As you may already know, I’m currently hosting a contest wherein I’m giving away a copy of Pirates of the Burning Sea for the PC. It’s a hot new MMORPG from Sony Online Entertainment, playing in a similar kind of way to World of Warcraft, except it has a definite swashbuckling theme, including the ability to participate in a mercantile economy and get involved in intricate ship battles. To enter the video game contest, all you have to do is subscribe by email to Beyond the Rhetoric.
The contest is slowly bringing in a few more subscribers, each of whom receive a single email from Beyond the Rhetoric each day that contains the blog post(s) from that day. Some people say that by providing such a service, I may be limiting the amount of traffic that the blog would normally receive, because people are more inclined to just read whatever is in their mailbox rather than coming over to the site itself. This may partially be true, but folks will still need to come to Beyond the Rhetoric if they want to watch any of the videos or comment on any of the posts. And we all know about the shout-outs that I give to top commentators each month.
One question that has been on my mind lately is when I should set the email to go out each day. With the email subscription service, powered by Feedburner, I can choose when the email is compiled and sent out. As it stands, I have it sent out right around midnight PST, because this ensures that any post(s) that I wrote that day would be included. I’m not really sure if this is necessarily the best strategy, because other blogs send out their email posts early in the morning or perhaps some time in the afternoon.
What’s your take on this subject? When is the ideal time to send out the email message as part of the feed subscription service?
I don’t think it matters a heck of a lot.
Your blog isn’t producing time-sensitive information, so the email is more of a general reminder to read, rather than a scheduled update of what’s going on in the world (of freelancing?).
If it comes at midnight, good chance I’ll read it in my morning-ish email check, rather than read it while I’m breaking up the day with sporadic email checks.
Damn, I gotta re-read 4-Hour Workweek…
PS – I’m only subscribed to a few email subscriptions (including your own) and have found that I am more likely to read each email versus reading every entry via RSS. There is one blog I ONLY read through email, actually.
It depends on your usual posting schedule, I guess. Since it seems you publish most of your posts well before midnight, that gives you time to fix any errors and for FeedBurner to update the feed before the email gets sent out. The post can get updated in a Feed Reader, but not in someone’s Inbox.
That’s a tricky question. It would depend on the blog but I think you will not find consensus among the subscribers.
In fact I read most of the blogs I subscribe from the RSS feed and from the blog itself.