Send your posts out by email

Some of us don't have time or the inclination to hunt down our fave blogs every day or every few days or to open up our RSS readers. So we miss a lot of posts.

You can make sure this doesn't happen to your blog posts by offering them by email. The reader signs up and every day or every week or however often they choose they will get a nice little newsletter in their email box, with your latest posts in it. Best of all, once you set up your blog to offer this choice, you're done.

One site that provides this service is FeedBlitz. FeedBlitz offers both paid and free options. Here's how it works:

Go to the page above. Scroll down to the "personal edition" option to sign on to the free option. When you click on the link in that paragraph you will go to a page that asks you to log in. It doesn't take long to set up an account. Once you are logged in you can get to your "dashboard".

FeedBlitz, understandably, wants you to go for the premium (paid) options. You may well find a reason to use this service eventually but for now let's stick to free. You will find that you have to be focused and keep aiming at "personal edition", avoiding the other bright and shiny buttons. Choose "personal edition center".

When you get to the center choose "create a new publication". Enter the URL of your blog. You won't need to enter the login info unless your blog is password-protected. Click "next".

Again, you are faced with premium options. Hunt for the "free" button and click that.

You then obtain the code for the subscription form. It's a simple form, just asks the reader to enter her email address and click "subscribe me!" You just copy and paste it into an appropriate part of your blog. If you can't use the form (as in livejournal accounts) you can simply use one of the links offered below. Once you have installed a link or form on your blog you are done.

If you want to be, that is. FeedBlitz offers several choices for delivery that you can go through to customize subscriptions (scroll down that form page to see the instructions). It also offers a widget that you can install in your blog that tells how many subscribers you have.

Easy, fun, and free. If you want to take it farther FeedBlitz certainly can help you. For most of us, though, the free options are plenty.