These 2 topics tend to confuse people the most.  Not knowing the difference between when people subscribe via rss (which is done through feedburner) or to their Newsletter.

Essentially, these are 2 different databases and are entirely seperate from each other and would require 2 separate subscription forms.

RSS Email Subscribers:

If someone is subscribed to your blog via rss, they will receive emails every time you do a new blog post.  The covers your entire blog, so no matter what category you put a post in, they will receive this update in their inbox.  In some cases that can be different, but in the majority of all cases, this will cover the entire blog.

Newsletter Subscribers:

This is when readers/clients subscribe to your newsletter client.  This is usually done through companies like Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, or YMLP.  When someone subscribes this way, they will only get a newsletter that you specifically send out to your subscribers.  This has to manually done within your newsletter client.

Well, can people who subscribe via rss also be subscribed to the newsletter?

Yes and No!  No, in they can not just complete 1 form and be subscribed to both.  They would need to specifically enter their emails in 2 separate subscription forms to be subscribed to both.  However, you can access the emails for your subscribers via rss in your feedburner account and manually enter them in your newsletter client.

How do I access the emails from my RSS subscribers?

Login to your feedburner account.
Click on the feed that has all your subscribers.
Go to Publicize.
Select Email Subscriptions.
Select “View Subscriber Details” (at the bottom of the page)
This will then drop down and show you all your subscribers email addresses.

I don’t have email subscribers to my rss feed. How can I get some?

Follow the same steps above, but after you click Email Subscriptions, you will need to hit Activate to turn this feature on.
Then you’ll copy and paste the “Subscription Form Code” into a widget in your blog for readers to begin subscribing.

Have a question on this that I didn’t cover? Leave it in the comments and I’ll come back to add it!

Want to add an etsy widget to your blog to automatically feed the items you mark as favorites?  Well, if you are like me, and love handmade stuff, you do.  So here’s how:

Login to your etsy account.  If you don’t have an account, sign up.  It’s free and you don’t have to sell anything

Once logged in, click Your Account at the top.

Then click Etsy Mini on the left hand side.

Select the options to suite your needs.

Copy and paste the code into a text (wordpress) or html (blogger) widget.

Save… and you’re all set!

If you are like me, you probably have lots of blogs you keep up with on your reader.  But how in the world do you possibly keep up with it all?  I use an app on my iphone to stay up to date.  Most people who read this blog, are probably busy moms, who blog or own a business.  So your time at the computer is normally your most productive time working while the other time is spent with family, children, cooking, cleaning, and the list can go on and on.

What I do is subscribe to all my rss feeds using my google reader.  Then with my iphone, I have an app called NetNewsWire that will automically pull all my feeds from google, and update them accordingly.  So at night when I’m getting ready for bed, waiting for water to boil in the kitchen, or just simply have a moment of peace and quite, I open this app and it will update my feeds and I catch up real quick.

NetNewsWire also has a desktop application that you can download, if you have a Mac, that is great too!  I don’t personally use this, but I’ve tested it out and works great!

How do you keep up with it all?

That title is pretty funny. But it’s so true. If it weren’t for being able to schedule posts, there would simply never be posts here. During the week, I’m generally consumed with completing all my design projects, family, etc to even think about blogging. So I like to gather a bunch of blog posts at one time, schedule them for 1 a day, and let them go! Easy! And content is here when I’m not. How’s that for productive

So, for those of you who are avid bloggers and don’t use this,  umm, I highly recommend it.

Don’t know how to schedule a post?  Where have you been?  Just kiddin’.  Here’s how:

In Worpdress:

When creating a new posts, you will see on the right hand side “Publish: Immediately”  Then next to that, you can click on Edit.  Click that and put in when you’d like it to post.

In Blogger:

When creating a new posts, down at the bottom where you insert your labels, you will see a link for Post Options.  You can then fill in the blanks for when you want your blog post to actually posts.

But then, you just have to remember when they are going to post.  Like this posts I’m writing currently will posts on Thursday.  Happy Thursday!

ETA: Wow! I’m surprised there are lots of people who didn’t know about this! I’ve had several people email saying “Thank you so much!”. So glad I was able to bring this to light, because it’s so very helpful!

This is by far my number 1 most asked question from people moving their blogs from Blogger to WP. So I thought I’d answer it here for you Aren’t I nice?

Let me first start by saying, that in order to move your followers widget from Blogger over to WP, your blogger blog must have been on your own domain. If you were still using the blogspot address for your blogger blog, all your followers are subscribed under that url. And when moving to wordpress, your url will change.

Soo.. with that said, you will need to do a few things:

Go get this plugin.
Install this plugin with the instructions from this post.
Activate the plugin.
Then to go Appearance>Widgets>Add the Google Friend Connect Widget wherever you’d like it to go.

Then login to your blogger account.
Then go here.
Once in your Google Friend Connect account, find the feed where you see the number of followers you have.
Select ” Add the Member’s Gadget”.
Skip to step 3 and hit “Generate Code”
Once the code pops up, scroll all the way to the bottom. You will see code that looks like this:

{ id: ‘div-0000000000000000000′,
site: ’00000000000000000000′ },

Instead of all those 0′s you will see your special numbers for your account. You need to copy the entire number, not including the ‘, after site: .
Then go paste that code into the widget from above where you ask you for your id code.

You should be set after that!

Need help? Contact me for a quote.

There are lots of Analytic sites out there to help you keep track of the traffic that comes to your blog or your website. Google Analytics is a really popular one, and lots of people use Sitemeter, just to see the actual numbers. I personally use Woopra, and it has been my favorite by far! Once you sign up for an account, you can download their desktop application and track everything from there. You can even see live traffic, and see exactly what people are clicking on as they click. You can even start a conversation with your viewers. I don’t use that feature at all, as I don’t want to scare the heck out of the people viewing. But hey, some bloggers may like that feature!

Woopra is very simple to install on your blog or website actually. They provide you with a snippet of html code to place on your site or in your blogger code to track the clicks into your site. If you have a wordpress blog, you can even install the Woopra plugin, and you are good to go!

If you currently have no analytic tracker on your site or blog, I highly recommend getting one. It’s completely free and very easy to do. And this is a great way to see what pages are being used, which are not, and how your site is functioning for your readers/customers. This will help guide you in future designs and how to further organize your site.

It seems that everyone is officially making the move to wordpress lately.  With that, comes a lot of questions on how to start setting everything up within the dashboard of wordpress.  WordPress is very similar to Blogger in some ways, but different in others.

Here is a quick reference guide on setting everything up within your new blog:

To set up your categories :

Click the little arrow next to Posts
Select Categories
You will see all your categories on the right.  Hover over them to hit edit or delete.

To put a category as a drop down:  (it depends on your theme/design if this option is available.)

(example:  You want Deals on the Main Navigation.  But when you hover over deals, you want Target to drop down)

Follow the instructions above to get to your categories.
If you don’t have a category titled Deals, create one.
Then edit Target and where it says Parent Category, select Deals.
This will then put Target under Deals.
Continue this until you have everything you want under that dropdown.

To add your widgets:

Click the arrow next to appearance.
Select Widgets.
You can simply drag and drop widgets on this screen into the space you want them.

To add images to your widgets.

Drag a text widget into the space you want.

Paste the following code:

<a target=”_blank” href=”http://THE URL LINK HERE.com”><img src=”http://THE IMAGE LINK HERE.com”></a>

You will then replace the capital letters above with your own information.

To get the Image link code:

Click the arrow next to Media.
Select Add new
Upload the image you want.
Hit File Url.
Copy the code it produces.
Paste it into the space in the code above.

How to add a page:

Click the arrow next to Pages.

Select Add New.