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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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Ok, so the “Ekka” will mean absolutely nothing to most people unless you are from Brisbane. Basically the Ekka is an annual show, full of rides, showbags, entertainment, games - a huge funfair for the whole family, as the saying goes.

It’s really for kids - and I haven’t been since I was a kid - but when I recently purchased home and contents insurance for my new house I was given free tickets to the Ekka (how’s that for cross channel marketing!), so I decided to go.

I’ll be there tomorrow and really I go for two reasons - to see animals (cows are so funny!) and for the cadbury showbag, which is chock-full of…chocolate.

In the meantime I offer you some links I’ve collected over the past few weeks that you might find interesting…

Recommended Links

• I write a lot about the concept of Social Proof and I was recently notified of an interesting post over at the Internet Influence Magic blog that features a case study about how social proof can help you be more attractive to women. I’m not sure if the same proof technique works the other way around though!
• Dennis over at The Beta News blog asked me to show everyone my desktop and also asked about some of the common software programs I use every day.
• It’s pretty clear that the niche of “freelancing” is hugely popular at the moment, as demonstrated by Chris, who recently disclosed his freelance writing income for July 2007 and received quite a bit of attention. I should change my blog’s name to “Freelancer’s Journey” :-).
• Here’s an interesting concept - Sean Aiken is doing a different job each week and video documenting the whole process via a blog. The pilot episode is at a Steam Whistle Brewery in Toronto and he recently finished his second week job at a tattoo parlor.
• Lately I’ve started to feel that we bloggers need to know more about the legal implications of what we publish, both in the articles we release to our blogs and the comments left in response. Anne-Marie Nichols offers a nice concise article with some handy links and discussion about what we need to know about copyright protection for photos and content.
• Ben Cook, who is one of my Blog Mastermind students, is running a competition and he’s giving away what he calls - The Complete Blogging Package - and of course Blog Mastermind membership is one of the prizes.
• I’m participating in Blog Action Day - you might want to as well.
• And last but not least, just in case you didn’t know already, my friend Darren Rowse just launched the new Problogger design featuring all kinds of bells and whistles - even a talking Darren head video once a week!

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