My RSS subscriber number is so fragile
Warning: this is me musing about the blog itself. It has nothing to do with money and everything to do with the randomness inside my head. Feel free to skip. Or bring popcorn and enjoy the show. 
The RSS subscriber number displayed to the right is determined by how many subscribers request my feed from unique IPs the previous day, basically. It is a little more complicated but that’s simple enough for this discussion. So if every person subscribed logs into their reader and gets my feed on a particular day, my number the next day would basically be the total subscriber number. Most likely it is always a subset of that.
Because my number is still relatively small (and growing!) it is really susceptible to things like… weekends. Weekends less people are reading blogs and requesting their feeds because they have better things to do. Like, a life. Heh. Just about every blog has a dip in subscribers on weekends but with a big number of subscribers it is most likely barely noticeable. However, when your subscriber number is in the double digits, 9 less people requesting your feed (like I had from Saturday’s display to Sunday’s) is an almost 20% overall drop which seems enormous.I guess Saturday is not a big feed reading day… surprise surprise. 
It did rebound on Monday’s display though and continues to grow by leaps and bound today, thank you! I love numbers, and the little growing number makes me smile. Even when I have to wait for it to recover.
Those weekends are a killer though. I’m so impatient to see what the number becomes once the weekend is over! I surprise myself.
I am becoming a stats junkie apparently. Man, I’m such a dork. Thanks to all my subscribers and readers for indulging my dorkiness!
~J
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August 28th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Feedburner definitely drives me nuts. I remember when I first broke 50 subscribers I was so happy. But by the next day (Saturday) it was down to 41! What an emotional rollercoaster.
I guess I’ll just continue to be content blogging to myself.
August 28th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
My feed has some kind of error right now and refuses to update, so I’ll be lucky if I have any subscribers by tomorrow
:pullhairout:
August 28th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Are you sure that’s how the RSS feed works? I thought it just meant how many people have requested the feed whether they read them or not shouldn’t matter.
I notice the number jumps up and down too which I didn’t think makes sense although if you are correct then maybe it does make sense.
Mike
August 28th, 2007 at 8:55 pm
I’m a junkie too. I try SO hard to not check my stats daily, but then I go and peek. I just can’t help it. It’s that competitive nature in me guess.
So you aren’t alone…
August 28th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
we all all junkies! lol
August 29th, 2007 at 7:09 am
I think a lot of bloggers go through the stat-junkie stage. I know I still do it and I’ve been blogging for a couple years now. Feedburner is very distracting since the number fluctuates and like you I don’t have a large number so a small change can seem huge.
Remember - they’re stats, just keep up the writing and they’ll continue to increase.
August 29th, 2007 at 9:00 am
It is the number that request the feed, I don’t think it matters if they read it or not. But if you don’t open your RSS browser that day (don’t get on the computer at all), you’re not requesting a feed.
Some people leave theirs open all the time but some people read from work/library/somewhere not home so they don’t open their feed reader at all certain days.
At least, that is my theory. lol
August 29th, 2007 at 9:01 am
Thanks for stopping by Matt! So in a few years I’ll still have my stat junkie ways… lol
August 29th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
so if I sometimes read on my google home page at work, and sometimes on my reader on my blackberry, and sometimes at the site directly … do I show up on Feedburner twice (google homepage and reader)
Inquiring minds ….
*smile*
August 29th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
hmm, maybe, if you loom at your reader at home and at work both in the same day and I write new stuff in the meantime…
hmm
Honestly, I have no idea. but it sounds good to me lol