I’m not one to fill my blog with less than helpful information for all my great readers but I just had to get this one off my chest…
Feedburner has become what seems like a heavily used feed management tool for many bloggers (and I don’t know if it’s just because I don’t use the premium version) but in my experience it’s got some serious issues…
It misreports my feed count massively on a day to day basis, varying by almost 50% on occasions – I KNOW I don’t lose 50% of my RSS subscribers in one day..
My feed subscription toggles between working and sometimes telling my readers that I don’t have feed email subscription active which I definitely do…
And there is no internal support for it that I can see… I can’t ask anyone in there why this is happening.
Of course the obvious answer is to stop using it if it sucks so much but:
1. It’s a shame because the things it’s ‘supposed’ to do are great and not offered anywhere else that I know of (any suggestions anyone?)
2. I’m wondering if it’s just me having problems or have other people experienced these things too
Anyway, rant over. Let’s all get back to our day 
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Hey Andrew, as I understand it, the fluctuations in the Feedburner subscriber count is normal. Maybe you have mostly RSS Reader subscribers vs. RSS email subscribers? It’s my understanding that the email subscribers diminish the fluctuations. Anyway, you may find this article interesting: http://bloggin-ads.com/how-many-subscribers-do-you-have
(not my blog-BTW-just a good article on the subject).
Oh, and are you using the Feedburner Feedsmith WordPress plugin? It may help with the errors potential subscribers are getting, although I’m not positive about that. If you think it’s worth a shot (I do) then you can grab it here: http://orderedlist.com/articles/feedburner-feedsmith
All the best,
Epiphany
P.S. I’m looking forward to Firepow!!
Hi Andrew,
I’ve been considering leaving feedburner for a few weeks now.
I use it on 4 of my main IM blogs and I have feeds set up in the sidebar of each one to show the latest posts from the other 4, but for 3 of them the feeds are showing errors and have been for a few weeks.
I tried to get hold of them through their “support” but it seems now that they are owned by the BigG they have the same attitude – “Do no support”.
their forum is closed and it’s now a google group. I posted a question 2 weeks ago and have had no reply, so they’re not really giving me a choice.
it’s a shame as I like the integration with AWeber for the “Blog Broadcast” feature”, but at the moment it doesn’t even seem like people can sign up for my feedburner rss feed….
Once I’ve got my house move done I’m going to look at this again and make a decision…
cheers,
Matt Garrett
What is there besides Feedburner?
Sometimes it shows my RSS feed; sometimes it does not.
The current problem is that my latest post has not appeared in on the RSS page when the page does come up. I’ve pinged from Feedburner numerous times and refreshed the page. Still no new post.
RE: Feedburner, I don’t know if this will help and it has been a year and 3 months since you wrote this blog, however Paul Colligan has a product, Premiumcast, which comes with customer service (i.e. somebody actually inside to give you answers) and a bunch of other stuff.
I’m sure you already know this but I don’t like to assume anything, sooooo,
it’s paulcolligan.com.
Also, I just discovered your blog today and I am very impressed. (Almost) everyone on the internet tends to jump around to the most recent “fad”, even most of the so-called Gurus. Your’s is the FIRST blog I have read that doesn’t worship at the Church of Word Press. And I find THAT reassuring.
I am a newbie, relative to actually getting up and running and monetizing, although it has taken me 2 years to get to the almost-ready-to-launch-my-first-site-state. So, I was almost there the other day and then my Word Press site disappeared. It was either hacked into or the host had a system failure and I had been wondering where the delightful surprise was going to come from (you know, the one that’s always spelled “G-dshot”) and then I read your blog.
It was the current one about the new Google Slap and you mentioned that Word Press can get uppity about using too many affiliate links. Well, the intent of the site is to be a recommendation, review, and affiliate site for a niche of products. The topic/niche is Spiritually-based Business, and Soft Sell Marketing and the blog will have lots to do with how to walk with one foot in one’s chosen spiritual practice and the other foot in the real business world.
Since there has always been controversy about whether or not it is possible to succceed in business while caring about the customer and since this is a topic I hold near and dear to my spiritual practice, I decided to make it the focus of my blog on The Spirit Maven Recommends. And the site would feature many different products that support and assist entrepreneurs in conducting spiritually-based business. I would feature 1 product/website per month with the other sites being represented but not featured.
But then I read your blog. And I am heeding your advice. So, I have already built the Word Press blog and I will use it for the “feature of the month”. But I think I will build a regular website for the other products, or perhaps even an individual website for each product.
But the main thing I want to thank you for is telling the truth as you see it.
The Spirit Maven, Arieljoy, is your new fan.