Will you know how many people access your feed? This is a tricky and difficult question. One option .is to put invisible images into your feed like they do in email to see if it was opened and in RSS that is not foolprooft.
DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT PUTTING Javascript IN THERE OR SOME OTHER SCRIPT SO A HIT COUNTER CAN COUNT IT. It will destroy the well formed XML and will not be aggregated or read as it will no longer be an RSS feed document.

• RSS IN your Web Site - If you go to some sites on the web, not only will they offer you their own orange button but you will see an RSS feed in fed into their web pages. The reason why many sites put an RSS feed on their web page, is because it creates and adds content to the web site. If you are interested in content ONLY for your viewers than you don't have to worry about the following. However, if you are interested in content for search engines as well be aware of the following two possibilities.

  Many places will offer you a Javascript code to put in your web page. But be aware that search engines are "blind" to Javascript. What is placed within that code is simply not taken into account. Therefore, all the content being picked up by your link to the New York Times RSS Feed and put on your web site will not be indexed.
  Some places offer you PHP code as well. This requires that your web server supports PHP, the great thing is that search engines DO SEE the content that is in that PHP code, and that content will be indexed along with your web site.

  For either possibility you can check out one such place, http://www.rssfeedreader.com/ There are others and once again a search will reveal a world of possibilities. Rssfreereader.com does have some really good options though both for Javascript and for PHP.

• RSS Aggregator - There are zillions of those. If you use FireFox you can find some great RSS aggregators as Browser extensions. If you want a Desktop Aggregator just do a search for them. And then of course there are Windows aggregators that work within your browser (not as extensions).