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I’ve had a few queries asking what is going on with my RSS feedcount. As I type this article, my feedcount according to the Feedburner chicklet looks like this -

Yeah, 34,015 readers, not bad considering I was around 6,000 a few days ago, then I jumped to around 17,000 and now it’s doubled that number.

So what’s going on?

As reported in this article where I asked - Will Feedburner Feed Counts Include AWeber Email Subscribers? - the answer is yes, they do.

I had set up my blog blaster (RSS-to-email service) in AWeber a LONG time ago, in fact, before I even used Feedburner and I realized I had my old standard WordPress RSS feed plugged into AWeber, so it wasn’t reporting to Feedburner.

I went into AWeber, switched over to my Feedburner “burned” feed and now my AWeber email subscribers are also included in the feedcount. Here’s how the feedcount breaks down now -

However, something is not quite right with these numbers because I do not have 27,000 AWeber subscribers - not yet anyway. I suspect AWeber and Feedburner haven’t quite got the communication right and no doubt tomorrow or the next day the numbers will settle to a true reflection of reality. I suspect it will fall to around the 22,000 mark, still a nice improvement.

Gobala stated - Aweber/Feedburner Integration is Good News For Marketers - and I have to agree. What will be interesting to see is if some of the Internet marketers out there with email list sizes in the hundreds of thousands begin using Feedburner chicklets on their blogs, thus catapulting them into the top of blog rankings even if the blog itself doesn’t get that much traffic.

Does this mean the Feedcount chicklet will lose its position as the standard measure of blog status, just like PageRank has? I doubt it, people still look to PageRank as a measure of a site’s worth and I suspect Feedburner chicklets will continue to be the social proof tool of choice for blogs, regardless of how accurate a measure it is. Once a standard is adopted, it’s hard to change it.

In the meantime I’m going to go and enjoy the one moment in history where I can pretend I was almost as popular as Darren. Even when the numbers are broken I can’t beat him! (…it’s not a competition Yaro ).

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I just had a great weekend. It was the Australia day public holiday here on Monday so I hosted a traditional Aussie BBQ housewarming party at my place. It was nice to have friends over, eat some good food, play some cards and then head to the park for some running around.

Now of course, it’s back to work!

With the profile of this blog I’m constantly sent reports and e-books to look at and unfortunately nowadays I have little time to read them, but I try to squeeze some in when I can. Today I picked out a few of the best to recommend to you and they are all free!

5x Profits Secrets by Dr Mani

Dr Mani is blogging like crazy on his Money Power Wisdom blog. He knows his stuff, so it’s worth adding his feed to your readers if you are interested in blogging and Internet marketing, the Doc has been in the game for a long time.

Dr Mani is a real doctor and much of his Internet business profits are used to fund heart surgery for under-privileged children in India. That’s a pretty noble cause and one worth supporting.

His new report - 5x Profits Secrets - reveals some of the fundamentals of successful marketing, including:

Read the rest of this entry >>

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Andy Beard reported on his blog that AWeber will begin to report email subscriber numbers to Feedburner.

This triggered a line of thought in me that I hadn’t considered before. Let me tell you why…

I’ve been an AWeber user for ages now and it’s been my RSS-to-email service of choice for forever too. I never used any other RSS-to-email service and it’s been clear to me for a long time that a real email list service is the way to handle anything that has to do with email marketing - it’s a “well duh” situation in my mind.

Why people would use a service that doesn’t focus on deliverability to deliver their RSS-to-email function is beyond me, so yes, I recommend AWeber to you too. You can read my full AWeber review for more about why it is a must-have tool.

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In case you are not on my email list and didn’t receive news about the opportunity to get a copy of Camtasia Studio 3 for free, here are the details.

Note if you want to get news like this as soon as I broadcast about it, you must be on my Blog Tips Email Newsletter.

To join my list, you can opt-in by filling out your details below. Make sure after you sign up that you also confirm your subscription by clicking the link that my system will send you immediately after joining. If you do not do this, you do not get on to my newsletter.

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Blog Tips Newsletter by Yaro Starak

Techsmith are giving away free downloads of their video screen recording software Camtasia. The only catch? It is an older version.

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Hi Yaro,

Students in Blog Mastermind will know the blog case study videos I do, which are real live blog reviews recorded in a screencast video. Members ask me questions about their blog, then I go take a look, record the screen and the audio and offer my advice and tips to improve their blog.

I also do videos occasionally on my blog, for example, check out the video I did back in early 2007 that showed people how I made $6549.52 from blogging in March -

http://blogtraining.cachefly.net/make-money-blogging/

To create these videos and other videos I have released on my blog, I use a program called Camtasia. Camtasia is very easy to use and until recently you had to spend a few hundred dollars to get a copy.

Techsmith, the company the produces Camtasia, are giving away a free copy of the software, but there is a catch - you don’t get the latest version, you get Camtasia Studio 3.1.3.

Camtasia Studio 3.1.3 works great and while obviously it doesn’t have the features of the latest version, it has all of the core functions. You can record and produce videos fine, in fact I used this software for several months before upgrading.

If you want to take advantage of the free offer click here to download your copy of Camtasia Studio 3.1.3 by following these steps -

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Following hot on the heels of the interesting Next Internet Millionaire episode 10 about blogging, comes the penultimate episode (episode 12), where the final two contestants, Charles Trippy (never has a surname been more appropriate for a personality - Charles really is kinda trippy) and Jaime Luchuck, the great Canadian hope, reveal the products they propose to Joel for their joint venture.

On the same episode, Rich Schefren is the feature expert, which made for a compelling watch all round. We get to see Rich talk about attention, then we get to hear what products Charles and Jaime want to release and then finally, the big surprise - Joel decides to back both products and JV with both contestants.

There is still a $25,000 prize on the line and of course the title of winner of The Next Internet Millionaire, but for the contestants, the hope is that their products will sell well enough that $25,000 won’t really seem like all that much. For Joel, he gets to be involved with the release of two products - he’s smart enough to see money in something and back it - so why not do it twice?

What Are The Products?

Here’s what they came up with:

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