When Google Adsense enhanced their capabilities by integrated with RSS feeds, bloggers around the world were ecstatic.  Finally, we could make money off those subscribers that we worked so hard to increase!  Or, could we?

Most bloggers acknowledge that the click-thru rates (CTR) for RSS feed ads are very low, almost nonexistent.  In almost every case, your CTR will be much, much lower on your feeds than the actual website.

Why are click-thru rates for RSS feed ads so low?  I believe the following may contribute to the low CTR:

  1. Readers of RSS feeds already have their eyes trained on what to look for which almost always makes them glaze over the advertisements, rarely resulting in a click.
  2. RSS readers are reading for content and nothing else, whereas web traffic from a search engine is looking for information, additional resources, etc.  By looking for a range of resources or options, they are much more willing to consider clicking on an advertisement.

Because of the low monetization of RSS feeds, you have to ask yourself, should we really be pushing people to subscribe to our content?  Doesn't this just lower traffic and thus, advertising revenue?

We have long been told by "expert bloggers" that the RSS count is gold, that it is one of the most important metrics for measuring our blogging success.  It may be time to reconsider this notion.

My solution over at 20smoney.com is to obviously continue to offer an RSS subscription option for individuals looking to read my content without having to navigate to my site, but I'm definitely not going to pull out all the stops when it comes to trying to get people to subscribe.

From now on, if you want to subscribe, feel free.  If not, it's no sweat.  I'll let my content dictate the traffic.