Feedburner and your subscribers

Since I posted last week on the Blogger Statistics and you're already in that mindset, I thought I'd continue this week with a post on Feedburner.

If you don't have any subscribers, this post won't make any sense. But you NEED subscribers, so hurry up and add the "Follow By Email" gadget! If you'd like a step-by-step how-to, check out my post Let Your Friends Subscribe.

Let me just say that I find Feedburner confusing and a bit cumbersome, so this post will be fairly short and sweet. Welcome to the wonderful world of Feedburner.

Go to www.feedburner.com and sign in just as you would with Blogger. (Feedburner is a Google product.) Click on your blog title and the Analyze page will come up.

This shows stats for a certain date, and shows the number of subscribers you currently have.

Introducing - the NEW Blogger Interface

Have you switched to the new Blogger interface yet? If you're using this menu -

you're not. But never fear - the new one is easy once you walk through the features! Just above the Language icon, click Try the updated Blogger interface.

Design & Posting Considerations

Everyone wants traffic on their blog. What are some things to think about for your followers?

Design:
Visual appeal is important for bloggers. "Busy" templates and gadget placement might be something you enjoy seeing, but your viewers can get bogged down by too much material.

Ask some of your friends for their opinions, especially fellow bloggers and friends who follow blogs. Stalk some other blog sites and think about what you like about it, but also what you don't like.

Can you find the author without scrolling to the bottom of the page? Are their pages descriptive and easy to navigate? Are the fonts easy to read? Is there a lot of extraneous stuff cluttering up the sidebar?