What did I do?  About ten days ago my subscribers started going down. What did I do? Looking at my sites journal for changes I couldn’t really find anything that played a major roll. Feedburner Smiths plugin did not play a roll in this, at least I think, though it did mess me up another way. Was it a layout change? Did I screw up a link? Nope and no. It was Link Splicer, and my bad.

What I Did to My Feedburner Account

Doing a little Journal Analytics on this site, I found the day my subscribers numbers started going down was the day after I implemented Feedburner’s Link Splicer. See screenshot below for where you can find this.

Link Splicer seems like a killer idea, and though it is certainly bad news for my subscribers, it could very well be good for you. Just watch it after you implement it. After I activated mine, I told it to post my Digg items. It worked, it listed the items I digged, but the subscriber numbers just started going down. Then I noticed something else. I didn’t care about the added content myself. Obviously, I had already been to those links, but if it’s not really worth my time to look at, why would it be worth yours. Looking at it as a new subscriber, the links just look spammy, possibly even desperate. Link Splicer, you are deactivated, and since then my numbers are going back up again.

Different Services with Link Splicer

I may try Link Splicer again someday using a different service, but after taking a hit like I did it won’t be anytime soon. Did any of you click or even notice my Digg links spliced into the feed? Let me know!

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