"Gobble, Gobble" is the sound of impending doom

Chuck eats spam.

While poking through the Blogger support forums, I came across a section labeled "something is broken." Because I'm rather new to blogger (not to the world of blogging), I wanted to investigate any possible issues that might roll in my direction based upon the experiences and frustrations of other people. And it is at this point that I found a few threads that more or less described how blogger's spam algorithm locked users out from their blogs, citing a violation of posting policies as the chief reason. "Oh, my." I thought. "I'd better learn what people were complaining about in order to avoid the same mistake."

Blogger's Terms of Service does not necessarily detail all the information needed to avoid having a blog flagged for spam. Accident or not, mistake or not, doing it in full ignorance or with full self-awareness, users who have their blog flagged for spam end up in the same place: locked out of their blogs. There is, of course, an appeal process for false positive spam identification on blogs. But what a pain.

What are Spam Blogs?

As with many powerful tools, blogging services can be both used and abused. The ease of creating and updating webpages with Blogger has made it particularly prone to a form of behavior known as link spamming. Blogs engaged in this behavior are called spam blogs, and can be recognized by their irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text, along with a large number of links, usually all pointing to a single site.

Spam blogs cause various problems, beyond simply wasting a few seconds of your time when you happen to come across one. They can clog up search engines, making it difficult to find real content on the subjects that interest you. They may scrape content from other sites on the web, using other people's writing to make it look as though they have useful information of their own. And if an automated system is creating spam posts at an extremely high rate, it can impact the speed and quality of the service for other, legitimate users.

As I mentioned earlier, I found some information on the help forum about the criteria used to determine if a particular blogger blog is a spam blog from one of the blogger support staff members.

Blog Banning Criteria

• Affiliate marketing.
• Content created with scripts and programs, rather than by hand.
• Content scraped from other blogs / websites.
• Copyright Infringement.
• Large blogs with multiple, unfocused / unrelated subjects.
• Links to Illegal Downloads / Streaming / Torrents.- Content or links referencing referral-based activities such as GPT, MMH ("Make Money from Home"), MMF ("Make Money Fast"), MLM ("Multi-Level Marketing"), PTC, or PTS.

Affiliate Marketing

OMG. I need to quote something that Chuck said in one of his comments that made the hair rise on the back of my neck:

Chuck said...
You can post as many affiliate links as you wish, in your blog. But any more than 0 makes the blog possibly liable for spam classification.
The best decision would be to not post any affiliate links.

Now, blogger makes available adsense widgets and amazon widgets. To use blogger's amazon widget means that affiliate links are generated. But here we read that any affiliate links above "0" might classify the blog as spam. Mind-blowing. It's as if a blogger staff member is actually discouraging the usage of affiliate links, which blogger itself provides through widgets!

Now I understand that Google wants to nuke auto-generated content blogs, content scraper blogs, copyright infringement blogs, and perhaps even the "large blogs with unfocused and unrelated subjects" -- although this particular one sounds a little more "subjective" rather than "objective" to me. But then again, isn't objectivity just a standardized subjectivity? And I'm totally on board with banning linking to illegal stuff.

What I don't agree with 100% is "Content or links referencing referral-based activities such as GPT, MMH ("Make Money from Home")". Now the reason is simple (and is in my personal self-interest of course)! Some of the original content I produce is labeled as money-making; heck! This entire blog can be seen as being in the "money-making" blog niche. But how I advise people to make money is through blogging unique, useful, relevant, and focused content. Yeah, you can make money from home (even with blogger) if you write in such a manner that respects Google's (Blogger's) terms of service for Adsense. But the manner in which the rules are written make it seem like I'm a total slime-ball if I encourage people to make money with being passionate about blogging.

Look, clamp down on the spammers. I hate spammers. I hate comment spam. But let's be a little more forgiving and soft towards those blog authors who produce unique content and encourage people to take up the blogging passion. If money can be made from from through blogging useful material -- why not?

How to neglect your blog's potential

Your blog has potential to make money. Regardless of how little content or how much content exists on your blog at the present time, and regardless of whether or not you've been neglecting your blog up until now, you have the potential to turn it all around. Now. However, if your goal is to continue neglecting your blog's potential or if your goal is to become another story of online financial failure, then all you have to do is nothing and let your blogging adventure gather more dust.

I can't tell the number of neglected blogs I come across on Blogspot alone! Many of them appear abandoned because fresh content hasn't been posted for months or years. Many of them look unprofessional in terms of their layout, use of colors, and placement of ads. Most of them do not place ads of any kind at all! It's no small wonder that people see no financial rewards from doing something (blogging) that they're doing already. I understand that many of you might be skeptical of what I am saying here. Perhaps a small number of you will even disbelieve me -- flat out. "Ok." I respond. "Here's evidence."

At the top of each blogspot blog, unless otherwise disabled through template modification, will be a site stripe. Within that site stripe will be several links (Follow, Share, Report Abuse, and Next Blog). My personal favorite is clicking on the Next Blog button. Clicking on that button will reveal precisely what I am talking about here within the content of this particular blog entry: blogs who neglect their own potential. You'll see blogs about church, family, and hobbies. There will be blogs about creative writing, photography, and artistic expression. And you'll come across blogs about cooking, vacation, and sight seeing. For the most part, you will be exposed to a wide array of blogs that cover an even wider array of material -- from the birth of a child to instructions on how to sew.

Searching Google for Why Blogs Fail reveals several things that most Blogspot blogs are practicing. Among them are:

1. Lack of Content Identity
2. Lack of Passion
3. Lack of Perseverance

Lack of Content Identity

Lack of content means that there are little to no words, sentences, and paragraphs on the blog. Blogs that are used as online photo sharing sites (think about all those blogs that you saw that featured pictures of babies and children), and blogs who main content is the republication of Youtube videos are doom to fail -- why? Not only is there nothing substantial to read in order to capture the attention and the imagination of the reader, but there is also nothing that the search engines can index. It boils down to this: when you visit a search engine, you search for words, phrases, sentences, and names. When your blog lacks content, the search engine cannot associate the content of what you're blog is about with particular keyword or keyphrases.

Therefore, if you're blogging about food and recipes, then it is imperative that the words "food" and "recipe" are used throughout your content. If your blog is about parenting skills, then it is important to use those keywords throughout your content. 

Lack of Passion

Blogging done for the sake of pure profit will eventually run out of steam. This is because talking about "making money" with each blog post will run out of novelty. You can only recommended a limited number of way of making money online. However, when making money is the secondary benefit to an overall creative process, then it becomes more real. In other words, by "making money" subordinate to "expressing passion through the written word," "making money" becomes more of a reality than if making money was the sole intent and purpose of blogging. (Therefore, it helps to be passionate about making money!)

Humans are creatures of passion and intrigue. We like reading stories about good guys vs. bad guys, seeing someone overcome impossible odds, or accepting choice and mortality. Money and profit are a means to an end; that is to say that money and profit come secondary. When a person has a passion for what they write, the passion can become infectious and inspirational to others. People are attracted to passionate writing -- this means that writing passionately will create more organic search engine traffic.

Lack of Perseverance

Giving up is easy. You might feel that there are hundreds of blogs who share your same topic of interest, or you might cite the fact that your new blog has no readers, no subscribers, and is generating no income. You might believe that you're wasting your time. However, "immediate" gratification has no place when it comes to blogging. It takes time (weeks, months) to build up a readership. Most people make the mistake of abandoning their blog because the amount of energy put into content creation does not equal some pre-conceived notion of how much money it should generate or how many followers it has. 

Lack of perseverance means that the motivation for creating the blog in the first place WAS NOT to express the passion of the blog author -- it was for some other reason. And when that "other reason" runs its course, nothing is left -- not even passion. 

Leave a comment below after you've seen several blogs through the Next Blog button. I'm curious to know what you found and whether your findings confirm or refute my opinion that most blogs on blogspot are not taking advantage of their full potential.

Auto-posting is a slow death to your blog

Nothing poisons a blog like auto blogging.

Auto blogging is the practice of using a script to publish the works of others for personal benefit, e.g., monetize mashed up content with Adsense, Amazon, or Prosperent. Auto blogging means that the results of the scraping process are stored in a database and are served as blog posts. Discussion in the comments may or may not occur, but the point of the matter is that auto blogging means that no original content was written or created. Rather, other people or news sources have generated the content and it is being republished with or without the expressed permission of the original content author.

Google hates this. Google punishes this.

Scraped content: Some webmasters make use of content taken from other, more reputable sites on the assumption that increasing the volume of web pages with random, irrelevant content is a good long-term strategy. Purely scraped content, even from high-quality sources, may not provide any added value to your users without additional useful services or content provided by your site. It's worthwhile to take the time to create original content that sets your site apart. This will keep your visitors coming back and will provide useful search results.

Translation from Google: "We know about auto blogging. We will blast your domain from the search results if you do it."  Now, before Google took such harsh action against auto blogging, people were making real money doing it. I had a buddy who was making $500.00 per month from Google's Adsense and another $500.00 from Amazon. (He was getting about 1,000 unique hits per day.) He would be contacted from his blog's contact form and would be sent products in the mail in order that he would write up a review for them. Now, he wasn't using an awesome template or anything. He was just scraping articles from articlesbase.com and was publishing content from Amazon's API along with Youtube videos here and there. For some reason, Google loved his domain and content, ranked him well in the search engine results, and the traffic flowed. And with traffic came real money.

Now all that's gone. While Google takes into account dozens, if not hundreds, of unique factors when calculating the "worth" of a page on the internet, scraped content seems to always count against the over all relevance of a page. Time and time again, Google recommends creating unique content. Google tells us to create useful websites, and even suggests that republishing content in small amounts is okay, so long as there are "additional useful services or content provided." This means that there must be a degree of original content on each page for Google to find worth and value in that particular page.

Now as I have said before, blogging is about the easiest way of creating unique content. The reason is simple: nothing is more unique than you and your perspective on things. Writing interesting pieces of information, offering advice, posting criticism, sharing poetry and short stories, talking about a foreign place or food, or even discussing your pet's latest escapades can be possible topics for original content. Google wants it -- lots of it. And if you do a good job of creating content, Google won't ban your domain from the search engine results page -- which means that you stand a nice chance of getting organic traffic. Organic traffic translates into real freaking money, folks. This is why even if you have the simplest blog, you should add some kind of monetization of it.

My evidence of this is Google itself. Google offers the blogger service for free, and it provides content publishers (blog authors) the built-in tools to freaking monetize their blog. Google wants you to monetize your blog, folks. Now, you can do that by blending in adsense with your blog's content. You can also do that by blogging about products found on Amazon or on Prosperent. The sky is the limit; actually no. That's wrong.

You are your own limit. :)

Product Review Breville BOV800XL The Smart Oven 1800-Watt Convection Toaster Oven with Element IQ

Breville BOV800XL: The Smart Convection Toaster Oven Product Review

The overwhelming consensus from people who purchase this item is that the The Breville Smart Convection Toaster Oven ranks 5 out of 5 stars for numerous reasons including practical function and design aesthetics. This product is not only a great toaster but it is also an easy-to-use convection oven. Gone are the days when a traditional standard sized oven needed to preheat for several minutes for the purpose of cooking a few cookies. Making a few cookies at a time with the Breville convection oven is more economical in terms of overall energy usage when compared to what's needed to fuel a conventional oven. In addition, cook times are reduced because the interior volume of the Breville is less than that of a traditional oven. It takes less fuel and less time to achieve cooking temperatures.

Read more about the Breville BOV800XL Oven on Amazon. 

The interior of the oven has 0.8 cubic feet of space, accommodating the included 12"x12" enamel baking pan. This smaller interior space means that it takes less energy and less time for the oven to reach its programmed cooking temperature. But don't let the sound of 0.8 cubic feet fool you: it is possible to roast an entire whole chicken inside this oven! In addition, the automatic cooking timer can be set for up to two hours allowing for more diverse items to be cooked. Also, many people claim that this oven is very easy to clean and that the oven's handle stays surprising cool to the touch even after vigorous use.

Frozen pizzas and frozen dinners taste better because they are cooked better; toast is browned on both sides, and baked potatoes are a breeze. Corn dogs are awesome! Cookies seem to have that "store bought" feeling to them, and no one can resist a house that smells like fresh baked cookies for family and friends. Reheating left-overs in this oven, especially cold slices of pizza, makes the food taste better than if it were reheated in a microwave oven.

Some people have suggested that the exterior of this oven gets a little hot while in use. Of course this is the case -- it IS an oven after all! :) However, despite the fact that the Breville Convection Oven takes less counter space than its competitors, it is still recommended that the area around this appliance be kept clean and clear from items that might come into contact with its exterior. If you're considering purchasing a toaster oven, look no further than the Breville Convection Oven for its longevity and over all customer satisfaction!

Make money writing product reviews in 8 steps

Here's a money-making formula for those curious enough to read this blog. I discovered this information on the Warrior Foum in a the thread titled, "Amazon Affiliates - Are You Seriously Making Money?" and found the idea of this method sound enough to integrate with this blog.

1. Join the Amazon Affiliate Program.
2. Join the Prosperent Affiliate Program.
3. Pick an Amazon Bestseller that costs around $150. Here's the HTML landing page containing all of  Amazon's bestsellers.
4. Find a handful of existing product reviews that are 4+ stars. Copy the content from each review to your favorite text editor.
5. Rewrite the product review of the item using your own words and unique presentation style. Do not plagiarize. B-e  u-n-i-q-u-e. The length of the review should be at least 500 words. 1000 words would be better. Take your cue of your unique review from the existing reviews of others. Make sure everything is in your own words!
6. Create a new blog post with the title of "Product Name Review" or "Reviewing Product Name" or something similar. Ensure that you use the word "Review" and the product's name in the post of your blog entry.
7. Use a text link linking to Amazon in the upper right hand corner of the content body of the review as well as in the first top-half of the screen. The URL of the link can be something like this: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/%1/0009-20, where "%1" is Amazon's product identification code, e.g., B004JKMQK4, and where "0009-20" is your affiliate ID. The anchor text of this link should reflect the title of the blog, e.g., "crocs Crocband Clog Review".
8. Add a Performance Ad from Prosperent; this ad will reflect the content of your review and will be about "crocs CrocBand Clog" for this particular example.

• For an example review, consider reading: Product Review Breville BOV800XL The Smart Oven 1800-Watt Convection Toaster Oven with Element IQ.

Rationale

• We're using two affiliate networks which feature similar items for sale. If a reader follows the banner ad from Prosperent and the Amazon link, they will have two affiliate cookies in use, each of which has the potential for a sale. 
• We're rewriting reviews using our own words while using the work that others have done as a point of departure. Search engines love unique content and we're giving it to them!
• We're not talking about the ethics of this method here; the bottom line is that we're talking about making money online. We're talking about making money with Amazon. We're talking about making money writing product reviews.
• The holiday shopping seasons is around the corner, so get writing! :)

Please post your success stories here.

Breaking through blogger's block: a practical guide

I mentioned in an earlier entry that "content is king" (Help with Ads on Blogspot) and that the search engines have a limitless appetite for devouring unique and helpful content. Search engines are computer programs in essence, and cannot gauge the usefulness of an article in terms of abstracting or practical thinking in the human sense of understanding. However, search engines can monitor network traffic to a particular article or another piece of data on a site. And the search engine's programmer can make an association between aggregate network traffic and perceived content usefulness. In other words, a programmer can associate content usefulness with over all traffic patterns. The more useful that content seems to be, the more traffic from humans that it will bring. Following this line of logic, if the traffic from search engine requests and human searches remain steady over time, then the content's value increases as well in the search engine's algorithm.

People will read things that they find useful, and will discard or ignore things that are not useful. The best content will provide a unique insight into a phenomenon that remains unique despite the passage of time. There is no need to publish only when the content meets the criteria of being the best, most universal, most insightful, and most profound. If this were the case, nothing would ever be published! Rather than worrying whether or not certain content meets some abstract quality threshold, I recommend that writing take the form of the author's unique perspective and understanding about the workings of the world around him or her. Don't fret that you're writing content about a popular subject area. Unique about what you're bringing to the table is your particular point of view about the popular subject area.

Content from the point of view of the author will always be unique simply because "there can be only one" author. (Did you catch my Highlander reference?) Topics can be controversial, pensive, reflective, technical, insightful, or anything else within the scope of imagination -- so long as the content embodies the "presence" of the author, it will be unique. Content can tell a story, illustrate a particular technical objective, or it can be written to entertain. It doesn't matter. The search engines love unique content, and they'll stop at nothing to index it.

If you've hit a wall when it comes to generating unique content, there are a few things you can do (aside from remembering what I've mentioned earlier). The first thing you can do is search Google: that's right. Do a search about your present topic and see what others have written about it. You can at this point write a better article that has more detail in it, or you can write an article that is critical about what someone else has written, or you can write an article that compliments with and blends in with the ideas expressed by others. In each case, you're bringing your own unique perspective to the topic at hand, and your starting point is based upon the information provided from others first. All you're doing here is building upon what work has been done already and you're taking it in a new direction.

Other things you can do to combat writer's block is to take a break. Walk away from the keyboard and do something active and productive: visit Starbucks, hang out with friends, go to the mall and people watch, treat yourself to a nice meal, or watch a favorite movie. In other words, give your poor brain a rest! :) After a little time away, you can then re-engage the topic with a new perspective.

Because you never know when your brain is going to snap out of writer's block and spontaneously generate a riveting idea, it's best to carry a pen and small notepad at all times. In this manner, you'll never miss another moment of spontaneous inspiration. Writing down a few sentences at the precise moment of creativity can give you something to expand upon later when you're back at your computer.

If you have other suggestions for overcoming writer's block (blogger's block), I'd appreciate hearing your techniques in the comments!

Subscribe to Amazon Deals in RSS: Free Code

Embedding Amazon RSS Feeds are a great way of adding product related content to your Blogspot blog. However, most people are not aware of how easy it is to add Amazon affiliate links, so I'm going to show you how. In exchange for this information, I ask you examine the Prosperent Affiliate Program and add one of their Javascript product banners to your website in order to have an additional line of revenue from your blog. First, we need to be familiar with how to embed RSS content with Blogspot:

Next, we need a list of valid Amazon RSS feeds. Featured below are direct links to Amazon's RSS feeds. These links can be embedded directly into Blogspot and/or can be added to Feedburner for syndication. More about Constructing Valid Amazon RSS Feeds is available from Amazon's site. Some good information can be found there. For example, Amazon makes it possible to generate RSS feeds based upon a particular keyword for USA affiliates.

List of Amazon RSS Feeds (URLs): USA Affiliates

1. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/apparel/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
2. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/appliances/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
3. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/arts-crafts/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
4. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/automotive/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
5. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/baby-products/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
6. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/beauty/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
7. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/books/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
8. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/digital-text/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
9. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/dmusic/digital-music-album/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
10. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/dmusic/digital-music-track/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
11. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/electronics/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
12. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/garden/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
13. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/gift-cards/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
14. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/grocery/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
15. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/hi/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
16. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/home-garden/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
17. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/hpc/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
18. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/industrial/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
19. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/jewelry/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
20. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/kitchen/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
21. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/magazines/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
22. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/mobile-apps/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
23. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/movies-tv/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
24. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/music/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
25. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/musical-instruments/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
26. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/office-products/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
27. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/pc/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
28. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/pet-supplies/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
29. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/photo/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
30. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/shoes/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
31. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/software/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
32. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/sporting-goods/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
33. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/toys-and-games/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
34. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/videogames/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
35. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/watches/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
36. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/wireless/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20

The advantage of using the primary category links above is that they are not likely to change over time. While "apparel" has a corresponding node number, the fact that the node number is referred to as a particular name means that it is less likely to change. This information is useful in URL construction. Any Amazon affiliate knows that they change their node numbers often. What this means is that while it is indeed possible to display RSS feeds for a particular Amazon product node, the node number is likely to change at some point in the near or distant future. (An Amazon product node number is a way of classifying information into sub-categories and sub-categories of sub-categories.)

Back to the information at hand. Let's take a moment to break down and explain one of the RSS feeds above. As an Amazon affiliate, it is important to be familiar with this information for the sake of earning money through Amazon's RSS feeds. This had the advantage (at the present time) of not making an API request, which has a limited usage per hour. Using and scraping Amazon's RSS feeds is your best bet.

Let's break down item #1 in the list above.

1. http://www.amazon.com/rss/bestsellers/apparel/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20

• http://www.amazon.com is URL address of the feed. If we were talking about Amazon Canada, Amazon Deutschland, Amazon France, Amazon Japan, Amazon United Kingdom, or Amazon China, we would use another URL.
• rss tells Amazon that we want the RSS version of the page; to view the HTML version of the page, change rss to gp. Here is the link to the HTML version of the page: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/apparel/?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20
• bestsellers tells Amazon that we want to see Amazon's bestsellers of course! Now there are alternate methods of data classification that can be presented. Simply change bestsellers to any of the following to see a different presentation (punctuation and using lowercase are paramount!): most-wished-for, most-gifted, movers-and-shakers, new-releases, and top-rated.
• apparel is the particular shopping category. Now, you CANNOT go off and put anything here. :) You are constricted to use the names that Amazon provides. I listed all 36 feed names, so choose one which you think your blog readers would be interested in seeing!
• ?tag=amazon-associate-usa-20 is the affiliate identification tag; change "amazon-associate-20" to whatever your particular tag is in order to receive credit, although, I wouldn't mind if you kept one or two feeds unchanged if you're feeling generous! :)

Blogspot Feed Widget vs. using Feedburner 
The condensed version is that using Blogspot's feed widget will limit the number of product items to 5, while using Feedburner's code on the other hand will increase the number of items available beyond the 5 number limitation. If you elect to go with the Feedburner solution, you must add the code to an HTML/JAVASCRIPT widget.

Syndicate Amazon through Feedburner
Pick a particular RSS feed from above, and add that Amazon RSS feed to Feedburner. Once in Feedburner, it is possible to customize further the number of items available for display. (Feedburner >> Publicize >> BuzzBoost) You would then add this Amazon Feedburner RSS url to a Blogspot HTML/JAVASCRIPT widget. For example, here's the code in use on this site ... feel free to copy it, modify it, and use it!

<a style="color:#0000ff;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:700;font-size:14px;text-align:right;" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/deals-amazon" rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml">Subscribe to Deals<img style="text-decoration:none;padding-left:5px;" src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/feed-icon16x16.png" alt="" style="vertical-align:middle;border:0"/></a>

<div style="font-size:14px;font-weight:400;margin-top:10px;list-style-type:none;list-style:none;">

<script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/deals-amazon?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript"></script>

</div>