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Comment by James_Owens_7 | Hacker News Reader

I usually don't visit websites that don't have RSS and tell that to the website owners. You should do the same. How else will they know that people care about feeds?

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Unfortunately, people who come to a website via RSS almost universally have ad blockers turned on and usually are not site sticky. Maybe not the best group to attract to your site?

I think you're assuming everyone who runs a website is running it as a business. I don't have ads on my website or even analytics.

You are correct, I was making that assumption and should not. I tend to think money on HN posts but not as much on, for example, r/programming posts. I suppose I'm more susceptible to indirect marketing than I like to believe. Damn.

A discerning, technologically literate audience who never heard the term 'site sticky' before? No, you're right, no use for those.

A "discerning, technologically literate audience" is exactly who you don't want at your site -- for most non-technical sites. The person you want is some who really believes bud light tastes different than coors light. You want the person who will believe that a particular body spray is the only thing preventing them from meeting more men/women. These are the folks who pay the bills on the non-technical sites.

RSS users don't need ad blockers because obnoxious ads can't come through in a (full-content) feed, but this means that feed users have all the downsides for the site as if they did have ad blockers.

And feed subscribers are much stickier than most web visitors - you can't generally use a feed without subscribing to it, so anyone who uses a feed will see it again. The problem is that stickiness per se is not actually that valuable (especially when it's difficult to quantify). Feed users are so sticky that they will read everything you post but never leave the site by clicking an ad.

Believe me, I do. Also believe me, they don't care.

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