I enjoy bloghopping and commenting around the blogosphere, not spamming but they are all related comments. This means that if I don’t feel like entering some rants like those too personal life stuffs (relationship) and things that sounds Greek to me, I won’t force myself to comment. I enjoy bloghopping through those bookmarked blogs in my browser but I guess I won’t be doing that for long.
As I move into a more aggressive stage of learning, I want to read more blogs and after reading a method recommended personally in by Maki through his post, “The Smart Way to Get Traffic and Links: Creating a Prospect List for Bloggers” which I think will increase a blogger’s productivity, I have a thought of start using a RSS Feed Reader.
He amazingly spent only one hour daily on blogging and he is that successful now. As a blogger, you are always advisable to go around the neighbourhood instead of sitting in front of your stall and look at your stuffs rot. In this post, I will break down what are the benefits for a frequent bloghopper like me in using the RSS feed reading method and the direct visits method.
RSS Feed Reading Method:
This will only increase the number of people subscribing to the blog rather than the number of hits of the blog unless after reading the feed, you chose to pay the blog a visit to comment on a certain article.
The benefits of this method are:
Efficient – If you really want to read a lot and don’t want to waste time on site loads, articles like latest sponsored posts, random link attacks and articles that don’t ring a bell to you, you can go for this method. You will find tones of blogs that you once took 4 hours to finish browsing them all will now consumes a quarter of your usual time spent!
Well-organized – There are many feed readers out there such as Google Feed Reader and Netvibes that can organize your subscriptions neatly, enabling you to categorize them and even personalize the layout of your feeds’ page. This gives you the comfort of reading unlike waiting for 10 of your bookmarks to load and have all the blogs crammed into the small bookmark tab on your browser.
Acceptance by blog owners – Don’t feel sorry about not making a direct visit because you fear that the blogger will exert his pressure on you in some way. The number of RSS feed subscribers is becoming more and more important in showing the worth of a blog, especially in the eyes of some advertising platforms like ReviewMe.
Extra readings on RSS Feeds:
- Feed Me RSS! Feed Me! by goldfries
On the other hand, the benefits for bloghoppers of doing direct visits are:
Getting noticed – If you make a direct visit to the blog, the blogger will know about the visit even though you did not comment due to blogging community platforms like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog. A cute avatar of yours will appear no matter what unless the blogger doesn’t like your face and strike it off. 
Unavailable items in feeds – If a post contains a video or a interesting Java applet, you will get the chance to view it which you will not if you read the post through the feeds.
Visiting a blog directly will also give you the chance to participate in off-topic discussions by using the Chat Box which will normally be seen on personal blogs.
Instant update – Feeds nowadays get updated promptly but still, there would be some delay due to pinging. If you are a loyal supporter of a blogger and see every posts of his as a breaking news, you will need to visit him directly more often.
After reading all the benefits, do you think I have left out something? What you will normally use as a tool to bloghop? Don’t tell me you don’t visit others, you need this to bring in more visitors and links! Lastly, do you subscribe to the free Wayne Liew Dot Com Full RSS Feed?
Other blogging tips that you might be interested in:
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October 16th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
Kakaa I still love bloghopping. Although may get disappointed when you see the author didn’t update his/her blog but at the same time you get excited when the blog is updated. I still love this thrill
October 17th, 2007 at 12:27 am
Agreed
October 17th, 2007 at 11:10 am
I do both. I find bloghopping more ‘exciting’ if the blogs you’re visiting are your favourites and when you tend to read everything they posted. I DO subscribe to your RSS feed.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I use Google Reader to read blogs and find it very efficient. I frequently subscribe to new feeds and unsubscribe those which fall below expectation.
I also subscribe to comment feeds and visit the blog if feel like commenting one.
October 17th, 2007 at 1:36 pm
I still dunno how to use RSS feed
silly me i know.. hahahaha 
October 17th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
Well, I think I shall start using Google Reader
October 17th, 2007 at 4:58 pm
I like my little avatar appeared in the MyBlogLog widget in those blogs that implement it. But I also subscribe to some RSS feeds of my favorite blogs via My Yahoo! because once I login to my yahoo mail box I can also check on the feeds updates. My primary mailbox is Yahoo mail therefore, sort of neglecting my Gmail.
October 17th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
@ yung .
I enjoyed that moment as well but with my bookmarked blogs standing at 160, I feel that I need a feed reader.
@ Valen
Thanks for your support! I guess I will need to reward my readers real soon.
@ Jalaj
Subscribing to comment feeds? If a blog is like mine, subscribing to comments might not cause a problems but try subscribing to ProBlogger.
@ cbenc12
Goldfries wrote some explanations on what is RSS Feed. Hope that you can find it useful.
@ MonkeyWong
Ya, it’s one of the best around.
@ Apple
It’s the two giant again. How do you categorise blogs that you visit by either bookmarking them or subscribing to them?
Where did my blog goes? Your bookmark tab, RSS Feed Reader or neither both?
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:52 pm
I still enjoy to give them a direct visit because the web design is always there. Sometimes, You won’t know what new plug-in or new features were added if you just read from your reader.
I think they deserved the visits very much. Many bloggers are so “kiasu” they wont click your ads, sign up with your referral or even gv u a visit. Why? because they dont want you to be popular but they still want to read what you are talking in your blog. No offense here, just a feeling on Malaysia bloggers. No all but I think got some ….
BTW, you page load time is a bit long compare to previous visit. Maybe the increase of plug-in?
October 24th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Sometimes I have to say what you say is true but no further comments!
You are finding my site load is slower because I have add in a few more plugins and a few days back my server is down and the site is running on the WP-Cache plugin.
Also, my host got confused with the charges and suspended my account. Darn them!
October 24th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
lol…so unlucky then
Wish it will be in good soon