What Is Feedburner and How Do You Get One?

You may have heard about a tool called Feedburner (www.feedburner.com). But what is it, exactly, and do you need one?

To put is in simple terms, Feedburner is a feed “enhancer”. It takes your default wordpress feed, and adds more functionality to it without you having to modify it yourself.

If you’ve already had your blog up for some time, chances are your readers may have already subscribed to your default RSS feed. Since you’re using Feedburner, it’s a good idea to make sure everyone is reading the same RSS feed.

Here’s how a default Wordpress feed looks like in Firefox:

Once you redirect your feed via Feedburner, it looks like this:

Once you’re set-up with Feedburner, you can activate all the cool functions, such as allowing your readers to subscribe via email, and also the Feedburner “Flares”.

Flares allow you to add functionality to your feeds, and there are a couple of good ones you’ll definately need to drive more repeat visitors to your blog:

Once you’ve activated the Flares, they will appear in your RSS feed.

There’s only one disadvantage of using Feedburner: you lose control of your RSS feed.

Imagine if you already have thousands of subscribers via Feedburner, and you decide to stop using it (or switch to a similar service) for whatever reason. You won’t be able to tranfer those readers to your new service easily as your Feedburner version has already been published on the Internet on tons of different sites and sources.

That fact aside, using Feedburner will ultimately make your life a whole lot easier. To sign-up, just go to www.Feedburner.com.

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8 Comments »

Comment by Andrés Paredes

2007-08-13 02:53:33

I have that problem with feedburner and feeddblitz “…magine if you already have thousands of subscribers via Feedburner, and you decide to stop using it (or switch to a similar service) for whatever reason. You won’t be able to tranfer those readers to your new service easily as your Feedburner” My web design site is built with Joomla CMS, users like to suscribe via the Joomla suscribers component, but importing users to Feedburner is very burocratic, with Feedblitz you have more control of your feeds and you can import export users, the problem: you have to pay for a premium account.

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Pingback by How To Create A Custom FeedBurner Flare | Blogging Tips

2008-01-11 15:16:07

[...] you know you can add a “Personal FeedFlare” or Custom Feed Flare to your FeedBurner account, and that it’s not that hard to [...]

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Pingback by Aweber / Feedburner Integration is Good News For Marketers | Blogging Tips

2008-02-02 12:24:17

[...] bloggers like Yaro Starak, Alex Sysoeff and me aren’t 100% pure bloggers who depend solely on FeedBurner, pure blog traffic or even pure blog monetization for that matter. We have our own products that [...]

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Comment by Lueni Blog

2008-02-09 17:10:04

Thanks for sharing this info.

I still have a problem with how to get RSS Subscriber..

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Comment by Adam Moss

2008-02-09 18:41:45

Feedburner is quite hard to demystify.. I’m still not entirely sure if it’s a beneficial or restricting application. I wrote a small article about it too:

I agree the Flare functionality is useful though.

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Pingback by The Guru Theme for Gurus, Coaches and Professionals | CMS Wordpress Themes

2008-04-28 06:27:14

[...] the subscribe buttons and search form is neatly laid out right on top, with support for Feedburner RSS and email [...]

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Pingback by How Should We Put an End to Poverty and Is Feedburner Utter Crap? - The Displaced African

2008-08-07 23:21:48

[...] Answer: For those who don’t know what Feedburner is, check out this page explaining what it is, check out the Feedburner site or subscribe to the blog via RSS to see it in action (the subtly of [...]

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