[petercooper]

When I decided to try creating a Ruby e-mail newsletter two years ago, I had people saying e-mail was old technology, they wanted RSS, it wouldn't work, etc. And I've heard that many times over the years. Now at 74k subscribers (across four newsletters) and it has become my main business by accident. My takeaway is that it's better to pay attention to what people do, rather than what they say.

[tomjen3]

Paying attention to what people do is often a good thing, but how many subscribers would you have if you had gone with blog+rss?

[petercooper]

I can actually attempt an answer at that as I launched the e-mail newsletter off the back of the most popular Ruby blog which I also run.

I grew the blog to 25,000 RSS subscribers (as measured by FeedBurner) between 2006 and 2010 but the engagement and what those readers actually do pales in comparison to my 15,000 e-mail subscribers who click more and open more in vastly greater levels. I now believe, like many, that the numbers FeedBurner give out are mostly BS and don't give any hint of engagement at all.

Separate to this I've built a 30k strong JavaScript e-mail newsletter without any blog. This is a larger regular subscription base than most other JavaScript related sites I know of.. with the exception of Ajaxian which is now half dead.

So I can't say for sure because maybe I could make a blog work better, but in terms of engagement, how much money I can earn, etc, e-mail has been a huge win over blogging.

[simonh]

Who knows, but they'd almost certainly be different readers.

Not everyone uses an RSS reader and people forget to check blogs. I have most of my favourite blogs bookmarked, but every now and then I come across a blog I used to read occasionally and just forgot about, or end up googling for a blog or web site I vaguely remember seeing once.

There are a few online 'magazines' I read published in PDF form. I really wish they'd send out an email when a new issue comes out with a link to download it, but as it is I keep forgetting to visit the web site regularly to get the latest copy.

For many people, email is still the main push protocol they use to receive content and it's still useful even to those of us that also use other options.