Feedblitz turns your blog into an email newsletter, by grabbing each blog post and sending it out to your subscriber list as an email.
Everyone following my foray into FeedBlitz, here are the basic steps in setting up a new newsletter:
After creating your account, go to My Account, My Dashboard

Under Newsletter Center, click Set up a newsletter

Under Article creation, select Automatically, from an RSS feed or blog.

Enter the URL or your Bog. (Yes FeedBlitz works with Active Rain -- the URL of your Active Rain Blog looks something like this http://activerain.com/blogs/cheryljns )

Most blogs automatically generate RSS feeds. FeedBlitz will ask whether you want to use the Atom, RSS1 or RSS2 feed to create your newsletter. Click on the View (binoculars) icon to see a sample of each feed. Click on the words "Atom" or "RSS" to select that version of the feed.

Here is what the sample subscription looks like for my NELA Live blog with the ATOM feed. (By the way, my RSS feed looks the same.)

FeedBlitz will then walk you through about 10 different set-up screens. FeedBlitz will work just fine even if you leave all of these blank, or just accept the defaults. One setting that was important for me: I choose Express Delivery... The email is sent out as soon as I publish the blog post:

When the set-up is complete, FeedBlitz will take you to the Summary page. Click Add subscription forms to your site to grab the HTML to copy and paste into your blog.

Drag over the HTML code to select it. Hit Edit -> Copy. Now you are ready to Paste the code into your blog or website. The finished Widget (with a tiny bit of tweaking) looks like this:

The email newsletter received by your subscribers looks like this:

THIS ARTICLE IS ALSO AVAILABLE AT DABLOGMOTHER.COM



Carole, this is my project for a Sunday afternoon. What a wonderful person you are, to share helpful stuff for people you've never met! Active Rain is blessed to have you as a member.
Sincerely,
Mike in Tucson
Hi Cheryl,
Saw your post on Feedblitz - thanks so much for the how to.
Since you have been using it for a while now, are you still have with it? I am thinking about switching over to Feedblitz for my non-ActiveRain blog.
Thanks, Casey