My last post -Bloggers Can Be Very Self Centered – Are You? seems to have created a small wave of comments and some of them were very well thought through and raised some good points – good enough for me to take some excerpts and comment on.

Will from Will Taft .com – Healthy Living For People and Planet Earth made several good points including the following large chunk:

Blogging overall is not what people think. The big success stories are often those who stared early. Some have tremendously valuable content, others have content not different than thousands of other blogs, they were just early to the party, so to speak. If you want a daily site to read that makes you laugh, and you have one in your reader that works, why would you be interested in the thousands of other funny sites that came along after. There are now so many blogs that if a person was to subscribe to even 5% of what they find interesting and of quality, they would soon overload their reader. Even most of what is subscribed to does not get read. I talked to someone recently who subscribes to about 20 feeds. One of them is the Simple Dollar feed, a very successful site. That site usually puts out multiple posts per day. So over the course of a year would send thousands of posts to this person’s reader. I asked how many of the posts from The Simple Dollar he had read over the past year, and he said maybe 10.

You have to start to wonder. I have between 70 and 80 subscriptions and so I wonder I how many actually receive the posts and how many actually read them. If you do subscribe and read please take a moment to leave a comment – just out interest.

I must admit I only subscribe to around a dozen blogs now and only by email. I scan the title and if it interests me I then scan the content. It then gets either binned or put aside for further reading at a later date. I do eventually get back to them all. The other thing that I notice is that when I receive a post via email I very rarely actually go and visit the site – it is only when I feel I have something to add through the comments section.

So subscriptions not only reduce visitor numbers they also reduce interaction. It is far easier to comment while you are passing through a site. If you are not on site it is easier to ‘leave it until later’.

Wil’s overall thrust is that there are just so many blogs out there that not only are we suffering from information overload, it is almost impossible to write about anything new unless you take a personal view of things. In the bigger picture not many people are actually interested in my opinions (not that this is going to stop me giving them). Those blogs that have been around for years have the reader base and it is going to be very hard to take any readers away from them – or share them anyway. There is one interesting point though when it comes to subscribers and reading the feeds. I guess in four or five years I could have several hundred subscribers, not because they are reading my feeds, but because they have never unsubscribed.

When the bloggers who have been around for five plus years talk about having several thousand subscribers, I wonder how many are active and how many have just never unsubscribed with the feed actually ending up in the ether somewhere. I could quit blogging tomorrow but I would still receive the email subscriptions for the next hundred years. Perhaps their should be an annual flush of all subscribers. Now that would be interesting.

Flo from Flo’s Place Online also added an interesting point:

…..by the time I get to read blogs the ‘discussion’ has been going on for hours and someone’s probably said whatever I was going to say. As far as contests, I have just never been a contest person, just not my thing. But your post got me to thinking. I’m going to make it a habit of commenting on every blog I stop at, even if it’s only to say HI

I must admit that is a problem of mine. Blogging from the sunny shores of Australia I am at least 12 hours out of pace with the rest of the world. By the time I get to read a post the comments on some blogs are twenty plus deep. Personally, if someone drops by and just says hi in the comments, while some consider it spam, if it is from a fellow blogger I consider a polite gesture and a compliment in that they thought I was worth talking too. I guess every one has their own take on that – I like the personal touch – call me a softy.

Dan from The Way of the Web added:

I think it’s a case of familiarity. I’m far more likely to sign up for a cause that is recommended by someone I already have a relationship, than one of the 100s I can come across on random blogs and websites.

..and I again it is a good point. It becomes an issue of trust. Even Will mentioned the same theme at the end of his comment – I received half a dozen sign-ups on my petition through his site and they would most likely only arrived because they took his link as a form of recommendation. Few of us would jump in to an issue from a complete stranger unless it really dig strike a chord with us.

Tommy from one quart low made an interesting point about some bloggers being business people and that being self centered goes hand in hand with that role. I am not sure if I agree or not. I think as a business person you have to look after your own interests, but sometimes that means going that little further.

Fragile heart I think summed one point up nicely when stating “I’m the type that will comment on what I read – if I have something useful to say ” which is fair enough – I go back to my point earlier – sometimes a simple ‘hi, enjoyed your post today’ or ‘hi, didn’t think much of today’s post’ are a nice touch (yup, even the negative one).

I hope you all didn’t mind me taking excerpts from your comments. They all made interesting reading. If I keep going I am going to need an extended holiday to Little Italy San Diego – thanks.