Association The percentage of readers who misunderstand what you mean when you ask them to subscribe is largely dependent on your niche. Readers who know what RSS is probably aren't confused by the terminology, but most web users have no clue about RSS (as Brian has pointed out here and here ). I've found that a good measure of reader savviness is a blog's split between RSS and e-mail subscribers -- the higher the percentage of RSS subscribers, the more savvy the readership. I write a blog about entry-level jobs for new college graduates . Despite what you might think of the younger generation, the vast majority of my site's visitors are not familiar with RSS. 55% of my subscribers get my daily posts through e-mail. From what I've heard from other bloggers this is well above average, and I believe that my percentage of e-mail subscribers would be even higher had less savvy readers not been scared off because they thought "subscribing" would cost them money. These are the readers who think of magazines when they hear "subscribe." They think of paying to get something. Great Theory! Now Back It Up I use Google Analytics' outbound click tracking on my blog so that I can analyze the subscription behavior of my readers. This method misses RSS subscriptions from the address bar, but the people who subscribe in that way are probably the most savvy readers and are basically irrelevant to this case study. Most of my subscribers use one