Moving Your RSS Feed to Another Service
oday I welcome guest poster Kelly Whalen from The Centsible Life! I’ve known Kelly for a while and admire her smarts, her laser-focus on her niche and her knowledge! She recently made the switch from Feedburner and has some great tips about taking the leap.
With a recent major blip in Feedburner’s service many bloggers and website owners are looking to other options. While I had been considering a move for my blog, The Centsible Life, for several months due to sporadic stats and issues with Feedburner the recent issues were enough to push me to make the change.
What’s the Deal with Feedburner?
Feedburner is a Google owned service that sends a blog or website feed to users via RSS (syndication in a feed reader) or via emails delivered directly to readers. In it’s simplest form this a way for regular readers to receive your blog posts in a format they prefer. Feedburner has long been the main service blog owners use, but in the last several years the attention to Feedburner as a product has been less and less of a focus for Google. Recently Feedburner shut down their blog and twitter account, and with news that the API will no longer be active, as well as word that Japan’s Feedburner shut down many blog owners are concerned that Feedburner may shut down in the future.
Whether or not Feedburner shuts down their service has been lacking, and the data provided for the blogs I manage has been lacking. At times I will see the number of subscribers shift by hundreds. Other times I’ve seen a ‘reach’ of 4 people versus a more typical number of 200+ readers. The main reason to use Feedburner versus the feed that comes with your blog is the data. Once that was removed the reasoning for using it was diminished for me, and I suspect many other blog owners feel the same way.
Owning Your Feed
The most important thing to take away-whatever feed service you use is that you should own your feed. That simply means that any service you use will redirect to your feed, and that users will not be captive by the service. For details on how to own your feed see this post from the Hobby Blogger.
Simply put this allows you to switch feed services at any time without losing a single reader.
Feed Services
There are many options for feeds, but let’s keep it simple with 5 options.
1. Your Feed
If you’re on self-hosted WordPress or WordPress you can use the built in feed on your site to reach readers. Typically this feed will be similar to http://www.YOURURL.com/feed. The easiest way to find this address is to subscribe yourself. This will also help you keep track of how your feed is being sent. For self-hosted WordPress blogs Jetpack comes with email subscription services. You can see the number of blog readers and download their emails, but there isn’t much customization here.
2. Feedburner:
As outlined above this is a free service that has long been the standard service for blog owners, but in the last several years has suffered from lack of development by Google. while many blog owners are still happy with Feedburner I would caution you strongly to own your feed and copy you email subscriber list weekly or monthly so that should you need to move–you can.
3. Feedblitz*:
Feedblitz offers low cost RSS feed services and a pay scaled structure for email subscriptions starting at $1.49. Feedblitz owner, Phil Hollows, has created guides, videos, and helpful FAQs for new users, and is readily available via twitter and email to respond to questions. Many well-known bloggers have sung the praises of Feedblitz. The main issue with Feedblitz is the cost. If you’re a data junkie this is for you.
*This is the service I’m currently migrating to, and I find that the stats and information provided in only a few short days far surpass the information Feedburner and Jetpack supply.
4. MailChimp:
MailChimp is known as a newsletter service that offers free email newsletters for up to 2,000 readers and 12,000 emails per month. You can easily port your RSS to email with MailChimp as well as create email subscriptions for newsletters. MailChimp does have rules about what you send including strict copyright laws, anti-spam policies, and no affiliate links allowed. As with any service I’d recommend copying your list so you don’t lose it, as some bloggers have had issues with MailChimp shutting down their account without notification. (this is part of their terms).
UPDATE FROM MELISSA: This post from Mailchimp clearly explains their take on affiliate links. For most of us, using affiliate links won’t be an issue with them.
5. Feedity
Feedity is another alternative. With pricing starting at $6/month this is said to be another close alternative to Feedburner. Major sites like Time and LifeHacker use this service for pushing their feeds to readers.
How Do you Move your Feed?
Decide what service you want to use, and set up an account. For my site I used Feedblitz.
1. Follow the feed service’s instructions for importing current feed readers. If you own your feed (as mentioned above) you will just need to direct the feed service to find your feed. If you’re simplifying and using your site’s feed (like Melissa mentioned in Tuesday’s post) or Jetpack you simply need to turn off any redirects, and your feed should continue to work. (Before you delete your account-make sure you try it though!) Many feed services will import all your current readers automatically (though in many cases it won’t bring over bots or emails that were never verified).
2. Next you will need to send readers an email or note (typically just by adding this info to your post) that your feed is moving. For most bloggers this will be seamless, but offering the new feed will help readers if they suddenly aren’t able to view your feed. Some feed services offer this information as part of the transition process.
3. Now you will need to change your feed address on your website, your email subscription boxes, and anywhere you have placed your feed address to make sure new readers subscribe to the new feed.
4. Finally you can shut down your old feed.
Tip: For WordPress users you may have a plugin that redirects readers to Feedburner or another feed service. Make sure you turn those off as well.
Make sure you subscribe to your own feed and check it for issues. Readers may let you know if they have issues, and if you’re like many bloggers you may find more readers by switching services.
A Word of Caution on Losing Readers:
If you have people sign up via Feedburner (or any other service) they ‘own’ those subscribers, so if you just shut off your service and switch you’ll lose readers. Take the steps to own your feed, and then transition to a new service. (Note that you’ll need to change the redirection of the feed once you move feed services.)
If you use the Feedblitz guide it will help you transition from Feedburner to their service fairly easily. While readers may have to resubscribe, there will be a notification in their feed so anyone who is paying attention will move.
Email subscriptions are easier to move since you can download a document with current subscribers from Feedburner.
The final verdict: While it has only been several days since I made the transition my numbers were definitely effected by the move. I have lost a good # of subscribers, but they are trickling in as they read updates. what’s fascinating though is the way reader engagement has gone up! The numbers on Feedblitz are higher than Feedburner even with several hundred readers who haven’t resubscribed yet.
What questions do you have about feeds?
Kelly Whalen is the founder of The Centsible Life, a blog where motherhood and money meet. Her goal is to help readers live well on less. Kelly is a mom to 4, and loves that she can stay at home with her kids, and still pursue her passions for writing, personal finance, and social media. You can often find her on twitter and Facebook talking money and motherhood.
