Alternative to Feedburner?

Hi everyone,

I have a WordPress blog and I've been using Feedburner for as long as I can remember. I've heard that it wasn't that reliable anymore and I'm open to new alternatives.

Do you have any suggestion? I'm looking for a free service (eh, may as well!)

Thank you!

 

Hasn't FeedBurner been out of vogue for years since Google more or less dumped it?

I think you'd probably benefit much more from simply using the built in feed generator on WordPress for RSS and gathering subscribers via an opt-in email list. If you're unfamiliar, I've heard that OptinMonster makes this a pretty easy process for WP powered sites - but I haven't played with it myself, so take that recommendation with a grain of salt.

 

I'm afraid I'm waaaay behind indeed, I've been meaning to research Feedburner alternatives for ages!

Thank you for your input. I have subscribers on Feedburners (about 1,000) so I'm not sure how the change would affect them. Any idea?

 

MailChimp has a pretty good post on about how you can "convert" your FeedBurner subscribers to whatever email list management software / autoresponder (e.g., MailChimp themselves, Aweber, whatever you use).

blog.mailchimp.com/moving-your-subscriber-list-from-feedburner-to-mailchimp/

I hope that gives you a good starting point. If you want a hand down the line feel free to grab me via PM or Skype (TwoCentHeroes) and if I have time I'll be glad to poke around with you.

But in a nutshell, you can export your FeedBurner subscribers to a .CSV and then import that elsewhere. Now here is a personal recommendation - I know they're veeeery popular because of their free services, but personally, I don't like MailChimp. Go take a look at their Acceptable Use Policy - they outright prohibit "Affiliate Marketing." Affiliate marketing is such a huge blanket term - if you do any kind of commission or performance based marketing with your list, they reserve the right to cancel your account. That could technically include recommending a product on Amazon. I wouldn't trust my list with them, but that's just my opinion. I'd go with Aweber or Constant Contact (the latter of which is my preference).

 

Who even uses RSS anymore? It is no longer relevant. Why do you think Google Reader was discontinued.

 

I don't necessarily disagree, but there are people who still use it. Why not give them the option if all it takes is a few clicks to set up?

 

It is automatically setup if you're using WordPress, just add /feed/ to the URL.

 

Right! And even though RSS isn't as popular as it once was, I'd say that's a good thing.

 

Let's be honest, did RSS ever really take off that much? I found it more of an annoyance more than anything else.

 

Your username checks out, your insights are very helpful

I checked out both Aweber and Constant Contact but unfortunately, their offer paid services and I'm not comfortable adding yet another paid service to my list. This is a personal blog, my marketing efforts are... ahem, minimal.

I'm surprised to hear about Mailchimp prohibiting affiliate marketing. Presumably, merely using their services is, in a way, doing affiliate marketing!

Now bear with (or don't if you're busy!) but I have a 101 question. Basically, I was using Feedburner to deliver new articles to my readers' feed service, so that they would know a new article was published without visiting the website... or at least it was my understanding. It seems that all the services you mentioned are email-based. Am I missing something? I know I am

 

What do you mean? I find it conveniently to follow blogs via services like Feedly, for instance.

 

I guess it does serve some purpose. I would rather just follow a brand on FB/YouTube, for example, to keep up to date with the latest content, because I will be using these sites in any case. Using a RSS service to scan links of content you might find interesting gets monotonous pretty quickly is all I am saying. I know that sounds weird because RSS readers are meant to save you time but whatever lol.

 

That's correct, FeedBurner is/was for delivering notices to feed readers, and I believe it also gave subscribers the option to receive updates via email.

What I'm getting at here is that dcristo is right about RSS being far, far less popular than it once was (although I'm like you, I still like it too). However I don't think there's any good reason to write it off entirely - like he said, WordPress sets it up for you by default.

However, rather than focusing on RSS or feed based subscribers, you'll benefit a lot more from building a list of email subscribers - you can send them updates about when you post on your site, but you can also send them anything else you want through email. Give them an incentive to sign up (e.g., some kind of free content). Then send useful, interesting, perhaps exclusive members-only information, and they'll love you for it.

Basically what I'm saying is give your visitors the option to use RSS if they want it, but focus your effort on building an email marketing list instead of worrying about how many people are reading you through RSS.

And I totally understand about not wanting to add another paid service to an already long list. Assuming you aren't doing any affiliate marketing, MailChimp does have a free option and can be a good way to get started. If you ever decide you want to "upgrade" to a different (and in my opinion better) service, you can export your subscribers from MailChimp and import them somewhere else.

 

1. Not everything is on Facebook / Twitter / Whatever
2. RSS-readers are excellent aggregators of a lot of content - I use mine to scan news (about 20-30 different newspapers and science blogs and such), keep up to date on several web-comics and quite a bit of other stuff, which I would, if I was gonna go to each and every one of them, spend hours going through.
3. If I was gonna find all of this manually, by scanning my FB feed, or going to pages, it would involve a lot of clicking and moving around - with the RSS feeds I can peruse most of it in a single app, and if I need to, I can open that specific link in the browser with one click

RSS, to me, is a LOT better than email-lists (which all gets automatically archived and never looked at), or browsing pages.

 

Depends on the demographic, it's not really shocking to know webmasters on DP still use RSS. What you really want to know is whether the general web user is still using RSS, and I think you will find most don't.

 

Not YET anyway. Which is too bad - I don't even have a personal Facebook account. Too creepy as far as privacy is concerned in my book.

Right, and I'm glad you said that because it's an important distinction to make. Here's an interesting article from last year on the topic: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/rss-dead-look-numbers/

So RSS most certainly is not dead - but who's really using it? My grandma definitely isn't, but folks like you or I or PoPSiCLe might love it.

Hence why it's a good idea to give your readers the option (so if you're not running WP where it's set up automatically, you should look into it), but your focus on RSS largely depends on your demographic as you said, dcristo. I think it's safe to assume that in most cases/niches list building is the better path to take, with a peppering of solid social media presences.

 

^ Showing off your research skills to land writing jobs?

Actually that was an interesting read. Not only have web users habits changed over time, companie's priorities have changed too. Like the article talks about, companies much prefer users visit their sites instead of scanning RSS readers.

 

How dare you sir, I'd never do such a thing.

The article also mentioned that more and more sites/companies are aiming for the "walled garden" approach. Which, yes, is smart from a business perspective. My girlfriend and I like to cook together so I was looking up recipes, and I landed on a site that flat out required an account to view their content, very similar to Pinterest. It's a pain, but for the site operator it's got to do wonders for user retention. Building a list is sort of a micro-version of a walled garden, somewhat anyway.

 

It is, however, a bloody pain in the ass for users. Having to log in, having accounts and so on, just to read a site. For commenting and other interactions, I see the point, but most pages uses Disqus or Facebook or something similar, so one can keep the logins limted. Same as paywalls, and other misunderstood ways to try to entice users to pay for stuff.

 

Sorry for coming back late to the party...!

This is a very interesting thread because it gives me a different perspective.

Unlike many of you here, I'm not online to make money--not directly, at least, and not in this context.

I started a blog ten years ago because I was settling in Canada and I didn't speak much English. I wanted to improve my writing skills and I couldn't work until my immigrant status was sorted out. Ten years later, I'm still writing because I love it. This blog is a way for me to connect with people and show my long-term presence online. I do have a few banner ads and occasionally, I accept sponsored articles but I don't blog for money.

I read blogs because I enjoy the content, I write because I like it, not just to produce content or as part of a branding strategy. I'm not on Facebook because I don't see the point.

So for people like me who follow a bunch of blogs for content, RSS and feed readers like Feedly make sense. It's an easy way to be notify when new content is published. I wouldn't want to receive hundreds of articles by email every day.

Now I'm wondering if my readers would subscribe to receive new articles by email. Newsletters, special offers, yeah,., maybe. But I don't offer that. I offer content, 700-word articles to be enjoyed with a cup of coffee.

See what I mean?

Thoughts?