Sep
Faking a Feed Count – The Real Reason To Do It
Last week I posted about getting more feed subscribers, and one thing I mentioned was to fake your Feedburner feed count. That was to employ the power of social proof and convince your visitors to sign-up based on “Oh wow, if a bunch of other people subscribe to this, I should do it, too.”
That should get you past the 0 subscriber mark at some point. (Maybe not to infinity though…)
But there’s a reason for every blog to make use of a fake feed count, no matter how many subscribers you actually have!
And the reason is: publicity!
I guess this applies mostly to internet marketing or business blogs where your visitors actually know what the Feedburner chicklet is, but if you’re reading this, chances are you have a blog that fits the description. So here are a few good tricks to try…
Use the feed count from a popular blog
It doesn’t really matter what the subscriber count is, just so it matches someone else’s exactly. And the blog has to be popular and have loyal readers.
What you want is for one of their loyal readers to visit your blog and think “OMG! That’s like totally some other celeb blogger’s feed chicklet!”
They’ll get all worked up and start commenting on your blog and spreading the word that you’re “busted” … like you were trying to keep things secret! 
Change your feed count daily
Switch the feed count source on a daily basis. Try to fluctuate between 500, 100k, 3000, 1500, and 20, on a rotating basis.
That will definitely catch some attention (i.e. it’s great linkbait.) I’ve never seen anyone try this, so chances are, other bloggers will write about even if they know the “trick.”
Spread the word
Once you have your fake feed count ready, log-in to a spare hotmail account and email the other blogger, pretending to be a naive reader. Say something like “Hey Fred, I saw a feed count over at Joe Schmo’s blog and it looks like yours. What a coincidence!”
That blogger will probably fall for the trap and then come to your blog at least to see what the fuss is about. Then they’ll probably even leave a comment or write about it on their popular blog!
Then change your chicklet and repeat the process!
This should create a little buzz around your blog’s name. At the very least, your blog looks more popular due to increased comments!
? Subscriber Count
Another trick with your Feedburner chicklet is to Photoshop it. Then you can put something like a question mark or an infinity symbol in there to make people laugh.
Disclaimer
This might not work for your blog. If your blog has a serious, uptight, or professional tone in a credible industry, use caution.
It works perfect here because this blog is all about sleazy internet marketing tactics and making fun of people. Anyone not expecting people to fake earnings screenshots, testimonials, PR, Alexa rank, and/or feed count is way too naive to the whole internet marketing field!
If people want to expose my deceptive tactics, all they have to do is take one look at my home page.
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Hahaha, that is some good old fashion fun! I don’t know why not do this? I mean if you want to have a little fun and maybe generate a little buzz. I just put my rss chicklet up on my blog maybe I should screw with it a little. Not like I’m trying to take over the world or anything with my blog so might as well do something fun with it.
That’s what I always say!
You never know when someone will get a little bent out of shape about it though
That’s a good technique but some people might ignore the rss and not comment or post about it knowing you’ll get the publicity or never trust your site again as a result?
Then it’s their loss
Anyway, who cares about rss ?
I preffer to let people to come on site and see also what else is around there, maybe drop a comment, maybe click a link …
I do not read any blog content from a rss reader.
Yet, as “evil” technique, would be or not a good one (for “evil” guys), yet for long terms is good just – the fake one – for fun
Nice, great post.
Interesting post!
It would be a good idea faking the feed counter, but its easy to know when a blog is popular or not by its comments. No comments, no popularity.
I guess the best way is to wait until the feed subscriber get 100 or more to include it on the blog.
It seems as though you would lose credibility with some of your readers if they found out. It might make them wonder what else you’re faking?
As a business owner an soon to be advertiser I know I would be pretty upset if I found out that one of the websites that I approached, for my business, was faking their feed count. Then again I don’t only look at a feed count but if I found out I would not be happy.
..just my opinion
Like I said, it’s not for everyone. And it’s different if you are using stats from someone else vs just a funny image.
But when I run a blog about all kinds of internet scams and shams, I’d be doing readers a disservice if I didn’t cover this stuff.
I think the lesson here is that creating controversy is a great way to get publicity.
For example, my feed readership grew by 135% in the past 2 weeks, and it was mainly from the publicity from writing about this
Interesting ideas. I never thought of this before. I wouldn’t personally do this on my blog though, because I think it might cause readers to loose trust if they feel deceived. It depends on your blog. If you use humor or write on more laid back topics I could see readers not being bothered by it.
“Anyone not expecting people to fake earnings screenshots, testimonials, PR, Alexa rank, and/or feed count is way too naive to the whole internet marketing field!”
That was the most honest thing I’ve read in a long time. Or maybe I’m way too naive, and this is why I thought it to be a honest statement. Or maybe… oh. this is getting too confusing.
Karen, now that I have your trust, why not surf on over to my ebook sales page?
http://internetmarketingsucks.com
Hello! I was using StumbleUpon today and happened to come across your site. I really like what you’re doing here! Keep it up!
Stephanie
Why stay home when you can escape?
http://www.makethegreatescape.org/
It’s quite incredible to see what some people do just to get more visitors
Best part of all – there’s actually a blog that tried it. And a friend of mine caught him in the act, lol.
http://www.affiliatelounge.co.za/articles/offbeat/feedburner-hacked-or-just-plain-cheating/
Plus, that post on NetBusinessBlog has since 404ed. Guess they didn’t want to hand out the free publicity anymore.
Great blog so far! It’s a welcome sight – a hype-free site and all of that…
~ Wogan
@Wogan
Glad you’re liking the blog!
The post is still at NBB, but they recently changed permalink structure. Thanks for noting this, I have fixed the link
http://www.netbusinessblog.com/stealing-feed-counts-is-lame/
I really can’t believe that people would actually fake their feed count. That’s absolutely ridiculous…
Even if people do fake their feed numbers, how would it benefit them. If you don’t have good content to post people will unsubscribe it anyway even if it shows 20k readers.
@Denise
You are absolutely right. Faking the feed count is just a way to attract more people to a good publication, in less time.
If your feed sucks, you’ll have to resort to paying people to read it!
@Sucker
Faking feed count works the same way as faking the amount of visitor to your website via a visitor stats button. These are ways to convince visitors to re-visit the next time because the site must have something interesting that gets so many visitors. – Rif Chia
i like this post and given tips it’s new for me so i say really great post with useful information keep giving resource and tips like this.
neat information. It has been a bitch ti get new subscribers.
Never think on this view, yes it used for getting result in shorter time, makes visitor to revisit site… but is it really helpful in anyway or like fake feed its same as a fake means visitors useless ?…..
Eciting ideas. no one thought about it. but who ready to do this on their blog but still depends on your blog…..
I don’t think of creating a fake RSS count. May be you can do that just for fun
Switch between 100k and 20…. LMFAO!
I think we shouldn’t care about the feed readers, although putting a count on your blog is not a bad idea but it should not be given much importance due to the obvious reason that it can be faked!
Too funny, I have actually wondered if people do this. I watch Lost online and the #1 website for “Watch Lost Online” says they have 22,000 subscribers. Could it be true or are they faking it?
@Best Man Speech
If you mean cucirca.com, yes, that’s a huge site and could easily have that many subscribers. Actually, they do, because they have a real Feedburner badge, not a faked one.
The idea of faking a feedcount is preposterous…I love it. People want to go see the movie that has the big lines and shop at the stores with all the people. Just like your site says, Internet Marketing Sucks, and faking feed counts definitely sucks. I won’t do it, but I get a laugh out of it when people do
–Jim
Still confusing any one answer ? creating fake RSS would be helpful to getting real user traffic ?
It is true the aspect of people follow after seeing lots of followers. I bet many websmasters have done this cheeky technique..
If the world in which we live into is so full of lies, cheats and such things, one can easily understand what is going on with the vitual world, the internet.
I’ve seen this link bait work for a website that I had found via Entrecard, a long time ago, that was faking their subscribers. It might not have gotten alot of links, but It did get alot of controversy from my friend linking out to the website, and got some buzz for the website.
-Randy