If you are reading this in an RSS reader, please click on the post.

See what I had to do there? Because if you, like me, read all of your blogs in an RSS reader, then you only see the headline and the first two lines of text on this blog. And, if you’re like me, you very rarely click on the headline to read the entire post.

Here at Bnet, only Scot McKnight has his entire feed syndicated. The rest of us get only the first two lines. The reason, as you might guess, is that Bnet wants you to come to my actual blog so that your eyeballs see the advertisements on the site (but, again, if you’re like me, you’ve got an adblocker installed in Firefox and just see black spaces where the ads are supposed to be.

I’ve advocated a middle ground to Bnet — that they’d syndicate everything before the jump…

…then I’d have the opportunity to write some compelling copy that might hook you enough to click thru and read the rest of the posts.  Many of the best blogs to which I subscribe do this, and I often find myself clicking thru if they offer me 2-3 compelling paragraphs, as opposed to 2-3 lines. And, as a blogger, I find it difficult to say enough in 2-3 lines to get you interested.

Further, my images never show up in the feed. It’s become clear in the blogosphere that images result in more clicks.

The other option, of course, is to sell ads that show up in the bottom of the feed, which other blogs do. This doesn’t bother me at all.

So, I ask you, does the 2-3 line tease dissuade you from coming to the actual blog? What would get you to click thru? And, conversly, what — like ads in the feed — would piss you off?