Do you Subscribe?

Photo by Rex Pe

Like many bloggers, I use Feedburner to manage my subscriptions. I am still learning to use all the features and I was commenting to my husband that I had x number of e-mail subscribers.

He said: “So people pay to read your blog?”

I laughed at him. He doesn’t do computers and if he wants to see something online, I search for him. I told him that no, that just lets people get my posts in their inbox whenever I write a new one. The advantage is that if someone don’t want to check my blog daily, they get an e-mail with a link that takes them to my latest post.

Currently, the subscription box looks like this:

Before this morning it didn’t have the “subscribe (Sign-Up) for FREE” words in it. I put those in today because after I talked to my husband, I mentioned the topic to my 24 year-old son who knows his way around the web. Even coming from much younger generation (Dad is 63), he said, “Mom, I think Dad’s right. To me, subscribe means pay.”

I looked at the Feedburner settings but I don’t change code and it doesn’t look like they have options. So I added that little phrase, “Subscribe (Sign-up) for FREE” to clarify things for people who might think like my husband or son.

Why would anyone want to get reminded by e-mail to read blogs anyway?

You could read it when you see the post on Twitter or Facebook or you could check the blog for new content. Twitter streams are great but content flies by so fast that you might miss the post of your favorite blogger. Same with Facebook. Yes, you could search the stream of the bloggers (writers) you love best and figure out if there is a new post. But it takes time.

I have “subscribed” to a number of blogs I started reading them regularly a few years ago, some I unsubscribed to when my inbox got too full. I think you can overdo it. But I like getting a reminder in my inbox that there is new content from my favorite writers.

Reasons you might chose to subscribe to a blog:

• If you are a job seeker or career changer, you might choose to subscribe to this blog or others on careers or work that you can find in my sidebar:
  • A Different Kind of Work by Christine Livingston
  • Career Trends by Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter
  • Executive Insider by Robyn Greenspan & others at ExecuNet
  • Hire Imaging by Barb Poole
  • HRMargo by Margo Rose
  • Interview Angel by Brent Peterson
  • JibberJobber or I’m on LinkedIn Now What by Jason Alba
  • Job-Hunt.org by Susan Joyce
  • Keppie Career by Miriam Salpeter
  • The Job Quest by Melissa Cooley
  • The Write Solution by Dawn Bugni
  • Tim’s Strategy by Tim Tyrell-Smith

• If you are interested in other things like marketing, public relations, personal development, stress management or Technology, there are other fascinating bloggers on my sidebar as well as throughout the blogosphere.
• I just updated the definition to many of my links after I published this and I found that Danny Brown wrote his own post on the same topic, E-mail or RSS – Feeding the InBox while I was working on mine. For his take, go read (and you could subscribe to him too!)
• Jim Connolly has written more than one post on the topic and since I gain much valuable marketing advice from him, I take heed when he explains why and how to do things like in this post, Increase your blog’s readership the easy way!

You can find great writers who write compelling, educational, or inspiring posts and you can subscribe. I know some people prefer to just go to the blog and that’s fine. Others like using Google Reader or other readers and subscribe to RSS feeds. I never look at my feeds that I signed up to read so that doesn’t work for me.

But if like my family, the words “Subscribe” made it sound like you were committing to payment or a lifelong relationships, you aren’t. My blog posts are free. When I charge for a service, I tell you.

We live in a world where at least two things are happening. Some people think that everything everyone does or promotes on the web should be free and some people are afraid of anything that might enter them into a commitment.

If you subscribe (sign-up) here, Thank YOU! I am grateful that you want to follow what I might say next. Note that Feedburner sends you an e-mail that you have to verify to make sure you are not a bot or spammer. If you get scared by the e-mail and skip it or you just let Feedburner’s verification e-mail sit idle in your inbox without finalizing, you will not get the posts by e-mail. Right now there are at least 7 people on my subscriber list that never finished signing up.

If you decide later that you want to unsubscribe, I get that too. Just know, it doesn’t mean Pay.

Just stay connected. I like that… let’s stay connected!