Before I get into my step by step guide on how to setup RSS email delivery for your blog with Aweber, I want to give you a little background on why this topic has been coming up more and more lately. As bloggers, many of us love subscribing to RSS feeds by email and through Google Reader. But as you probably know, the much loved Google Reader is being shutdown July 1, 2013. While this caused a lot of initial panic, it’s not as bad as it sounds as there are many free alternative service providers such as Feedly.

Around the same time the shutdown of Google Reader was announced, a couple changes happened to Feedburner as well, which many blogs use for their RSS feeds. The APIs were shutdown on October 20th, 2012 and AdSense for feeds was discontinued on December 3rd, 2012. While many people started to think Feedburner itself would get totally axed as well, that isn’t the case…at least not in the foreseeable future.

There’s still no need to panic though because if Google ever decides to shutdown Feedburner completely, myself and many experienced people in the blogosphere are confident they will make a formal announcement and give everyone plenty of time to migrate their actual RSS feeds off. So let’s not won’t worry about Feedburner going up in smoke for now.

What many bloggers, myself included, have decided to do in the meantime however, is move our RSS email subscribers off of Feedburner and onto the much more reliable and flexible platform called Aweber. Many bloggers have seen their Feedburner email subscriber counts drop to 0, and while those occurrences may have just been temporary glitches, it created enough of a stir for a lot of us to migrate those email subscribers off of Feedburner to keep them safe and avoid outages.

Why Go With Aweber For RSS Email Delivery?

I like Aweber because I’ve been using it for years for my Untemplater Newsletter. Aweber is easy to use and totally reliable. They have lots of customizable templates and forms that are easy to edit and add to your site even if you don’t have a technical background. And I find it very easy to schedule announcements, blog broadcasts, autoresponders, and manage subscribers.

Aweber also has a great reputation in the blogosphere for their customer service and their strict compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act. They have a no tolerance policy for spammers, which means their existing customers are quality clients and thus the successful delivery of emails is higher. And that means happier subscribers and bloggers. They also have great analytics that help you track how many people opened your emails, what time they read them, and what they clicked on.

So what’s the catch? Well, it’s not free. But as many Yakezie Members will tell you, it’s worth the cost. They also have a tiered pricing system, so you’ll only pay more as your subscriber count grows. And if your subscribers are going up, chances are your blog revenue is rising as well to cover the extra cost.

Currently Aweber offers the first month for only $1, and $19/month there after for up to 500 subscribers and unlimited emails. Tack on another $10 for 501-2500 subscribers, or $30 for 2501-5000 subscribers, etc. There’s no setup fees or contracts so you can cancel at any time, plus they have a 30 day money back guarantee. You can sign up here.

How To Set Up RSS Email Delivery For Your Blog With Aweber

Step 1: Once you’re logged into you Aweber account, click the “Create And Manage Lists” link near the top of the page.

 

Step 2: This will take you to the List Options tab. Click on the green Create A List button.

 

Step 3: Then take several minutes and follow the onscreen prompts about your new list, filling out each section and saving your progress as you go. You will be completing each of the 3 sections below. If you want to make any changes to your list at any time, simply click on any one of the areas indicated below.

Step 4: After your list is created, it’s time to setup a Blog Broadcast to generate the email delivery of your RSS feed. Click on the Blog Broadcasts button under the Messages tab.

Step 5: And then click on the green New Blog Broadcast button.

Step 6: Enter the URL for your blog’s RSS feed in the first box. Then populate what you want the email subject to be. Click on the “Personalize” link to insert code for the date {!date abb+0}, the subscribers name {!name}, and more.

It’s up to you whether or not you want to use a template for the actual body of the email. To keep things simple, you can skip the templates all together and just enter some basic code into the HTML and Plain Text Message boxes. See Step 7 for an example.

Step 7: Here is a sample set of code you can use to pull in the Title of your feed and a link to your site, along with the Title of your latest post and it’s content. I’ve included a table of additional codes and their meaning below if you want to make some alterations for your own blog broadcast.

{!rss_channel_title}
{!rss_channel_link}

{!rss_itemblock}
{!rss_item_title}
{!rss_item_content}
{!rss_itemblockend}

Variable Displays
{!rss_channel_title} Title of Your Feed
{!rss_channel_description} Description of Your Feed
{!rss_channel_link} Link to Your Web Page
{!rss_itemblock} Opens an RSS Item Block
{!rss_itemblockend} Closes an RSS Item Block
{!rss_item_title} Title of Your Post
{!rss_item_date} Date of Your Post
{!rss_item_description} Excerpt/Content From Post
{!rss_item_content} Full Content From Post
{!rss_item_link} Link to Full Post Online

 

Step 8: After you are done with filling out the Message fields, scroll down to the bottom of the page to determine what time you want your RSS emails to be delivered, how often, whether you want them to be automatic (I highly recommend you make them automatic to save yourself time), and a few other options. Click save and your RSS is all set for email delivery. Aweber gives you the option to run a test if you choose as well once you’re back on the main Blog Broadcast screen.

Step 9: If you haven’t already, create a Sign Up Form for your RSS Email feed list and place it on your blog. When new readers visit your site, they will fill out your form, confirm their subscription with a link Aweber will send to their inbox, receive a thank you message or autoresponder if you set one up, and then will get their first RSS email delivery to their inbox on the next scheduled run.

Are you currently using Feedburner for your RSS email delivery? If so there are several additional steps you’ll need to take in order to move your existing email list out of Feedburner and over to Aweber, and then disable the email delivery and sign up functionality on Feedburner. Read my step by step guide on How To Migrate Feedburner Email Subscribers To Aweber for instructions.

Step 10: You can also create a page on your blog dedicated to subscription sign ups such as your RSS email delivery, a link for RSS reader sign ups, and newsletters.

 Check out the new Yakezie Subscribe page and sign up to receive Yakezie email alerts.

Notes: If you have a blog broadcast scheduled for a specific time each day and make some edits to a post that’s already published on your site, but hasn’t gone out via Aweber’s blog broadcast email delivery yet – you will need to make those edits in the body of the Aweber email. Aweber currently don’t have an automatic refresh functionality so it only checks your actual RSS feed once and that’s what it puts in the email draft before it’s scheduled delivery. They have this on their list of developments so hopefully they will improve on this.

Looking to learn how to start your own profitable website? Check out my step-by-step guide on how to start a blog. It’s one of the best things I did in 2009 to help earn extra money and break free from Corporate America!

Updated for 2017 and beyond.