Is Having an RSS Feed Just Giving Content Away for Free? | CSS-Tricks

I mean, kinda.
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But…
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It's hard enough to get people to care about your work anyway. Being extra protective over it isn't going to help that.

This article is good, and I just wanted to add one idea that may rub some people the wrong way, but here we go anyway…

It all comes down to what you want more, people to read your articles or people to click on your articles. If you write to pay the bills and you need ad revenue to put food on the table, go for it, I get it. If you run a business that needs revenue to pay your writers, I get that too! But if you're a solo writer doing it for fun (and either zero or little money) then I'd really think twice about restricting your RSS feed in any way.

It's possible to subscribe to BirchTree and never give me a single page view. You'll never see the (tasteful) ad on my site, you certainly won't click on it, Google Analytics won't know you were here, and I can redesign the site all I want and you'll never notice. But that's okay, I don't make a living wage from this site, and even weeks like this where I wrote something that got tens of thousands of views, the most exciting thing has been the conversation I've gotten to have with people and listen to other folks have online. The ad revenue will be nice, sure, but that's not what it's all about.

Thank you for reading, no matter if this is in Feedly, or Reeder, or a good old fashioned web browser.