscribers. It seems at least so far that isn’t true.
I know I for one clicked in to read the post and felt compelled to leave this comment, something I wouldn’t do if you were still publishing full feeds.
aaron wall 1209 days ago
I imagine that monetizing a site like this with contextual ads is self defeating. SEOs don’t really click too many ads, and you would do far better just making a few affiliate posts here or there, and then keeping the experience as clean and sweet as possible to keep pulling in more links to help any affiliate pages rank.
Or you guys could do some sort of membership site…DaveN is one of the brightest in the industry and surely many people would want to pay to see stuff from him in a private setting.
Or you guys could just blend ads for your current services in the blog to help promote them.
Virtually any/every option imaginable is better than contextual ads
especially with an SEO blog.
aaron wall 1209 days ago
Also forgot mentioning backdating some blog posts about spammy topics and carpet bombing those pages with ads as a good strategy
There are plenty of plugins which can be used to make people not see ads on posts that are less than x weeks or y months old, and then run ads on the older posts.
Rich 1208 days ago
It annoys the crap out of me when people have partial feeds but if the content is good enough it stays in my reader (which this site is). I’ve deleted many though and they now lose out on my readership, and I won’t be alone.
Of course switching to partial feeds is going to increase click through to the site though, that’s hardly breakthrough analysis – but what will happen is that your content will be viewed by less people overall IMO.
Lord Lommel 1208 days ago
http://www.lord-lommel.de/I think it’s okay for a good blog to use partial feeds to get some money for the ads.
Andy Beard 1208 days ago
http://andybeard.euFeedburner tracking sucks, as they don’t tag every link with tracking data
Was this more to do with Buzz than feed readers?
Also aggregate “views” get messed up by sharing, and people don’t necessarily see the content – I am all for cleaner data
Even if you see more traffic on the site, less people may actually have read the content and you will never measure that difference.
SeoWebHelp 1204 days ago
http://www.seowebhelp.comHopefully the switch continues to work for you!
Anthony Wakefield 1204 days ago
http://antwakefield.comAnother option, is to give full feeds, but give a ‘Related posts’ section at the bottom of each post, listing 5 or so posts that readers may be interested in.
Also, the usual in-article linking to other resources on your site would increase click through whilst still showing full feed.
Anthony.
David Whitehouse 1204 days ago
I’m with Rich on this one, it is already pissing me off that I can’t read the davenaylor blog on my RSS feed! Personally I can’t stand partial feeds lol
Toot 1200 days ago
Like others have already said, I’m less likely to read a blog with a partial feed. This site should be about marketing DaveN and the team at Bronco not for some pissy monthly adsense cheque. Does Adsense even convert on a site like this with the type of visitors it gets?
SysComm 1196 days ago
http://www.syscomminternational.com/blogHmm…that’s an interesting remark actually. The data shows quite clearly you’ve been more successful when enabling partial feeds…
Bob 1173 days ago
Really ridiculous, as mentioned above the Adsense check wouldn’t be worth the gas required to drive to the bank… and from the article : “46,705 views” “if we were running CPM banners in our feed then it would have been perfect” So you consider the pitiful CPM income from 50,000 views is worth pissing off your subscribers?
MJ 1106 days ago
http://adsenseblogtoolbox.comI’ve actually been trying to make the partial feeds *trick* work on my part. It may produce good profits in the long run, I’m glad you posted this, I’m now more confident on the modifications I’m trying to implement. Hope I’ll be able to produce good results too… Thanks!