Five Important Reasons Why You Need To Subscribe To Your Own RSS Feeds
If there is no.1 great fan of your blog, that “numero uno” admirer is nobody else but you. Yes, it’s you- not your mom, wife or hubby not even your dog.
You’ve got to be updated on what’s going on in your blog and see it from your reader’s perspective.
And there’s no better way to know the latest gossips on your site but subscribe to it.
Are You Subscribed To Your Own RSS Feeds?
Don’t think that subscribing to your own feed will simply increase your readership by one 
There’s actually more benefits to this exercise and I will to tell you the most important one, among several reasons, based from my own experience. In fact, it saved my blog from going into oblivion.
Reasons Why You Need To Subscribe To Your Own RSS Feeds
1. Looks - call me vain but it’s very important to see how your posts look in feed readers. Just like an actor, you’ve got see how you project your image on the screen.
2. Make sure the feed is working properly - How do you know your feed provider is not working? A minor mistake while editing your WordPress theme can totally break your feed.
Tip: Use Feedburner’s FeedBulletin to alert you any problem in your feed.
3. Review your own posts – If there is anything wrong you will know about it sooner rather than later. This will also give you time to adjust the original post as needed if there are mistakes.
4. Check the Timing – Sending a feed is like making an appointment. Make sure you know when the feed will be pick-up by a reader or when it will be sent. If you can’t control this, at least you will know the approximate time. FeedBurner will check your new blog content every 30 minutes. If your feed didn’t show up within 24 hours, there must be something wrong with it.
5. Backup – You can use your RSS feeds as your backup! There was a time when I had a problem with my hosting provider, they did some database rollback and in doing so, they accidentally deleted some of my current posts (this is very possible!). I have my own local backup on my computer but it’s not the latest.
How did I recover my deleted posts? I copied back the RSS feeds from my email. It’s cumbersome but it’s the only way. I’m glad that I subscribed on my own feed since day one! This 5th reason is the most important for me.
There are more other reasons why you need to subscribe to your own feeds but the 5 reasons that I mentioned here are the most significant.
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I have actually never subscribed to my own rss, but I guess this should change.
I only think I understand what my rss look like to other people, and I don’t know if it works at all
Awesome post, and thanks for the tips.
- Jens -
I’m glad that you appreciate it, Jens.
I had a hard time looking how to share your post. Of course, I found the share this button, but it’s inconspicuous, in my opinion. Here’s suggesting to please add Tweetmeme before or at the end of your post.
Subscribing to my own RSS feed has never occurred to me…what a great idea.
Thanks
Hi Rod,
Thanks for the appreciation.
Kindly let me know about the launching of your products.
Regards,
eric
Come to think of it, I’m subscribed to my own feed. I did it for one reason only and that’s to make sure the post is as it should be. Don’t know there are four other important reasons besides that. Well, good to know, Eric.
How are you? Kumusta ka na?
Jan, I’m a bit busy with some other projects but I’m doing just fine.
Btw, thanks for your suggestion about Tweetmeme, it’s actually on my list.
Excellent points! I haven’t thought of that until now. he he he. Specially, reason number 5! I better start doing that.
Z
Thanks, Doc! Number 5 is actually the most important one, i think. I learned it unintentionally.
This never even occurred to me. Thanks for the tips!
My thoughts exactly, but I never thought of #5.
I love to read my rss cause I just love to see my markup plain
I write kickass markup and seeing it on my reader makes me feel good
This makes complete sense! Specially about using the feed as a means to back up. I’ve experienced that in the past too.
If you subscribe in Google Reader, then you can look at Reader-specific trends at a glance. For example, I can see who has clicked that they like my posts, I can see how many readers I have in Google Reader, and I can also see when the last time my blog was updated, and compare it to others in my niche that I follow. I had never considered using it for backup before, but that’s an excellent idea, though.
The 2nd point is nice otherwise I’m not too fond of this tip.
Anyway you have a nice blog
Thanks
TC
OK. I have subscribed to my own feed, lol. But what really caught my attention was the fact that you were able to recover some of your post through your feed. That’s very, very interesting and helpful too. I do regular backups but this can come in handy (hope not:), one day.
yah… you’re right… \we should be the number one fan of our own works… thanks for this post,,,, it really did helped me a lot..
I don’t know RSS can be so useful.. i have overlooked it so far