All of the wurk blogs have it. So does Darren. So does The Blog Herald. Chartreuse doesn’t. And neither does Brian.
What am I talking about? Easy. An option to subscribe to the comments for each post via email.

But what I can’t decide on is whether it’s a good idea – or not – to let your readers subscribe like this.

One one hand, it’s convenient for your readers. They don’t need to keep checking back at your blog to see if anyone’s replied to the comment they just left, or to see whether anyone else has had anything insightful to say.

But hang on. With a blog like Chartreuse, some of the best stuff happens in the comments, and if I’m taking part in a discussion over there, I’m checking the page every 15 minutes to see if anyone’s snaking me. And I doubt that I’m the only one. But is that because there’s no subscribe by email button? Probably.

Plus, if everyone’s doing it, then Char (and a bunch of similar blogs) are racking up a pile of extra pageviews that are tasty advertiser-fodder.

Clever.

Maybe unintentionally clever, but clever none the less.
However, I don’t keep checking those posts for ever. Maybe after an hour or two, I’ll stop. So while NOT having a ’subscribe’ option works to increase pageviews in the short term, what happens if someone replies to my comment a couple of days later? Or a week? Or a month?

I’ll miss it, that’s what.

And there’s the real benefit of a ’subscribe by email’ link comes in. It sits there in the background and quietly reminds anyone who’s subscribed that your blog still exists. Great for keeping a conversation going days, weeks, or months after the original post.

So, the choices are: reduced pageviews in the short term and the chance of pulling people back to specific posts on your blog over a slightly longer term. Or, many more page views in the short term, and posts that are effectively ‘forgotten’ in the longer term.

It’s a case of doing it for the revenue, or doing it for your readers.

Why is it that I just can’t decide?

You can pick up a copy of the subscribe to comments plugin for Wordpress here.