RSS subscriptions are essential for building a successful blog. This example will help illustrate my point.

I worked at the local video store when I was in high school. I though it was a great job since I could take home all the videos I wanted for free. My best friend worked at the local pizza place, so on the weekends it was traditionally movies and pizza for free. Nothing beats that in high school. While working at the video store, I learned the store doesn’t make a lot of money from the rentals, due to the high royalty rates. This blew my mind and explained the high rental costs, at least a little bit.

I am a firm believer that most things should be free. I also believe that great profits can be achieved by providing a free service or product. Take Facebook for an example. Facebook provides a good service for free, and now it can leverage all of that information to advertisers for millions.

Now, back to the idea that video stores are using an antique business model. In my current town, the grocery stores are installing DVD rental machines. They charge it to your credit card, and you can rent each DVD for a $1 a night. What a great idea! I would probably never use them because I don’t like credits cards. However, if the video store I frequent offered that deal, I am sure I would pick up more than one or two DVDs at a time. I am also positive that if the store were to offer this type of deal, its profits would jump greatly. If I forgot to return the DVD, I would say, “oh well it’s only $1,” and then return it the next day. I am sure many more people would forget on a regular basis, being that it only costs them $1. After the first day of renting out the DVD, the store would be making 100% of the profit for each consecutive day, because the royalties would be covered in the first day’s rental fee.

In the blogging world, we have this same business model of “getting it into people’s hands.” It’s called RSS subscriptions. It is no secret that once people sign up for an RSS subscription they tend to hold onto it even if they don’t like it, because it is easier to delete each post than to unsubscribe all together. So, how much are RSS subscriptions worth? They are the foundation and building block of your blog.

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