15 Comments on Is Aweber or Feedburner better for syndicating blog posts via email?

Mitch on Sun, 15th Feb 2009 10:42 am


Unfortunately John, I couldn’t vote for any of them because I don’t subscribe to feeds by email, but with a Reader; probably should have added that as a vote choice. lol

I do that because I already get close to 300 emails a day, and I’m just so much better in tracking all the blogs I follow through a reader.

Mitch’s last blog post..Stylish

JD on Sun, 15th Feb 2009 6:25 pm


Good afternoon, Mitch.

No, I’m not really interested in which feed reader someone uses, or if they use one. They all work the same from my perspective and I have the big RSS icon on the top right corner of each of my primary blogs.

What I really want to know is if anyone sees any functional difference between Feedburner and Aweber for email subscriptions to blog posts. I use both and I’m happy with them, but I don’t know if anyone is having problems with either service.

I have a lot of feeds running through Feedburner, but I’m starting to use Aweber more for syndicating my blog posts, especially on the three blogs I’ll be updating regularly.

I thought about it when I was getting ready to offer subscriptions via email for this blog. I’ll probably go with Aweber, unless I hear real reasons not to.

I get about twice as many emails as you do, and since I already spend so much time in my email application, I don’t have as much time to use my feed reader.

Also, I tend to get behind now and then and the email notices are still there waiting for me and they may have moved out of an RSS feed by the time I get around to checking it.

You can probably tell that because of some of the long delays when I responded to some of your comments.

Act on your dream!

JD

Mitch on Sun, 15th Feb 2009 6:50 pm


Hi John,

My only point was that you had a poll which didn’t leave someone like me a choice to select, whether you asked if one used a reader or none of the above. I almost didn’t write a comment at all because, overall, it didn’t pertain to me.

Mitch’s last blog post..Book Writing Series Part Seven – Contacting Publishers

JD on Mon, 16th Feb 2009 1:16 am


Good morning, Mitch.

I’m sorry for missing what you meant.

Actually, you can add pretty much whatever you want to that poll.

It may not be obvious, but there is a choice for Other and a text entry box (the gray stripe) where you could write in “RSS feed reader” or “none of the above” or whatever pertains.

(I have those comments set for moderated, just to make sure people don’t get too far out of line.)

I wanted this to be a simple question about Aweber and Feedburner, not really about other choices.

I’m happy that you did choose to comment. I hope I didn’t come across otherwise.

It doesn’t look like there’s going to be a flood of votes, though.



Act on your dream!

JD

JD on Sun, 1st Mar 2009 5:45 pm


Today, I see a reason to choose Aweber instead of Feedburner.

I haven’t been to Feedburner.com in awhile, but today, I wanted to burn a feed from my Murphy, NC group on ning.com.

I went to Feedburner, as usual, but my only choice was to login using my Google account. That’s new.

So, I did.

I got a real surprise. The screen says:

“You have no feeds set up in FeedBurner. Go ahead, burn yours now! It’ll be a hoot.”

WHAT!?!

Where are the more than two dozen feeds I’ve burned over the last few years?

I’ve spent the last hour trying to find what to do about this and I’m no closer to finding an answer.

I always thought that it was a good thing when Google bought Feedburner back in 2007, but now, I’m not so sure.

I haven’t had time to look at some of my sites to see if they’re showing the Feedburner feeds, or not, and frankly, I’m too busy today with important tasks to get sidetracked by this.

This is simply unacceptable.

I would expect something like this from a fly-by-night developer, but not companies with the track records of Feedburner and Google.

I’m happy that I made the decision to go with Aweber for subscribing to my blog posts via email.

Still, I have no idea how I’m going to sort out this mess and be able to access all my former Feedburner feeds on Google.

This is simply unbelievable.

JD

Mitch on Sun, 1st Mar 2009 7:45 pm


Hey John,

Before you go bonkers, if you didn’t update your Feedburner account while it was going through its “voluntary” crossover to Google, then today was the day that everything was officially moving, and therefore you might just be MIA while it’s going through the change. If you remember during my little contest, I moved my accounts to the Google side, and my numbers drastically reduced for about a week, as did everyone else’s.

Then again, I’ve never even seen a Feedburner feed on this blog, so I may not know what I’m talking about.

Mitch’s last blog post..February Statistics Report – Still Growing

JD on Mon, 2nd Mar 2009 12:10 am


Good evening, Mitch.

I’ve been so out of the loop in February, while planning for my local offline marketing consulting, that I haven’t had time to keep up with all the things I usually do.

I had no idea that Feedburner was making a transition to Google. I got no emails about it and I didn’t visit the site and see anything there.

It’s too late; I already went bonkers!

Thanks for the info about this being the date for the change. I didn’t know that.

I do have a feedburner feed for this blog, and almost all of my others, but there is nothing to see about it here. I mainly use it to make it easy to syndicate the blog on other sites and/or to use the headline animator where I can’t do otherwise.

An example would be:

http://www.ayearfromnow.com/weblogs.html

or

http://www.ayearfromnow.com/blog-john-dilbeck-friends.html

So, at least I’m a bit comforted that the headline animators are still working and the BuzzBoost javascript syndication is working, too.

So, the feeds must be active somewhere.

Hopefully, you will be right and my account may just be MIA for some reason. Thanks for letting me know. I feel a bit better, now.

Still, this is no way to handle such a transition, and I’m not feeling very good about Feedburner or Google, today.

Act on your dream!

JD

Mitch on Mon, 2nd Mar 2009 12:13 am


Hey JD,

I knew about it because I was checking my Feedburner account on a regular basis during my contest. Actually, I mentioned it on the post, but you’d already posted your one comment and never came back, so you probably ignored it. I hope it comes back for you also.

Mitch’s last blog post..February Statistics Report – Still Growing

JD on Mon, 2nd Mar 2009 12:48 am


Good morning, Mitch.

Just now I visited your blog for the first time in what seems like weeks, and that’s unusual, because I enjoy what you write and how you say it.

I enjoyed reading your last few posts.

I’m feeling a bit better. I’ll investigate the Feedburner to Google migration this week and see if I can determine what happened to my account.

Thanks for the feedback. It helped.

Act on your dream!

JD

Ryan on Mon, 16th Mar 2009 12:39 am


I used Aweber now as well and 99% of my readers are through Aweber. The ONE thing I don’t like is that I can’t automatically group messages if I were to post two posts in a day. They automatically go out separately, which can piss some readers off. Not sure if they have improved this yet, and the advertising within the aweber isn’t as easy.

Ryan’s last blog post..Pulmonary Embolism. What’s That?

JD on Mon, 23rd Mar 2009 9:51 pm


Good evening, Mitch.

I don’t know if you’ll see this or not, but I’m still unable to access my Feedburner account or successfully migrate the feeds to my Google account.

I finally found an email address and wrote with the particulars. It’s a feedback address, and not support, so I don’t know if it will do any good.

We’ll see.

This is rather bothersome. I’m making changes to various blogs and other sites with feeds and can’t modify the feeds in Feedburner. Plus, I have some clients for whom I’ll be burning feeds and don’t know if I can go ahead and do that in my Google account, or not, without causing additional problems.

Sigh.

JD

JD on Mon, 23rd Mar 2009 9:57 pm


Good evening, Ryan.

(I’m sorry for the delay in responding. I was sick most of last week and I’m just now trying to catch up.)

Thanks for your comment; welcome to the discussion.

Why would it bother someone to get two posts in a day rather than one? I don’t understand that. I’m not asking you to explain it, however, it’s just an observation.

You raise a good point about the advertising, but I don’t have much experience with that kind of advertising since I don’t use Adsense for feeds or similar products.

Act on your dream!

JD

Mitch on Mon, 23rd Mar 2009 10:11 pm


Hi John,

Yes, I see this message, and I’m sorry you haven’t recovered all your feeds yet. That really makes no sense, as I did get all of mine back. Is it possible that the old Feedburner might have had it all wrong?

I have both of your blogs in my reader, and I’m getting the updates, so at least you can feel confident that the feeds are still working.

Mitch’s last blog post..Where My Traffic Comes From

JD on Mon, 23rd Mar 2009 11:51 pm


Good evening, Mitch.

Thanks for the feedback and I’m happy to hear the feeds are still working.

I’ve made some progress this evening; finally made contact with a Feedburner support rep who says he can work with me to straighten this out.

I hope to get access to all my old feeds and the ability to burn new feeds, soon.

Act on your dream!

JD

JD on Wed, 22nd Apr 2009 10:00 am


Good morning, Mitch.

Finally! My feedburner feeds are available to me at feedburner.google.com. Now I have to try to remember what I wanted to do about seven weeks ago.

Act on your dream!

JD