I think this post title sums up my feelings from this morning. I woke up to find my Feedburner count had dropped by 11 subscribers. I quickly felt the pang of defeat. I wanted to know what could cause such a sudden drop in readership. I had written good content, right?

 I did a quick blog search through Google. I think this is the quickest way to find out what’s happening in the blogosphere. I found a number of articles talking about Feedburner counts dropping yet again. The first search I found took me to the Feedburner blog, which had a post from yesterday.

Google Integrating Feedburner
It sounds like the big G will be swallowing fire. The Feedburner crew has been hard at work behind the scenes making their service more Googley. It wasn’t until I read the comments on the post that I found the culprit for my lost subscribers.

Google Reader numbers were not counted yesterday. Oh, the irony.

So while integrating the service to be architecturally similar to Google’s backend architecture (i.e. putting/removing the junk in the trunk), they somehow lost touch with their very own service. I guess those are growing pains. Or is that indigestion? I don’t know for sure.

Living by Numbers
Needless to say, it’s rough losing 20% of my subscribers overnight. Someone on the comments of the Feedburner blog said their blog went from 500 to 150 overnight. I must say that’s a lot of Google Reader readers. I might have fallen out of my chair had I seen that much of a drop. As it was, my drop had me re-reading my past posts, looking for offending material. I’m glad it was just a glitch. You’re all still here, right?

Do you know how Feedburner counts subscribers? Curious? Mr Javo put up a nice discussion on the topic last week. You might check that out. In the meantime, I’m off to russle up some subscribers.  

Does that headline ring out for syndication? I put it there as an experiment. Maybe since I target BlogRush itself, this article will receive some syndication buzz through their widget.

I know I’m late to the party. My blog just began and BlogRush has been around for a while now. I get it. I just wanted to lament that I received more traffic from a comment on a neighboring blog than I ever have from BlogRush.

Maybe it’s my fault? 
I might be writing terrible headlines. My titles just might not sell the article. I have Blog Gangland, A Man from Nantucket, Big Bang…you get the idea. Obviously these titles are not exactly link bait, but they should at least strike curiosity. But no, not even a click for Blog Gangland. Why then should I continue sporting the BlogRush widget in my sidebar?

 I actually use the damn thing. Can you believe that? I look at it on my own site from time to time, and it does take me to genuinely interesting content around 75% of the time. The other 25% of the time I realize I’ve been duped by a linkworthy headline and a crappy underbelly article. It’s usually someone bemoaning a lost boyfriend with a headline of sheer, curious torment.

And What’s with Their Interface? 
I understand their buzz meter. I know when someone reads my content that it registers as heat for the meter. I actually like that element.

I think how you accrue syndication credits works. But why can’t I control syndication, using my credits the way I see fit? I want to push out my best content with the whole bank of my credits, not just the most recent article. Of course, maybe I don’t understand their system entirely.

I have only been able to find instructions on other blogs. Oh, sure, they have a video which would take me around 15 minutes to watch, but I’m a reader. I’m not a watcher. I like to search FAQs and How Tos for my tidbits of insightful information. I don’t want to hear someone yammering about a page for a few minutes, which contains stuff I already understand.

And What Incentive Do I Have?
As a blog owner I receive more credits when my widget gets shown, but who cares about credits when I can’t control syndication of my articles. This blog network seems to cater more to the large blog sites than to the little guy. I’ve constantly seen the same 27,000 dollar check article from John Chow’s site on various widgets, but have yet to run across my own articles. I know his site probably earns millions in syndication credits, but can’t we somehow bridge the inequal gap between a site like his and a site like my own?

Conclusion
I want to like BlogRush. I want to believe it will someday bring in tons of traffic. I just don’t think that’s the case. Of the two visitors I’ve had from the service in two weeks, one bounced while the other stayed for several minutes. Maybe the lingerer subscribed to my rss feed and enjoys my content now. I think I’ll keep it around for a while, just in case.