News Feed and E-Mail Posts have been changed. Here is why..
My news feed and e-mail posts have been changed. In fact, about two weeks ago I changed them from sending out the full post to just sending the 1st paragraph or two. I have had about 40 e-mails since then asking me why I did this. Some were very polite and kind and others were rude, mean and hateful, which is odd. Why would someone send me a rude e-mail demanding I change the feed back to full when this is a 100% FREE site? I work 60-70 hours per week on this site and I make the rules here and by me providing FULL feeds and E-Mail updates over the past 2-3 years, while great for many of you, was awful for me. Why? Well, look at it from my perspective. As I said, I run this site which has thousands of articles that have been written and placed over the last five years, right here for anyone to see. There is a ton of useful information here, and to keep this site running fast, smooth and to keep it from attackers and hackers it does cost me a pretty penny every month. The site, as it is receives anywhere from 75k to 110k visits each day, depending on what is posted that day of course. To keep it running 99.9% of the time and running reliably I have a VERY fast dedicated server. I have two backup solutions so if something did crash it would be back up within minutes. I have security measures in place to stop DOS attacks and other malicious things. So yes, it costs me money, quite a bit every month just to keep it going.
Since it is a free site, I rely on my advertisers and affiliate sales. Without traffic coming to the site, no ad revenue. I have noticed over the past 8-12 months that thousands of readers were no longer clicking over to the site because they were reading the full articles in their newsreader, which bypasses all of the ways I am able to make money to keep this site “going and growing”. I decided to make the feeds show just the beginning of the article and those of you who get the feeds, this means all you have to do is take the one second to click over if it is something you want to read 😉 The content is and always will be 100% free! All I ask is for a click over to the site from your news reader or email. Easy squeezy. As soon as I changed it I noticed MANY more hits coming in over what was currently there, so I thank those of you who are clicking over.
So to those who have been asking me why I changed it over, this is why. Hopefully you understand, even you meanies who emails and DEMANDED I change it back, lol. FYI, Most sites these days do NOT include full feeds as that is bad business.
Hope everyone is having a GREAT day! I am gearing up for my Vacation trip soon so getting excited about it. Will be many cool photo opps and nothing is cooler than going on a trip to see different scenery to get your creative justices flowing. More to come today!
Steve
