Recently I was contemplating redesigning my blog, and was told by a regular reader that I need a really Large RSS icon to make sure readers have somewhere to subscribe to. This made me feel rather Inadequate and I decided to ignore the comment.
Days Later, as a point of interest I went out looking for some Beautiful and Large RSS images for my blog. I found some of these;
The Big
The Not So Big
However, being insatiably curious I decided to see what the celebrity and A-List bloggers use for their subscription options. Looking at the top 50 on technorati I went through an analyzed what they use to encourage people to subscribe. Below you are able to see the RSS feed link, the name of the blog and its address. Do You Notice Any Similarities?:
RSS Feed Engadget http://www.engadget.com - Full Content (ad supported) Gizmodo http://www.gizmodo.com
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Boing Boing Boing Boing http://boingboing.net 
Tech Crunch http://www.techcrunch.com-
Featured Blog Posts
Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ 
http://arstechnica.com/site/subscribe.ars Ars Technica- Could Not Find… http://us.lifehacker.com/ LifeHacker
Mashable Feed Mashable http://mashable.com/ 
http://www.beppegrillo.it/english.php Beppe Grillo’s Bloghttp://www.dailykos.com/
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http://icanhascheezburger.com/ I Can Has Cheezburger
TMZ.com http://www.tmz.com/ 
Perez Hilton http://perezhilton.com/ 
Post Secret http://postsecret.blogspot.com/
Seth’s Blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
Site Feed Official Google Blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/- Tree Hugger (None On Main Page) http://www.treehugger.com/
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Subscribe to Problogger via RSS Problogger http://www.problogger.net/ - Could Not Find…. Kotaku http://us.kotaku.com/
- Could Not Find…. Blogcu http://www.blogcu.com/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/ Read Write Web http://www.readwriteweb.com/
Entries RSS Peterandrej http://www.peterandrej.com/wordpress/-
RSS 2.0 Think Progress http://thinkprogress.org/ 
Crooks and Liars http://www.crooksandliars.com/
- Full Content (with ads) Gawker, Manhattan Media Network http://gawker.com/
- RSS 1.0
Gigazine http://gigazine.net/ 
Subscribe to RSS Feed How to change the world http://blog.guykawasaki.com/- Could Not Find…. The Consumerist http://consumerist.com/
RSS feed My Church http://www.mychurch.org/mychurchteam/blog- Subscribe to the RSS Feed Ancora Imparo http://scottwater.com/blog/
- RSS Michelle Malkin http://michellemalkin.com/
- Could Not Find… DRUDGE REPORT 2007® http://www.drudgereport.com/
Smashing Magazine http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
Feed GigaOM http://gigaom.com/- Comment RSS Feed
Scobleizer http://scobleizer.com/ - Full RSS Blog Feed Make Money Online with Dosh Dosh http://www.doshdosh.com/
LifeHacker http://www.lifehack.org/
Subscribe The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/ 
CopyBlogger http://www.copyblogger.com/- Feed A List Apart http://www.alistapart.com/
Explosm http://www.explosm.net/- Full Content (with ads) Valleywag http://valleywag.com/
Main RSS Joystiq http://www.joystiq.com/
HotAir http://hotair.com/
xujinglei http://blog.sina.com.cn/xujinglei
- Radar RSS feed O’Reilly Radar http://radar.oreilly.com/
Subscribe Telegraph Blogs http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/
RSS Netorama http://www.neatorama.com/- RSS Feed MozillaZine http://www.mozillazine.org/
Conclusion - Big Is NOT Better (For RSS Images at Least)
I have found that many of these A-List blogs do not have RSS images, and if they do they are generally tiny. It feels that if you have quality content then people will want to read what you have written and search out your RSS button or icon (Many were hard to find). People with many RSS subscriptions know how to subscribe without a button, and those who do not may not know what the image means anyway.
Make up your own mind - I think that my medium RSS will be perfectly sufficient. If you liked this post Please Use My RSS Button to Subscribe to My Feed
