With all the feed readers out now a days what is your preferred means of staying up to date with a website? RSS Subscriptions or Email Newsletter Subscriptions?
Eric, do you ask about 68C or in generally? If it is general question than for me it depends from site niche and quality of newsletter.
Definitely email for me .... and I suspect the vast majoroity of 'average' Internet users are the same. I suspect RSS is most for the tech/enthusiasts. Just to reinforce the benefits of regular communication to users: Each day, I receive a set of automated emails from eBay providing me with the latest entries in 'categories' (or 'keywords' within categories) I have previously chosen. This means I don't need to visit that site each day and conduct searches - rather the information comes to me. It's just brilliant.
I have to say RSS. I still have some email newsletters dropping into my inbox but RSS is actually much easier! Subscribe to the feed by just clicking on a button and get updated via your Favorites tab in IE or Live Bookmarks in Firefox. C'mon guys, drag yourselves into the 21st Century!
michael, I appreciate that fully michael (for us) - but we cannot tell our customers to do the same. That will be an evolving process.
I still prefer email over RSS. With email, you have a saved documented and dated version of the communication. RSS is great and I use it alot, but mostly for keeping up with current news/events that don't need to be documented. Although, you can of course save the article/feed to your local hard drive if you need to. -Mike
And that's the point in the context of developing a classifieds site. Buyers waiting for something specific appreciate the immediacy of RSS. Email is still great too.
I use RSS, but I'm a web designer and know my way around these things. I wouldn't expect the general public to use RSS in a big way for a long time yet.
For my 68c site, I am thinking I need an email that will send a widget driven by an rss feed for chosen categories and hopefully in the future "tags" on a selected time frame. This widget could also be placed on any html/myspace/blog and emailed and the same rss feed could be subcribed to on it's own. That make sense? BTW I couldn't vote for both.
E-mail and calling During last 5 days I have sent about 200 e-mails each day to adv. at other ad sites. In reply I receive 1-4 answers each day, and about 50 visits at my page. I do not use RSS because I do not know how to do it, once I signed for RSS info and I could not stop it coming. So I will continue mailing. But to tell You the trouth the best way - more efective is calling to advertisers asking for acceptance. I do it after 6 pm when I do not pay for the call. Anyway it is worth doing even when you pay because with some experience I make the call and get "yes" in 20 sec. I of course offer the adding the member and listing so that he receives all ready. And within next days comes to the site to see it. The best time to do it is to be present at the other adv. site and at the moment the ad is beeing added - call immediatly so that the person could enter the site with your help, Some people are very thakful. Thanks for the tolerance for my english
hehe, thats rich coming from a guy who is still using php 4 hehe, just poking some fun, no offence intended.
