Blog Understanding

I keep watching as friends and others I follow on their blogs do more and more with trying to track their followers, make sense of the hit counts, etc.

I haven't got much of a clue. I set up a feedburner account more than a year ago, and then never did anything with it, namely because I wasn't patient/smart enough to figure out how to utilize the tool. [I just felt like a tool]

Any suggestions for good tutorials? People patient enough to walk me through (via google talk, IM, etc)?

What a waste of good media, not to utilize the other end of the medium.