From the start, Searchblog has had a full text feed. I took my cue from my pals at Boing Boing – I believed in fully portable content, and I also believed in portable business models. But it’s been two years since I started FM, and I have to say, the most important and valuable business model for a site like Searchblog remains bringing your attention to my site, where I can introduce you to marketers who buy ads there.
I know that folks, particularly our partners Feedburner, argue that feeds themselves should be monetizable (Lord, what a word). But the reality is, they are not nearly as valuable to a publisher, at present, as visitors to the site are. “We’ve seen no evidence that excerpts on their own drive higher clickthroughs,” Feedburner posted recently.
Well, I’d like to test that assertion.
Now, I’m a practical guy. So, I figure, are most of you. I’m thinking of shifting my feed from full text to excerpts, for a week or a month, and seeing how pissed, or not, all of you get, and seeing if traffic increases to the site over time. There’s nearly 70,000 of you now who read this feed. Some of you read excerpts because you’re in crippled readers (ahem, MyYahoo). But many others read, like I do, in full text readers. I’m not switching sides here. I’m just curious.
Consider the comments section your chance to tell me what you think….
PS – I’m also very open to other approaches, like adding sponsors to the feed myself – the sponsors who buy on the site, that is.
After all, they want to reach you…not me!