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Using Aweber Instead of Feedburner on Your Blog
Most bloggers use some kind of RSS subscription service like Feedburner to manage reader subscriptions. Using Feedburner allows a reader to subscribe directly using “feed readers” like Google Reader and Feedblitz, or users can also choose to receive blog updates via email.
Feedburner is great for:
- Providing an easy way to subscribe to / unsubscribe from your blog
- Providing basic reports on your web traffic demographics
- Providing extra RSS tools via “Feed Flares” that build interactivity and embeds several important functions of social bookmarking
However, Feedburner email subscriptions have several limitations:
- You can only email your blog’s content to users, exactly as it appears on your blog
- You cannot send other commercial email to your email list
- You cannot segregate / manage / transfer your email list
For my Easy Wordpress blog, I have been using Aweber’s “Blog Broadcast” feature from the very beginning. This is because I prefer to create an ezine format for my broadcast, where I group together several posts and also add in other related content from the forum and put in some links to my products.
I can also use custom HTML for my broadcasts, and here’s how an EasyWordpress Ezine edition looks like:
You’ll notice that I can manage and divide my content in a more presentable way, while also adding some custom messages anywhere in the email itself.
Here’s some characteristics and advantages of using Aweber’s broadcast service:
- You have 100% control over your email list and you can send them any message / email you want independent of the content on your blog
- You can broadcast individual posts, or manually group several posts at a time.
- You can also choose to send out a summary of the posts, or just the headers and link to your blog for the complete content
- You can automate the broadcast, or you can send it out manually. Sending out manually gives you the opportunity to review the content and also add in other stuff like ads and promotional messages.
- You can choose to broadcast only certain categories in your blog, by using the category feeds
- You can archive your email broadcasts, and obtain an RSS feed for the archive, provided by Aweber themselves
The only issue here is that Feedburner is free, while you’ll need to pay $17.00 / month for Aweber. However, Aweber is a complete mailing list management tool, not just a blog syndication tool like Feedburner.
If you’re just writing and building a blog, and you want to monetize your blog with Google Adsense, Kontera or other ads, you should go with Feedburner as it’s more universally accepted as a reliable indicator of a blog’s reach and popularity. A lot of bloggers advertise the amount of RSS readers they have using Feedburner’s additional tools right at the top of their blog to attract advertisers.
If on the other hand you’re not blogging for advertising bucks, choose Aweber. For example, if you’re an author or trainer and your money is made when someone buys your products or attends your events, create an Aweber opt-in form like the on you see on the right hand column of this blog and offer something of value to encourage people to sign-up.
You can then insert autoresponder messages into Aweber to follow-up with your subscribers, while driving traffic to your blog at the same time. You won’t need to show off your opt-in list, because you’re not interested in advertisers or Google Adsense.
By using Aweber, you will receive much more flexibility in terms of sending out promotional messages and special offers for your products and events to your subscribers.
16 Comments »
Gobala Krisnan is a direct-response marketer turned blogger who makes over $10,000 a month from his blog empire. If you want to make money online from blogs, he is the only person who can reveal the secret of merging time-tested direct marketing strategies with web 2.0 traffic. Read more about him >>
I was supposed to attend an AWeber Webinar this past Thursday - their List of Features + Benefits seem awesome!
;))
Another very informative post Gobala, thanks for this great tip. Even though I am quite satisfied with feedburner the way it is I’d be sure to look further into this.
Gobala I am subscriber of your ezine and Aweber also, but when I tried to use its template, normally it will raise up my spam index making it more easier to be marked as spam by ISP. What is your experience?
Purple Rain
I cannot figure out how to get my aweber code into my wordpress blog. Can you please help? I know the javascript one won’t work because WP does not allow java, but I can’t get the html one to work, either in a post or in my widgets. It appears to be ’stripping’ the input field information.
Thanks!
Hi Crystal,
Did you try to put the script tags in front and after the code you get from Aweber?
That’s what I use on mine and it works fine. Also, this should work in a text widget too.
Monika
Do you host your blog on your own site, or on WP site? I tried again and again to make this work, on a regular post (in the ‘code’ mode) using the javascript version and the html version, and I also tried it in widgets. I end up with the form header, and the two names of the fields showing, but no fields actually there for the users to input.
What is a script tag? In the java version of my aweber form, it looks like this: : This looks like it already has the tags, but from what I understand, WP does not allow javascript to be ran. My html code would not have a script tag I don’t believe?
Please help! lol
Hey gobala, man i never knew you could do such stuff. I have been using the feedburner version of getting readers to my posts but deep within i didn’t like it cuz i knew that i didn’t have a “control” over my readers’ database. But on the other hand, i also didn’t to lose on possible reader base so i just chose to go with it. Now that i know that this can be done, man it sure is a win-win situation. Btw, does the free aWeber version offer this?
Keep the juice flowing gobala, thalaiva, u rock!
Seeni
blogmiracle.com
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Thanks Gobala - this has been instrumental in helping me decipher what exactly a Blog Broadcast can look like…
I’ve been an AWeber user for years, and love their service, and yet I’ve found their description of what exactly is going to happen when setting up a B.B. (that is, what’s going to be in the emails that are sent) is pretty thin. Your post answered it for me.
Thanks again.
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