Those using FeedFlare from FeedBurner, such as this blog, Geekie.org, will find the “email this” feature extremely useful. “Email this” lets users easily send any page or post from a FeedFlare-supporting blog directly to their friends.
But the “email this” feature doesn’t pay… and it doesn’t give you a whole lot of options.
I recommend the FunnyTaf service, which is an easy-to-use “tell-a-friend” site that can be easily linked from any blog, including ours. Simply point a link to “http://www.funnytaf.com/share/” and the referrer field will allow FunnyTaf to determine the URL to be shared.
With some PHP programming, you can even make this dynamic, preventing problems that occur when someone’s antivirus software blocks referrer fields:
<?php
$site = ‘http://www.example.com’;
$request = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
$url = $site.$request;
?><a href=”http://www.funnytaf.com/share/?url=<?=$url?>” rel=”external nofollow”>Share</a>
You see that I recommend the rel=”nofollow” method of preventing search engines from following these links where your article’s URL is appended!
On blogs like WordPress, this should be a bit easier to do, since the_permalink() automatically returns the URL of the individual post.
<a href=”http://www.funnytaf.com/share/?url=<? the_permalink(); ?>” rel=”external nofollow”>Share this post</a>
But that must be placed within the Loop part of the site template that handles the display of individual posts.
The best part about FunnyTaf is that, if you’re a ShareASale.com affiliate, you can earn 5 cents each time someone uses the link to send your own content to someone else.
Now, this post is about FeedFlare and replacing “email this” with the FunnyTaf link. Our dynamic yet simple implementation at http://www.geekie.org/funnytaf.feedflare.xml.php will allow you to add FunnyTaf as a FeedFlare. Simply go to FeedBurner, log in to your account, go to your feeds, choose the feed you want to apply this to, and go to the Optimize tab. From there, click FeedFlare on the left side and activate it if it isn’t already activated.
Now, I also mentioned ShareASale, so if you’re a ShareASale member, just append ?affiliate=[your ShareASale memberID] to the URL, and the XML file will automatically be updated to insert your affiliate ID. Make sure you’ve signed up for the FunnyTaf program on ShareASale, though; but it’s an automatic activation for the FunnyTaf affiliate program on ShareASale, so don’t hesitate to sign up.
Once you’ve clicked “Add New Flare”, check the boxes beside “FunnyTaf tell a friend” and the link will automatically be placed in your FeedFlare array!
If you want to customize the order, I recommend placing it first:
Don’t forget to get the HTML code for your site!
New feature! Specify your link text by appending a parameter to the URL. If you want the link text to be, as it is by default, “Tell a friend“, don’t add anything. If you want “Share” instead, add link=2. For “E-mail to a friend“, use link=3. (Really, if you’re using FeedBurner, you should know that the ? question mark is necessary for these parameters, and that if you are specifying an affiliate ID, an & ampersand is necessary.) For “Share with a friend“, use link=4.
To specify your own link text, use linktext=[your link text]. Please note that when both link and linktext are specified, linktext overrides the predefined link value.
In other words:
- link — the variable to use when selecting from the 3 alternative (predefined) link texts
- linktext — the parameter to specify when choosing your own link text (do NOT URL-encode your link text)
- affiliate — the ShareASale affiliate ID to specify
All of the above parameters are optional.
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