I’ve used FeedBurner to serve up the RSS/XML items from this blog for sometime now. But I don’t generally visit the FeedBurner site on any regular basis. I mean maybe 2-3 times a year I’ll go into the account and look around. Seems like every time I go into FeedBurner I find something new or an older feature enhanced. These guys rock!

Case in point is the FeedFlares. Not sure what FeedFlares are? If you read any RSS feeds you will see little text ads added between the RSS items. These ads are generally call to action links like, “Digg This!”, Bookmark on del.icio.us”, etc. At the time this feature was added they offered a pretty standard list of FeedFlares.

This weekend I logged into my FeedBurner account and went over to the FeedFlame section and noticed something interesting. The now offer the ability to add your own custom FeedFlares. Interesting. So I started looking at the API. They even offer a FeedFlare sandbox to test out the XML. Fully functional with you actual feeds.

As noted the general list of social bookmark sites offered in the FeedFlare list I wanted something a little more specific to my site. I wanted to add a text link in the FeedFlare items to my web host, WestHost. I’m a member of their affiliate program and at one time had ad ad on my site for them. Affiliate programs are all about getting links out and getting paid. So I stared playing around. Without about 5 minutes I had the XML in the sandbox ready and previewed. Next step was to save the XML file on my site somewhere. Then to add the URL to the XML into the FeedFlare list. Boom boom boom!

Like magic the FeedFlare link was added. Look for the “Site Hosted at WestHost” link at the end of the list below. Or check out my RSS feed for the real links.