RSS Feed Reader Incentives

It’s common knowledge that the best way to build your list is by offering an incentive. Just recently, I connected my blog feed to my Aweber account (I’ll tell you more about that later) and now people can download my new ebook  if they subscribe … by email.

Knowing there are many people who don’t want to give out their email address, I started looking for a way to give away the ebook in return for reader subscriptions.  I thought it would be best to add some sort of a footer message to every outgoing feed, but when I turned to the Feedburner site, I couldn’t find what I was looking for.

However, a Google search learned me that it was actually possible, and although Feedburner makes it sound so complicated, it’s quite easy, really. And now I’m glad to be able to announce that now EVERY subscriber can receive a free copy of my ebook. 

From this moment forward, my feed footer lookes like this:

Here’s how to do it:

First, llog in at the Feedburner site and click ‘Optimize’ – ‘FeedFlares’.

The Feedburner Feedflare feature allows you to places a simple footer at the bottom of each content item to give your subscribers and easy way to email, tag or share your feed. There’s a list of predefined links, which you can add or remove easily.

At the bottom of that list, you can add new flares.

That’s exactly what you need to do.

For your flare to be found, you first need to create the XML-file and upload it to your server somewhere.

To create an XML-file: copy the piece of code below, edit it to fit your needs and paste it into an empty (text )file.

Save that file as somename.xml (you can name the file anything, but you must make sure you save it with the .xml extension. If you’re using notepad, click ‘save’ and select ‘All Files’ instead of ‘txt files’ at the bottom of the saving window).

Code:

Upload it to your server (Don’t forget to change the values).

Then, go back to the Feedburner site and enter the URL to your .xml-file in the ‘Add New Flare’ box. When you click the button, your flare should appear at the bottom of the ‘Personal Feed Flare’ list. Check the box in the ‘Feed’ column, and you’re all set.

Take a look at your feed to see if it actually worked and nothing went wrong.

I told you it was easy

(By the way, if you didn’t subscribe to my blog yet, you can do so here)

More:

- Feedflare Developer Guide

- Feedflare Scratchpad: create and test your .xml