In the first part of this 2-part post, I alluded to the idea that I wasn't getting as much in return - in terms of quality and relevant industry information - from the large amounts of blog / newsletter reading I do on a weekly basis... at least not to the point that I once was. After spending some time last week analyzing statistics on what I read, how I read, and for how long I read my feeds (courtesy of Google Reader), I decided that the best course of action for solving this problem was to essentially remove those blog / newsletter subscriptions that weren't doing much for me... a pretty simple solution if I do say so myself.

I spent the greater portion of this week "trimming the fat", if you will, from my Google reader account. I started this process off with 104 feeds and eventually ended up with a final count of 58. Now, that's a lot of fat! Anyone that manages feeds like this on a daily basis understands full-well how big of a cut 46 feeds is.

Well, now the question becomes how did I determine which of my 104 feeds to cut? As much as I would like to say that this was an easy step for me, it was actually quite the opposite. I started with removing my dormant feeds - these are the feeds that for whatever reason aren't being updated. Typically these are blogs in which the author has either given up on, or has become so preoccupied with work that he or she no longer has time to update them. Almost instantly, I was able to cut my list from 104 feeds down to 81. While this sizable cut didn't really help to solve my "time / quality" problem any, I felt that it was worth the effort just to "clean house" a little bit.

Next, I spent a little time reviewing over my Del.icio.us account. Why Del.icio.us? Well, in my opinion the two go hand-in-hand. Should I come across something of value in my reading, I immediately bookmark it using Del.icio.us for future use - as explained in a previous post. I found that by analyzing these bookmarks, I was able to better understand which feeds were worth keeping. Moving forward, I was able to cut feeds one-by-one until I was confident that I had a list of quality, relevant industry reading.

Here's a look at my Google Reader account now, 46 feeds skinnier:

The first screen-shot here is a snap-shot of my feed subscriptions. See how nice and organized they are. Previously, I had my search feeds broken up into 3 different folders: "Daily News", "Daily Reads", and "Weekly Reads". I used this system as a way to properly allocate my time when reading feeds, but needless to say it didn't work out. Now, as you can see, I've simplified my feeds and organized them by topics.

The second screen-shot is a snap-shot of my "cigar" feeds. Smoking cigars is a huge hobby of mine, and like all hobbies, I like to educate myself through reading.

The third screen-shot is a snap-shot of my "Yahoo! Store" feeds. Even though I mostly dabble in search marketing, I do try and keep up-to-date on any new Yahoo! Store announcements, advancements, and the like.

The forth screen-shot is a snap-shot of my "Search Marketing" feeds. These feeds are the meat and potatoes of my industry reading and these are the feeds in which I get nearly 100% of my industry information from.

In conclusion, I want to go on record and say that yes I understand that there are several hundred other industry related blogs and newsletters currently in circulation, many of which I'm sure offer a lot of value to their readers, but these are the blogs that I choose to read at this point in my career. Obviously, as my needs change and my thirst for more industry reading spanning different topics grows, I will be adjusting this list again. However, for now, I think I have everything just as I should.