Some people's RSS feeds only include excerpts of their articles, instead of the whole thing.

And I get that. You put a lot of work into the design of your website, so you want your readers to read your work there, not in an external RSS reader.

And, you know. The extra ad revenue doesn't hurt.

But as Gabe Newall famously said, "piracy is a service problem." And that doesn't just apply to games.

Instead of forcing people to read your work on your site by intentionally blocking access to your content in your RSS feed, what if you instead made the on-site experience better than the off-site experience?

One way I do this is with special article components that off-site RSS readers cannot include.

This site has a live code demo component for code demos, which obviously cannot be used in an external RSS reader. So I'll sprinkle my articles with them, but in the RSS feed, replace them with CTAs to read the article on-site while leaving the rest of the article accessible.

Now, instead of forcing people to my site by intentionally blocking access to my content, I put the effort in to make the on-site experience better by including widgets that cannot be emulated in an RSS reader.

Other potential ways to encourage people to read your content on your site include:

• Fill your site with features that improve the reading experience.
• Include unique widgets in your articles that RSS readers can't render, like Josh W. Cameau does a ton.
• Structure your article's HTML in a unique and unconventional way.
• Making your site so visually appealing that your readers just have to read your stuff there!

Overall, if you make the on-site experience better than the off-site experience, people will naturally read your stuff there!

I have nothing wrong with only including excerpts in your RSS feed. In fact, I do that too on a few sites.

But my goal for this site is to achieve growth not through cheap means, but through providing a great on-site experience.