its gettin hot in hur

Posted March 4th, 2008 by casey

So site syndication monitoring is nothing new, but is perhaps underutilized in web analytics. Its seems that the goal of any blog (especially one subsidized by advertisements) is to provide content that encourages users to visit as frequently as possible. Tracking visits from a loyal viewer on analytic software is a simple task that provides ample information on the user; however, when the viewer graduates your site from random daily visits (seeking for new content) to giving your site’s url a home in his/her RSS Reader, things change. The user can now receive a [your site] fix every time new content is published. Truly, this is a premium customer of your site. But if you ask your typical analytics software, it will tell you the your previously loyal customer, who once frequented your site daily, has moved on to new cyberspace. Ironic that your most loyal customer is one that is now impossible to track.

FeedBurner, recently acquired by Google, is an excellent way to track users that subscribe to your blog (even if its just your wife, mom, and your other computer at home). The subscriber data provided by FeedBurner cannot rival the data received from sound analytics software about site visitors, but it can describe the number number of subscribers, how often they fetch from your site, and what RSS reader they are using.

One issue with converting site visitors to site subscribers is the loss of ad revenue. Users no longer see text and banner ads that may be the sole purpose you host your site. FeedBurner provides terrific integration with Goolge Adwords. Upon providing Adwords credentials, users can opt to advertise on each sydicated post. A simple text or banner ad is appended to post (the advertising content consistent with predetermined Adwords account preferences) and each user ad click generates the same revenue that would be expected from actual onsite ad clicks.