ON NAVIGATING THE FEEDBURNER SERVICE

SELF SERVICE

(Update:  Problem solved thanks to comments and emails by several folks, including several folks from Feedburner.  Thanks very much all.)

I've been a subscriber to Feedburner's services since it's early days, and like many others, am pleased to see the company being acquired by Google this week.  I've long used Feedburner as the primary way for readers to subscribe to my blog via email and RSS feeds.

Like other well wishers, I congratulate Google, the Feedburner team, and it's investors in this outcome.

The company's services have long had a 'Feed and Forget" characteristic which has been laudable.  Both their primary feed service, and email subscription services were relatively easy to set up for my blog, and have worked well for my subscribers and me.

Today, for the first time though, I got a direct email from an email subscriber to my blog, asking me to remove them from the email subscription list.

I immediately tried to oblige, but realized quickly that I had no idea how to do that. 

So I went to the Feedburner site, and logged into my account for the first time in months.  I then spent close to 45 minutes trying to figure out where in the service I could manually unsubscribe a particular email subscriber at their request.

And I failed miserably at trying to find a way.

My account page on Feedburner seems to offer no obvious way for me to access my email list and/or perform any maintenance on the list.  There likely is a way, and I'm just too dense to notice it and/or figure it out.

In the meantime, I replied back to the person who requested that they be unsubscribed, with a lame reply. 

Basically, I asked them to see if there was an "Unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the email they get daily in their email feed for me.  Or try replying directly to that email with the word"Unsubscribe".

Hopefully that works.  But it is not a good feeling being unable to help someone directly with this reasonable and straightforward request.

I'll spend some more time on my Feedburner account to figure out what I may have missed. 

If any reader has an idea or a suggestion, please leave me a comment, or email me directly. 

Thanks.

Comments

[Brad Feld]

There is an unsubscribe link in the footer of every email that goes out. However, you (the feed owner) can delete a subscriber also.

- Login - chose the appropriate feed (if you have more than one)
- Click the Publicize tab (on the horizontal tab bar)
- Click the Email Subscriptions option (on the vertical option menu)
- Scroll down and click on View Subscriber Details
- Click the "X" next to the person that wants to be deleted

[Dick Costolo]

Hi Michael,

As Brad points out, email management is all encapsulated within the email service on the publicize tab. There are 'tabs withint the tabs' there which is tough since that's the only place in FeedBurner we use that navigation metaphor, but Brad's notes above are right on the money. Next time feel free to shoot us a note if you can't track something down, and we'll get right back to you. Good to know about this as it shouldn't require prior knowlege to figure out where to manage this.

[Michael]

Thanks Brad, Dick and others for your comments and direct emails on finding the right place to manage the list.

Have managed to unsubscribe one as reader as requested.

Really appreciate the timely responses, everybody.

michael