I don't use the icon, but at the end of every article I have the "Follow me via RSS Feed" as a direct link to the RSS. As far as tracking the rss traffic, this graph is generated from my server logs. It is literally cat apache logs | grep my feed url | awk daily traffic | sort.

Note this shows me how many RSS readers have accessed my RSS daily. I can't actually track each person, although I have a report I'm working on for the end of the year.