I've been on the fence about implementing feedburner on a couple blogs. Can any of you share your experiences and perhaps some of the benefits you have had with feedburner?

The main benifit is being able to track your feed and how many people are using it.

I've never used Feedburner. I might be able to benefit a little from it ... I'm not really sure, to be honest. I've never used a feed reader, so the concept escapes me. Still, knowing how many people follow my site this way would give me a clearer picture in my stats.

Hi -

We have implemented it at WebHelperMagazine.com and for a couple of other sites we manage. There are pros and cons.

Some Advantages (in addition to tracking your feed as already stated):

• You can offer sign-up by email to your feeds... a way that some readers prefer to receive your posts
• You can monetize your posts
• You can add functionality to your posts
• You can use a widget to publicize how many people read your blog

Some Disadvantages:

• If you ever decide to "unhook" from Feedburner... you lose readers, since they are hooked in via FeedBurners RSS URL, not your native URL
• ______________ - left a blank, since I drew a blank here, but maybe you and others can list some of your concerns for discussion

Bottom line: Fingers crossed that Feedburner does not go away, or become undesireable so that you have to start over -- the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for us. Probably a good idea to periodically publish actual RSS urls versus Feedburn urls -- make your readers aware of them -- just in case. Maybe even have a page explaining it so that in case of disruption, your readers will know what to do. Then you have your bases covered.

Yours, Scott

I'm currently using Feedburner on my blog. I like the tracking features on it, and the live updates. It even has a tracker must like Google Analytics, which can be helpful for the person that likes to keep all of their information in one convenient package.

Unfortunately, Feedburner is blocked within my school's network, so when people try to access my blog's feed it shows the blocked page...

1. The FeedBurner stats
2. The uncommon uses shows you the websites pulling your feed. A good way to find your feed scrapers.
3. The site stats for small blogs.
4. If your blogging platform doesn't allow for you to shorten your feed you can do it through FeedBurner.
5. On Blogger we can only ping weblogs but with FeedBurner you get the option to add more services to ping.

If you ever decide to "unhook" from Feedburner... you lose readers, since they are hooked in via FeedBurners RSS URL, not your native URL

I can't find it now but I came across a help page recently that talked about leaving FeedBurner and it said something like "If you ever decide to leave us there'll be no hard feelings and we'll..." it described doing something similar to having your mail forwarded to your new address.

Fingers crossed that Feedburner does not go away, or become undesireable so that you have to start over...

Since it was bought by Google I don't think we have to worry about it going away especially since they're integrating the help pages into Google's template for help pages.

FeedBurner pretty much rock. I'd second all of the above - they offer lots of extra ways to track, modify and promote your feed. Subscribe by email is a real boon for us - about 95% of our subscribers get content by email. (Yes, I know this is unusual...)

FeedBurner can also lower the load on your server, as the only person hitting your real feed is FeedBurner. I haven't experienced this myself, but remember someone (with a pretty popular blog) saying it made a huge difference not having hundreds of readers checking his feed every hour or so.

Originally Posted by MrBrownThumb

Since it was bought by Google I don't think we have to worry about it going away especially since they're integrating the help pages into Google's template for help pages.

I read an article somewhere saying the links that go to FeedBurner instead of to your feed leach your toolbar PageRank, and make angels loose their wings. That was already grasping at straws, but if Google owns them now, it's even funnier.

Originally Posted by Learning Newbie

I read an article somewhere saying the links that go to FeedBurner instead of to your feed leach your toolbar PageRank...

LOL

Probably someone who checked off the option to allow for his/her feed to be indexed by SEs.

I use feedburner and all the features already listed i find extremely useful although i have probably yet to utilize it to its fullest potential.

The fact that it is now google owned it should secure its long term future.

I guess I never thought about the fact that I wouldn't be able to break off of Freedburner when I was done with it. I guess that's something that I should be upset about...lol

Well, I'm going to be breaking away from feedburner for a while, hmm?