Jennifer80
Member
I'm fairly new to blogging, and only barely understand this whole RSS feed thing (I know I have one, but beyond that....not much). I've been reading that I should use "Feedburner" to "burn my feed" but don't understand exactly what that means or why I should use this service.
Can someone please explain? P.S. I did read the pages at Google but they didn't really help much...
Feedburner is a feed enhancer that takes your default feed and adds more functionality without you having to modify it yourself.
Subscribers to blogs usually sign up through the default RSS feed. When you use Feedburner, it's a good idea to ensure everyone reads the same RSS feed. When you set-up with Feedburner, you can allow subscribers to sign up via email. You can also use Feedburner "Flares." This is where you can add functionality to your feed. You could select "Flares" such as Email This, Add del.icio.us., and others.
I hope this helped.
"Burning your feed" is just a cutesy way of saying "reroute your feed through feedburner" 
I definitely think that using Feedburner (which is free) is a good thing for anyone to do, primarily because Feedburner allows you some basic tracking, so you can see how many people subscribe to your Feed and how many actually read it, which can be useful information.
Also, as Rebecca pointed out, you can use them to manage email subscribers as well, and it's completely automated - it picks up your feed and emails it to those on your email list (sometimes people prefer an email over an RSS feed reader)....this service is also free, HOWEVER, I do recommend that you give serious consideration to using Aweber instead IF you blog frequently.
The reason is that Feedburner is a daily service - if you publish a blog post, then at whatever time you've configured Feedburner to send to your email list, it goes out that day. And if you're blogging frequently - daily or several times a week - your emails will go out that frequently. For some people (me included), that's too much and I'll generally unsubscribe. Weekly is the most often I want to get email from anyone, no matter how valuable the topic, as my inbox is already more than I can manage.
Aweber on the other hand, allows you to specify how often you want the email to go out, so you can choose daily, weekly, monthy, or every XX number of days or blog posts. There is also much more customization you can do to the look of your email by choosing one of many templates.
The downside is that Aweber is NOT free - their cheapest plan is $20 monthly, but if your goal is to build a large mailing list, and use that list to generate revenue by promoting products, then it's worth considering.
SO burn your feed through Feedburner, but give some thought to whether to use Feedburner or Aweber to handle your email list.
Jennifer, I use feedburner for my blog's RSS/email subscriptions. I would recommend that you use it for the following reasons:
1. It's free and easy to setup (someone already pointed that out)
2. It consolidates email ans RSS subscription. You do not have to set up things twice
3. People who subscribe get notified via the feed that you have a new post. If you are like me and post erratically (no fixed pattern) you need someway to let people know of the new posts
4. You get free stats of people who subscribe - again free, once you are setup with feedburner. So, you know how many people are subscribing and reading your blog
5. If you are looking to monetize your blog, you can add Google Adsense ads to your RSS feed
6. Feedburner also drives traffic to your blog. People who subscribe to your feed can 'share' it with their network, helping you reach new readers
My $.02. Hope it helps.
UnRoadWarrior
MyBlog
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