Hi Group, I've tried blogging several times over the years but have never really done well with it. Recently, I decided to give it a try again and it seems maybe on a fluke that I am having a little bit of success with it. I've been posting links to news stories for a particular niche. In essence, I have made the website a one stop shop for people interested in news on this particular topic. I scour the news and find the stories so people don't have to. I guess there is value in this as my traffic is increasing, good quality US traffic. I've also monetized the site with Adsense and it's off to a pretty good start. About $10 day right now and increasing. My question is the feed. Is having a feed worth it? When I look at my traffic, the feed is the number one visited page. People going to the feed bypass the website thereby bypassing the advertising. I suppose I could monetize the feed, but is it worth it? Should I force people to the home page in order to see the info? Would like to hear your thoughts on getting rid of the feed vs. monetizing it.
Several years ago when I had a blog that was my concern as well. You want people going to your website and viewing the content that contains the advertising. Feeds reduce those visitors. If you kill your feed, some of those visitors will never come back. The feed is convenient for them and they want content in the most convenient manner possible as they are pressed for time and do not want to spend a few minutes going to your blog and reading it. Some of those visitors will be feed only and you will lose them without the feed. If you are going to kill your feed, you may want to consider waiting until you get your readership higher. As for monetizing your feed, I knew that was an option but doing a little search just now it appears that Google discontinued its Adsense for feeds program a couple years ago. If it was profitable, I do not think they would have discontinued it. If it was not profitable for Google, feed ads may not be worthwhile for you either.