Popular Email Subscription Service
Below are a few of the email subscription service; both paid and free.
1. FeedBurner - Free
2. MailChimp - Paid & Free
3. Aweber - Paid
Offering a free email subscription service is a key step to blogging success. But we soon face a problem with setting it up. Having to pay a certain amount per year/month is a discouraging factor for Email services. Services like Aweber, Mailchimp will require you to deposit some fee and if you are just a beginner who just started blogging, you will be discouraged.
Google FeedBurner
FeedBurner being a free service provided by Google, is a really good email service for the collection of emails from your blog readers. Feedburner does not only offer you a tool for mail collection, they also allow you to quickly setup automatic Twitter posting, provide you with basic widgets e.g the feed rotator, readers count, subscription box and much more...
Topic List
2. 5 Cool FeedBurner Subscribe Boxes For Blogger Blogspot
3. How To Check FeedBurner Email Subscription List
Importance Of FeedBurner To Blogspot Bloggers
Although FeedBurner is a general email tool, it has a core value which it serves for Blogspot bloggers. Most of the bloggers I have seen, both professionals and new bloggers tend to use FeedBurner for the following purposes. Setting up FeedBurner will increase your blog's readers, social engagement, professionalism and also makes the whole work easy for you.
Features of FeedBurner
1. It's Free
2. Easy to Integrate with Blogger or Blogspot
3. Collection of Emails/Subscribers
4. Automatically tweets latest articles
6. Free Widgets (Feed rotator, recent post, readers counter etc)
7. Unlimited blogs per Account.. and much more.
Creating A Free FeedBurner Account
A FeedBurner account is automatically created the minute you create a Gmail account. Your blog Gmail account is connected to literally most of the services provided by Google including FeedBurner. You can either use the same Gmail you use on your blog or create a different one. Any Gmail (only Gmail) account can burn a feed for your blog.
Go to Feedburner
Click To Visit
Claim Your Feed
Step 1 - My Feeds Tab
Welcome to My Feeds Tab. This is the first step to setting up your blog RSS or Email list. Let's get started with understanding the My Feeds Tab.
First Visit
On your first visit to the "My Feed tab", it will prompt you to "Claim your feeds" or "burn a feed".
We will be using the "Burn a feed right this instant" which will let us create our own free email feed.
Type in the URL of your blog (e.g http://www.example.com) or use your blog's (Blogspot) RSS "http://www.example.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss" (replace www.example.blogspot.com with your blog URL) into the box right under "Burn a feed right this instant" and click "Next".
Step 2 - Identify Feed Source
All you need to do is "Tick" option 1 and click "Next".
Step 3 - Welcome! Let us burn a feed for you
You are a step away from burning your own feed for your blog. All you need to do is to Edit the "Feed Title" and "Feed Address".
Note: You can still delete or cancel this feed by simply clicking on the "Cancel and do not activate" option at the bottom right.
If you are satisfied with the changes you have made, Confirm your Feed by Clicking on "Next".
Congrats!
You have successfully created your first email subscription list. In the next page, you should see your FeedBurner URL (e.g http://feeds.feedburner.com/example). Save your URL to a notepad for future reference. Because it is what you will use to direct users to your subscription page.
Enhance Your Stats
FeedBurner Stats automatically tracks
Your FeedBurner feed is now running and active. It is now time to activate tools that will help improve our Blogspot feed functionality.
Tick "Clickthroughs" option; This will enable you to see a stats and clicks tracking page or view the number of clickthroughs to your site.
Also, Tick "I want more! Have FeedBurner Stats also track". For more tracking functions.
Optimize Your Feeds
Go to "Optimize". You should see a list of items in the left sidebar while their description and settings are shown on the main page which is at the right.
Your Feed: This page will show you your feeds (blog posts). The way you see your post here is the same way visitors of your feed site will see it. You can customize the look and add share buttons.
SmartFeed: This translates your feed (post) into an RSS or Atom format which is compatible with your blog visitors' feed reader application. Click on "Activate". To enable this option.
FeedFlare: This gives your subscribers easy ways to email, tag, share, and act on the post you published. FeedFlare places an interactive footer at the bottom of every post, enabling you to distribute and create a community around your feed.
Tick as many services you can enable and when you finish selecting, Click on "Activate" at the far bottom.
In the Optimise tab, you will find many other options. Just read what is written and activate any service you wish to activate. You can always deactivate any service at any time.
Subscribe To Obhiaba Blog
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Publicize Feeds.
Welcome to the tools and widgets section. You can create your own subscription box, headline animator, PingShot (improve blog SEO) and auto-publishing to social networks.
Go to "Publicize".
Automatically Post To Twitter
Using Feedburner, you can automatically post all your posts to your Twitter account. You can add hashtags to each tweet via your post label and also it automatically create a short URL for your tweet using Google URL Shortener.
Locate and Click on "Socialise" at the left sidebar. When you do, You should see an option to "Add a Twitter account".
Grant it access and connect it to your Twitter account. After that, you should customize the way your tweets will look.
Tip: You will see a "Preview" of your tweet at the bottom.
Post Content: Choose between the options to show either only the post title or the post title alongside a part of the post.
Include link: Enable to show a link to your post on Twitter tweets.
Leave room for retweets: Enable to add a retweet button to all your tweets.
Hashtags: Choose "Add hashtags from item categories" to add automatic hashtags to your post via your post labels.
Add Additional Text: You can type in any words of your choice (e.g Trending, Latest posts etc) or just leave it blank.
You can also choose where the additional words will be shown; either at the beginning of the post or at the end.
Item Limit: Choose any value that suits you. This means the number of times FeedBurner should post each blog post to Twitter.
Keyword Filter: You can filter some texts from your tweets.
Finally, take a look at the "Preview" at the bottom and if you are satisfied with it, click on "Activate" and it will start immediately.
Note: you can deactivate this service at any time.
How To Add FeedBurner Subscribe Box To Your Blogspot Blog
After setting up your FeedBurner account, burning your feed, optimizing the look, enabling automatic tweet to Twitter, it's probably time to start collecting emails by letting people subscribe to your subscription list, right in your blog.
At the sidebar and footer of my blog, you will see FeedBurner widgets, a simple one, and a styled one. I will show you how to add the simple one at the sidebar while in my next post on this series, I will publish at least 5 cool FeedBurner subscribe boxes.
Adding Default FeedBurner Subscribe Box
Go to "Publicize" under the publicize tab, locate "Email Subscriptions".
Now click on activate as shown on the page.
Method 1
Copy the code inside the box as shown in the image below. Go to your blogger dashboard >> Layout >> Sidebar >> Add Widget >> HTML/JavaScript >> Paste the Code inside and save.
You can also add this subscription box at the footer and header of your blog.
Method 2
This is the simplest method. All you need to do is select your blog platform (Blogger) where it shows "Use as a widget in" >> click on Go >> and follow the easy setup.
Communication Preferences
You can leave everything as default if you don't understand. But let me try and explain it a little.
Email “Reply-To” Address: Under this tab, you will be given the option to change which email account to receive subscription alert. Change it to any email you prefer.
Confirmation Email Body: This is the confirmation email that will be sent to anybody that subscribes to your blog. Change the message to whatever you desire or better still leave it as default.
Save when done.
Email Branding
The word "Email" and "Branding" already sinks in the function of this tab to us. You get to customize the look, fonts, colours of the emails sent to your blog subscribers once you post.
By FeedBurner settings, all your emails will show only your blog title and post information to your blog subscriber without the post title. If you like you can leave it as default or better still follow the few steps that let you show post title instead of the blog title.
Email Subject/Title - Change this from your blog title to "${latestItemTitle}"
Tick "Change Subject when an email has 2 or more items", in the box below it, type in "${latestItemTitle} plus ${m} more".
Logo URL: Upload your blog logo and paste the URL into this box.
Other Settings
Headline Font: Font of post title - choose any from the list.
Headline Size: Font size of the headline title, larger fonts are more visible and attracting.
Body Font: Font of the email body.
Body Size: Font size of the email body. Recommended sizes are 13-16. But make the decision yours.
Body Color: font colour or text colour of the email body. dark colors e.g #000, #222, #333 are better for easy readability.
Item Headline/Body Link Color: I recommend you choose the colour of the link in your blog. So it will look similar to your blog's colour codes.
Finally, Save when done.
Delivery Options
Schedule your posts emailing easily. Get to choose the timezone and time range to post your articles to subscribers.
Select Timezone: For Nigerians, change the time zone to (GMT+1:00) West Central Africa.
Schedule Email Delivery: Choose when your emails are delivered. Try and search for the best time visitors of your site tend to use internet services most or better still leave it as default.
Click save when done.
PingShot
Easily notify web-based reading services whenever you post. This is very important for quality SEO. Activate this.
FeedCount
Another cool way to promote your feed. Basically, it displays the number of feed readers either in a dynamically changing box or static box. If you have activated it, you can add it to your Blogspot blog by using the method 1 of "Adding Default FeedBurner Subscribe Box" above.
Headline Animator
This is a simple recent post widget created by FeedBurner for your Blogspot blog. You can add it to your blog easily. But one of the downsides is that it redirects people to your FeedBurner feed page and not your blog post page.
This is probably why most bloggers don't add this widget to their website.
Go to Blogger
Click Here
Redirecting Blogger Feed To FeedBurner Feed
Now that you have finished setting up your FeedBurner feed and enabled the important tools, it's time to redirect your default Blogger feed to your newly created FeedBurner feed.- This will direct all your previous subscribers to your FeedBurner
- All new subscribers will also be directed
- This is recommended for accurately and comprehensive stat recording.
Let's Get Started
Go to Blogger
Click Here
On your dashboard, locate the Settings tab >> Other >> Site Feed >> Post Feed Redirect URL
Now Paste your FeedBurner feed URL ( e.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/example) which you saved earlier to a notepad, into the box at the side of "Post Feed Redirect URL".
Click Save at the too when done
More From Author
FeedBurner is a very wide email service which I will detail out in a series that entails various posts. Other posts will explain more about FeedBurner, including checking email subscription list and transferring feeds. Hopefully, this post has shown you how to setup FeedBurner email subscription service on your Blogspot blog. This same procedure will work for WordPress bloggers.
To view other topics, click on the "Topic List" above. Feel free to ask questions and tender useful tips about FeedBurner, Blogspot, Email Services at the comment box.
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