If you’re anything like me, you will have a large network of blogs you read either regularly or occasionally. I love following other people’s blogs as it gives an insight into the different parts of the journey to Financial Independence while providing a wealth of tried and tested methods to achieve it.  Sometimes however it can be difficult to keep up with multiple blogs, especially if you’re using the old fashioned Bookmarking method. Back when I first started reading blogs online, I’d literally have a long list of sites in my bookmarks which I’d then scroll through at the start of everyday to see which had been updated. Inefficient and time consuming!

Mailing lists

Mailing lists have been around forever and everyone is familiar with them. Unfortunately with a mailing list you are under the control of the list owner as there’s no guarantee of what content will be sent or and if you can be removed from the list. Sometimes bloggers can forget to send out an email alerting people to their new post, or may be unwilling or unable to remove people from the list (personally I use Mail Chimp which offers recievers an automatic method of unsubscribing should they wish).

Standard RSS Feeds

Another method is RSS feeds which you subscribe to from your preferred reader site/application. These provide an automated way of collecting newly published posts but again rely on the blog owner to have setup and manage the RSS feed in the first place. You’ve also got little control over how and when the RSS feed updates and with limited filtering.

Blogtrottr

While looking for an alternative to these 2 methods I came across the excellent Blogtrottr site. This free tool allows you to subscribe to blog sites and receive email notifications when a new post is published. Depending on how the blog owner has set their site up; it will either email you the latest post title and link, or a full copy of the content. You can setup filtering to only send specific posts and control the schedule of updates should you wish to receive a daily digest of them all. Best of all; you maintain complete control over your subscriptions and can unsubscribe from any site you want. There’s no need to setup an account either.. just enter the website you want to follow and your Email address and it’ll send you a confirmation email to get the subscription activated.

I’ve been using Blogtrottr for a couple of years now and it’s been excellent in helping me keep up with the many blogs I follow. I’ve not been asked or paid to recommend it, just thought it might be of value to any other keen blog readers out there, enjoy!