Once I discovered the joy that is my RSS reader, I went a bit overboard. I subscribed to everyone I already had bookmarked, then hit that little orange RSS button wherever I saw it on sites I found even slightly interesting. I now find myself a bit overwhelmed and can’t keep up with everything.

I went on a cleaning spree and got rid of a bunch of my subscriptions. First, with the exception of online newspapers, anyone that offered only offered partial excerpts feeds were ditched. This cut down on a lot of my subscriptions. I then scrapped sites that had no new content for weeks or months, and I scrapped sites that were becoming too spammy.

I will never understand why people only offer excerpts. It’s been shown on many different pro-blogging sites that offering only excerpts will not guarantee more traffic to your site. If the average person is like me they will find partial feeds as frustrating as Christmas shopping for The Guy Who Has Everything. (Do you think he’d like these silver cufflinks?)

Think about it.. sites that only offered this were the FIRST to go out of my reader. I don’t care how wonderful your updates / posts are, the reason I choose to read your blog / web site through a reader is to save myself some time. What is really sad about this is a few of these sites I used to visit regularly via my bookmarks before I discovered how to use a reader. Now, I likely won’t be back to your site. So you’ve lost a reader AND a visitor.

I have found that I visit sites more often — especially if I want to leave a comment — if they offer the full post feed. If you’re only offering your RSS subscribers partial excerpt feeds, you’re selling yourself short. Don’t believe me? Read: 34 Reasons Why Readers Unsubscribe from Your Blog. Look at what’s in the top three.