Setting Up Email Subscriptions in Blogger.com

For those that are using Blogger.com by Google, follow this guide to add an email subscription option, which apparently is not part of the default gadgets in the blog template.

I set my blog up last month and thought I had email subscriptions set up. There were two links on the right-hand side under "Subscribe To", one for comments and one for posts.

Awesome! With so much that I was thinking about when setting up the new blog, not the least of which as "what the heck am I going to write about?" it was great not to have to worry about that.

So I'm going along, posting and my stats are slowly climbing, good good good! But wait? WTH? Only one subscriber? Is no one interested in getting updates or seeing comments? So I started poking around and actually clicked on my Subscribe To links:

Netvibes, Newsgater, My Yahoo and Atom? (Oh my!) What is this, Google? Where is the email subscription? I'm in Information Technology by day, author by night--yes, I have a cape--and other than My Yahoo, I have no clue what the other links are for, plus, I've used Yahoo for years but never go beyond it's email functionality.

Okay, enough griping about my lack of keeping up with modern social media technologies. How do we add an email subscription option?

When you signed up for your Blogger.com account you automatically got a FeedBurner account. This is the technology that is used to send out email alerts. So open a browser and go to www.feedburner.com and enter your Gmail credentials, these will be the same ones you use to log on to Blogger.com.

So you open it up and it lists your blog. Since I'm using mine as an example here is what I get:

First thing to note, I have 2 subscribers yet the number is listed as 0. Whaaat??? It's low but not that low! Well, my friend Google search told me there is a known bug, and this value almost always says 0. Okay, I can deal with that. So, continuing, click on your blog link, see the sloppy circle in the image above.

Since my blog is new, the first couple of tab are all useless giving me the notice about the people at FeedBurner playing with bubble wrap. Click the Publicize link, this is where the meat of what you need lives.

Here is the menu you get. Click the Email Subscriptions link--almost there, I swear!

Here is what you need. Highlight everything in the scroll box and copy (control-c or right-click and choose copy).
So close now!

Okay, go back to your blog and open it in template view, and add a new HTML/Java script gadget, putting it where ever you want it. Edit the new gadget and paste this in the script box and save it.

Here I am assuming you know how to add a gadget and if you don't, check out their help page. If you really really really are having trouble ping me and I can write up instructions for that too.

That's it! You're done!!!

Your new subscription should look like this:

Yay!!! Update your blog and you are good to go!

Now, here is a really great idea. Sign up for your own blog. Yes, I said that. "But I KNOW what I wrote and I read my own blog! I'm its biggest fan!" Yes, that is true, however knowing what your potential subscribers are getting can be very helpful. If the format is botched, or the graphics are mucked, or if the emails don't come out at all, you should know about it.

Okay, what about that pesky 0 subscribers? How do you know how many you've got?

So a little further down on that same FeedBurner page where you got the HTML for the gadget, scroll down. Not only does it list the number of subscribers, but it gives you their emails, allows you to export a file of the addresses, so on.

Once you know where to look, it's not hard, but like anything, you have to know what rocks to turn over.

Cheers!