Windows Live Alerts on your blog or space is a great tool for letting people that follow your blog to instantly know when you publish updates, driving frequency of use and happy readers.  It takes a little manual configuration, but the following steps are straight forward:

1. Sign up for Alerts here
2. You'll receive an e-mail from Alerts and you need to click the link to accept the terms of use
3. You’ll receive a 2nd e-mail from Alerts once you accept the terms of use.  This contains the URL and PINID for your sign-up page.  You will want to copy this HTML into the HTML container part. 

Here's an example of the HTML that you'll want to paste into the HTML container (use your PINID and make sure it points to your blog):

<p align=center>
<a href="http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts/login.do?PINID=xxxxxxx&returnURL=http://spaces.msn.com/members/windowslivealerts/">
<img src="http://images.alerts.msn.com/mcwebsite/graphics/blog/alert_signup_eng.gif" alt="MSN Alerts" border=0></a>
</p>

4. Go to your space and install the spaces PowerToy “HTML container part”
   1. Log with Passport or Windows Live ID and Edit your Space.
   2. In the Address bar of your web browser add the text “&powertoy=sandbox” to the end of the displayed URL.
   3. Click the Go button next to your web browser address bar.
   4. Once the page has finished reloading, click on the Customize tab in your Space.
   5. In the Modules drop down menu in the Customize tab there should be a listing for PowerToy: Custom HTML. Click the word Add next to it and then click the Save button.
   6. Copy the HTML described above into the container
   7. Save your updates to the container

You're done and should have a nice button on your space that lets your readers sign up to they'll instantly know when you post!