Aaron Lynch

For some time now, I have been envious of the stat tracking service Dave uses (BlogBeat) since they closed down new sign-ups as soon as they were acquired by Feedburner.  Well all that has changed thanks to Feedburner. 

One of the many services Feedburner offers is Site Stats tracking.  First impression:  very very nice looking interface.  Quite a bit more polished than Icerocket's tracking app.  One thing that was a little odd, since it is Feedburner they are much more keyed on "burning your feed" etc.  But, if you just want to use their  Site Stats, you can still do so even if you don't use their feed burning-ness(?).  

[pictures will be coming, but I don't have the time right now so be patient :) ] 

Once you have signed up for your Feedburner account, you need to click on My Feeds and enter in the http://path to your site.  This will take you through a couple steps and eventually get you back to the dashboard.  

[there will be some pics here too, shh] 

In the dashboard you should see a section on the left nav for Site Stats.  There is a link to activate the stat tracking, and should give you a couple options on what to track.  I just chose them all to be safe :).  You will also see a drop down of different blogging apps that the script is configured to work with.  Go ahead and click on that to find out what your Feedburner identification (for this "feed") is.  

[yeah, pics] 

If you plan on using this for your InstantSpot site tracking and once you have the ID, click on the Tracking Script Manager and select the Feedburner option and simply paste your ID in that field.  (well, hit save also) 

If this service turns out to be just the exact same level of service that I have seen in Dave's Blogbeat tracker, then I think my search for a great (and free) stat tracker is over.