How do I estimate the number of RSS subscribers?

I'm running a website, and would like to get a better idea how many subscribers I have. I can check the number of subscribers on Google Reader for my two feeds (RSS and Atom). I also have access to my server logs, so I sometimes collect all the IP addresses that access the feeds over a month or so and do a uniq.

Is that an accurate way of doing this? Are there other feed aggregators that I need to take into account? Any pitfalls when just going by IP address?

I've also thought about embedding an image in the feeds to get a better count. But do all feed readers load images automatically?

Robert Kosara

Posted 2010-04-20T13:21:23.543

Reputation: 163

Answers

Switch your feed to use Google Feed Burner and these stats will be generated automatically for you.

Shevek

Posted 2010-04-20T13:21:23.543

Reputation: 15 408

That's not really an option, since I would need to switch over all my current subscribers. – Robert Kosara – 2010-04-20T13:50:13.440

@Robert - in a way, you would know which ones care enough to keep following. – Gnoupi – 2010-04-20T14:05:16.737

Depending on how your feed is set you can replace your existing feed with a redirect to FeedBurner (this is easy in WordPress http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/redirecting-wordpress-feeds-to-feedburner.html)

– Shevek – 2010-04-20T14:52:01.210

Turns out there's a very clever module for Drupal (which I use) that redirects everybody except FeedBurner to FeedBurner. That seems to be the perfect solution. http://drupal.org/project/feedburner

– Robert Kosara – 2010-04-20T15:48:52.580

@Goupi: good point, but I'd rather not risk losing lots of people ;) – Robert Kosara – 2010-04-20T15:49:10.830

Well, IP addresses have their ups and downs. Most home clients (dial-up, broadband, etc) will have frequently changing IP addresses. And those accessing from behind a corporate firewall will often all have the same IP or range of IP addresses, regardless of how many are actually connecting. So going only by IP is not a really good indicator. You can use it to make a guesstimate, but that's purely what it is.

BBlake

Posted 2010-04-20T13:21:23.543

Reputation: 5 120