Should a writer put content behind the RSS wall?

November 25th. 2008, 8:38am

I’ve been scouring the Web to find more blogs on creativity and idea development and I encountered something… unusual.

A Google search led me to Creative Something, which seems to be a really good blog about the creative process. The search led me to a blog post that listed other blogs about creativity - great! When I clicked on the link, though, I found something that I hadn’t seen very often before:

The blog’s author has made the full content available only to RSS subscribers. Try this link and you’ll see what I mean.

I haven’t seen this happen very often.

I’ve certainly heard of pay walls (i.e. pay to get access to content) but never putting all of the blog’s content behind a “RSS wall”. The author wrote a post about why he turned this in a subscription only service, which you can read here. Uh, no, actually you can’t… not unless you subscribe. I’ll say it’s because the author wants to restrict the content to a community of subscribers - there are no restrictions on who can belong to the community.

I can see going subscriber only to prevent blog scrapers from copying your work. Although you could use some other kind of exclusive website, even a member’s only forum, to distribute your work.

It’s certainly the author’s choice as to how they publish their work, I’m not saying what they are doing is wrong. It just seems like you’re cutting off the means to spread yourself further if all you see is a single paragraph that’s open to public view. Leo Babauta has gone the opposite route with Zen Habits and “uncopyright”.

Creative Something is an excellent blog, by the way. I recommend that you subscribe if you’re interested in this subject matter.

What do you think? Is the Creative Something blogger being smart or making a mistake by going subscriber only?

EDIT: in addition to some great discussion here, I’ve also been contacted by Tanner Christiansen of Creative Something, who shared these thoughts about his blogging approach:

The reasoning of putting the content behind an “RSS wall” is two fold: 1) I wanted Creative Something to be more like a members-only club, rather than just a blog that people can come to and read as they please. By making the subscribers the only people who get complete articles they feel like they are a part of the blog, instead of just readers. 2) Because the blog is all about creativity and doing things differently, I figured doing something such as this would be interesting to try. The results have been incredible thus far. I’ve only been on a “subscribers only” basis for a few weeks, but already my subscriber, visitor, and click-through rates have increased dramatically. I’ve seen a huge spike in subscribers (as expected), and don’t plan on changing the way the blog is for a long time.

Interesting stuff!

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toddmck

Yes, I just did my part to foil this little scheme by subscribing as well. At this rate he's bound to fail.

It seems like a couple of things are happening here. The blog is about creativity, and exploring different ways of making something remarkable. Anybody can create a blog that has a html page, but how many people have one that's just RSS? Kind of along the lines of "some people won't like it if you're doing it right", but some people will. Also, the goal seems to be engagement, not numbers. By excluding the unwashed masses he's specifically creating an exclusive club limited to those who understand how to use a feed reader.

I think where this breaks down is there isn't any way I can figure out to comment on a post besides linking to it. That really raises the bar for participation, because now you're limited to just bloggers that use feed readers. If I was more interested in digging into this, I guess I'd go see if he's got many backlinks. There could be a healthy discussion going on other blogs already.

It looks like the blog was a normal one for quite a while, since he's been at it since January and just recently closed down the web interface. It should be quite discoverable via google, since the archive page is a massive bunch of excerpts from stuff that was previously published. I'm guessing that the permalink structure was left intact.

I doubt the goal is to prevent scraping, since it's easier to republish from a full text rss feed than to scrape the page.

Bottom line for me, it seems to be a unique idea. It probably won't lead to much growth, but it could very well lead to a more exclusive feeling source. The lack of interactivity seems like a very bad side effect, since there's no way to make it feel like a community. Of course, if the blogger uses friendfeed, or something like it, maybe the community can just live there...

Mark Dykeman

Actually, you can leave comments by going outside of your feed reader and clicking on the comment link. However, it would be awkward to reference what's in the blog unless you have two windows open.

I certainly wish him well, but I do wonder how it's going to go for him (the blogger).

dcfemella

This would annoy me. If they want people to become subscribers, then they should just give the RSS by email option. They are probably losing more readers than they think.

Mark Dykeman

We don't know, though, do we? It will be interesting to watch this and see how it develops.

dcfemella

You're right. It will be.

Wayne Smallman

Hmm, odd.

To me, this is akin to one of the gadgets websites (who's name I can't be bothered to look up right now), who require of us to create an account before commenting is possible.

By placing these various methods of walling content in, they're creating a barrier. People tend to just walk away, unless there's a really compelling reason to make the effort, which I very rarely do...

Mark Dykeman

Yes, that concerns me as well.

anaulin

Interesting, I have never seen this "rss-only" thing before.

With this rss-only method the author is getting people that might be interested in his content to subscribe to his feed. And many (most?) will not bother unsubscribing afterwards, even if they don't find the content overly compelling at first. So he will steadily grow his subscriber base.

If he 'opened up' his blog, more people would find him through search engines and the like, though maybe not many more, since the titles and excerpts are already available on his site (and you found his sight anyway, didn't you?).

Are these 'casual' visitors really valuable to the author? Probably these visitors will not engage as much with the blog as the users who subscribe to the feed. So maybe the author is smarter than all of us.

In any case, he got me to subscribe to his feed. That will teach him. ;-)

Mark Dykeman

Yes, there will be a growing captive audience. Will they be engaged, though?

anaulin

Considering that subscribing is free and you can unsubscribe at any time, I wouldn't call this audience 'captive'. :-)

anaulin

PS (hopefully not BS) As for being engaged, I think these subscribers have a higher probability of being engaged than casual non-subscribed users. Subscribers will see more posts over time and are more likely to develop some kind of bond or relationship with the blog than casual visitors.

Mark Dykeman

Well, we could monitor comments on that blog over time and see how they are going - comments are a good measurement of engagement.

Feedback Secrets

When I read this post, before I got to the comments section, my first impression was that strategy which Creative Something seems to be employing is method to try to increase their RSS subscriber count.

After reading the comments section, I now realize that their strategy is working!

Mark Dykeman

It would be interesting to see how well this approach works over the long term.

Tanner Christensen

Some great discussion going on here, I think.

Thanks for posting about the blog Mark, I've just sent you an email with some interesting details about Creative Something and the "RSS wall" approach to blogging.

Mark Dykeman

Got it, Tanner, and I'm going to pass some of that info on.

nicefishfilms

Mark,

The RSS wall approach from Creative Something is one approach to stimulating community. I don't begrudge the author for wanting deeper interaction with his audience. I would, however, offer that causing someone to pause and re-direct action interferes with the assimilation of the information. I'm a proponent of open source information because I know that we live in an era of unprecedented information opportunity. If a person somehow stumbles upon a piece I've written through a link or recommendation, I'm aware that their time is precious. I don't want to create a negative impression (which is what you do when being forced to work hard to get an expected result). As a creator of creative works, I'm sensitive to "moments." You've found a piece that you want to read right now. If you are unable to access it due to a wall you become aware of the process instead of the content. Imagine turning on the radio and hearing a new song that starts to build to an engaging crescendo then the announcer comes on and informs you that you have push a button to hear the rest of the song. The moment is blown, gone.

I am an avid RSS reader and subscribe to over 340 feeds. I peruse (read intently) the majority of the articles and evangelize the stories I find compelling with my social networks. I have yet to share a partial article, I just wouldn't do that to my friends.

Set the info free, build good-will and your audience will choose to engage on a deeper level.

Mark Dykeman

What you're saying makes sense to me. I do find it interesting that Tanner says that this change is working well for him.

nicefishfilms

While this may be "working" for him, I'm just of an Open Mesh mindset. My world is bigger because of Dave Winer's work with RSS. I'm a supporter of Marc Canter's Open Mesh cause. We have built too many walls already. There are many examples of walled success though- Jason Calacanis is doing well with his email list. Some people even pay for subscriptions to certain sites. The true growth arena though is open. We need only look at the unsuccessful attempts of newspapers to limit access to information. Sites are rushing to become more open not less. I'm really encouraged that you are having this discussion. Each of us will ultimately choose what is right and wrong for our own sites. I would only hope the we err on the side of OPEN community rather than restrictive access.

Tanner Christensen

The mindset here isn't about being "closed", it's all about being a community.

I think the biggest appeal to this is that anybody can join. Is it really that hard to subscribe? No, of course not. If you don't want to subscribe to get the information then you aren't really interested in the content provided, right? And if you are, then you can subscribe (unsubscribing is just as easy).

It's about being a part of something, and that something is open to anyone who is interested. :)

Dee Langdon - BloggerNewbie

I must still be in my rebellious teenage years because I don't like being told what to do. If I want to subscribe, then I will. Kind of a turnoff for me. However, this is definitely a way to engage serious readers, but what is wrong with casual readers? Why would you want to prevent the straggler from reading your "stuff"?

Mark Dykeman

That's the way I tend to think as well, Dee, but if Tanner says it's working for him, then who am I to argue? That doesn't mean that I'm going to try the same thing, though.

Broadcasting Brain

Should a writer put content behind the RSS wall?

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