Using rss

By Brendon Turner

Let me ask you three questions to get you thinking. Does your website offer an RSS feed? Are you promoting your feed effectively? Are you seeing an increase in profits as a result of offering a feed to your visitors?

I’m going to outline several actionable steps you can take to promote your RSS feed both internally on your own website and externally on other websites. Then I’m going to show you a couple of effective programs to generate more profits using your RSS feed. Read what I have to say carefully, and then act on the information. I guarantee you can take it to the bank! I’m not just reiterating what others have said before. I actually acted and performed on my own websites everything I’m about to tell you and the results are awesome.

Promoting your RSS feed effectively requires a two prong approach. Start with examining your own website. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your feed first. Then focus on external promotion second.

The average visitor won’t understand what RSS is about, why it would benefit them to use it or how it even works. So there’s no point in slapping up the little RSS Syndication logo on your website, linking it to your feed file and hoping people will subscribe. The simple fact is that they won’t. You need to spend some time building a page on your website that briefly explains to your visitors what RSS is about and then show them how to use your feed.

Let me show you a solid example. Point your browser to this URL: http://www.profitgazette.com/syndicate.php On this page of my website I tell my visitors the various ways they can receive my content. Along with subscribing to the newsletter, a visitor is also able to subscribe to the RSS feed. I don’t want to overwhelm them so I keep it brief and educate them with four points. “What is RSS? How can I use RSS? How do I get a News Reader? Can I use these feeds on my website?” See also in the top of the left column of that page (and every page on my website) how I give the visitor a quick teaser, mention a benefit to them and give them a link to my “RSS education” page? That’s how I get my visitors to discover what RSS is all about. Then if you look in the center near the top of the page you’ll see the little orange RSS image which doesn’t just link only to my RSS feed file, I actually use a small snippet of JavaScript to make it easy for my visitors to automatically subscribe themselves to my feed with whichever news aggregator they happen to be using. Just mouse over the RSS button on that page to see what I’m talking about. You can download a copy of that JavaScript for free at http://www.methodize.org/quicksub/

What’s next? External feed promotion. There are lots of websites that accept RSS feed submissions. I’m not going to drop a large list of sites into this article but I have put together a large list of them here: http://www.profitgazette.com/rss-submission-list.php Visit that page when you’re ready to submit your RSS feed. I personally submitted my feed to each of those sites and took a brand new website which I own from zero traffic to consistently maintaining an average of 80 unique visitors per day in two weeks from the date of submissions. So that really is a powerful submission list.

Now that you’ve educated your visitors on how to use your RSS feeds and are well into promoting your feed externally, what about optimizing your feed for the major search engines? Yes I said optimize. Did you know that you can optimize your feed to effectively garner traffic from MSN and Yahoo? Here’s how. Do some proper keyword research using WordTracker just like you would when performing a regular SEO campaign. Identify your top 3 key phrases and use them when you write the title and description of your feed inside your RSS file. The search engines will pick up on this and in conjunction with the items inside your RSS file they will rank you accordingly, providing you with an additional stream of traffic you never had before. To alert MSN and Yahoo to the presence of your RSS feed just visit http://my.msn.com and http://my.yahoo.com and add your feed to each page. That’s all there is too it.

By now you’ll probably be asking yourself “How can I make some bucks with my RSS feed?” There are a number of things you can do and programs you can participate in to generate a constant stream of revenue from your feed. Obviously if your website is product/sales oriented you could drop in an advertisement about your products at the end of each item in your feed. You could also apply for the Beta RSS program which Google Adsense is offering to select partners but there is no guarantee of being accepted. Although I have noticed that Google recently updated their Adsense terms of service agreement to include RSS and feed terminology. Perhaps this may mean that the program will come out of Beta soon. See this URL for more information: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=957 Another search engine which offers publishers the option to earn revenue on ads placed in their RSS feed is Kanoodle. More information about Kanoodle’s venture into RSS is here: http://www.kanoodle.com/about/press_releases/02-28-05.cool

There is so much more to promoting your RSS feed and generating profit from it than what I could possibly hope to cover in an article and it really wouldn’t be fair of me to reveal all of the secrets when somebody has already put a lot of hard work and research toward putting them into a paid publication. If you really want to learn all of the top internet marketing strategies for RSS you should purchase a copy of Rok Hrastnik’s new eBook, “Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS“. I read Rok’s book from cover to cover and implemented almost all of what I discovered through him into my websites. The difference is not just noticeable results but a completely amazing increase in exposure and profit margin.

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While the in-browser feed readers are convenient they are still quite rudimentary. You should consider switching to a full-fledged feed aggregator for more features and increased usability. There are many feed readers to choose from, each have different levels of complexity and features. There are essentially two types: web-based and application-based. With a web-based aggregator you can check your feeds from any computer but this comes at the cost of limited functionality and speed. With application-based feed readers you get excellent features and speed but lack mobility. You dont have to decide just yet, Ill go over configuring both types.

First off, well start with a web-based feed reader. The most best and popular online feed reader, in my opinion, is Bloglines. Sign up for an account and click My Feeds on the top left. Test out Bloglines by adding a few feeds. When you setup Bloglines for the first time, it will suggest a few feeds to subscribe to. I usually do not accept them and just add my own. Below My Feeds should be a Add link that you will click.

You will be on a subscribe page now. If you found the feed on the website you can paste that in here. However, Bloglines has a feature where you can just type in the URL of the website and it will search for feeds. It may find several feeds and other times it will not find any.

To avoid confusion about which feed to use, I suggest using the one shown on the website as that is the one they want you to use. Sometimes they will place a link to their FeedBurner feed and forget to remove the old feed. Either way, whether you enter a feed or URL, click Subscribe and use the default options. Do this several times with some more feeds and you will have setup Bloglines. Everytime you login you can click My Feeds and instantly find out how many of your feeds have new posts you have not read yet. Unread feeds will be bolded and have the number of new stories in parentheses. Bloglines provides a simple way to read RSS feeds from anywhere, but is not the fastest and most feature-rich solution.

RSS is a approach for syndicating website content. It consists of a group of XML file formats for web syndication used to supply web content or summaries of web content, links to the complete versions of the content, plus other meta-data. Feed readers or aggregators can test RSS-enabled web pages automatically plus show any updated articles.

If youre a website owner, you can offer an RSS feed of your websites content to in essence allow people to employ the content on their website or by way of their feed reader. This provides links back to your website, plus plus prompts repeat visits.

Depending on your websites content, providing an RSS feed could be one of the best things you ever do. If your website includes news or contains a blog, plus publishing an RSS feed allows people to get a quick update from you, plus plus easily visit your site to read detailed articles. Most blog software will automatically put out an RSS feed for your blog, so check for a URL plus start promoting; add the RSS badge to a top area so visitors can effortlessly find it plus sign up.

Likewise, if you are continuously adding brand new products to your website, you might ponder making an RSS feed offered; in this case, just a quick rundown of your latest or top selling products plus their prices. Other websites may perhaps be interested in publishing that data for their users, plus you would receive more visitors! Again, RSS plus givs you links, which can help your sites seo.

You can visit the RSS directories plus search engines on the net; a lot of offer submission pages, plus you can enlighten them of your feed. Again, make sure that people who come to your web site spot that you provide a feed. Position a link to the feed somewhere on the home page of your web site, plus if you have a dedicated news page, you may want to put it on there as well.

You can connect to your feed with an common HTML link, but it is becoming more conventional to use a small orange XML icon to connect to the feed. Some sites even use a blue RSS emblem.

To finish, ping one of the major services that track web log plus RSS changes. This ensures that other sites which are monitoring know to check back at your site for additional content.

Weblogs.com is one of these chief sites. Type in your sites name plus the URL of your feed into the manual Ping-Site Form, plus it will understand youve updated your feed. The Specs page explains how to set up automatic notification.

You are all set! Basically add content to your page or blog, plus anybody who signs up for your RS feed will acquire automatic updates.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. It is a manner to easily distribute a list of headlines, update notices, also every now and then content to a wide number of people. It is used by computer programs that organize those headlines also notices for easy reading.
What problem does RSS solve?

Most people are interested in lots of websites whose content changes on an irregular schedule. Examples of such websites are news sites, community also religious organization information pages, product information pages, medical websites, also weblogs. Repeatedly checking each one website to see if there is any new content can be very tedious.

Email notification of changes was an early solution to this problem. Unfortunately, when you receive email notifications from multiple websites they are usually disorganized also can get overwhelming, also are often mistaken for spam.

RSS is a better manner to be notified of new also changed content. Notifications of changes to multiple websites are handled easily, also the results are presented to you well organized also distinct from email.
How does RSS work?

RSS works by having the website author continue a list of notifications on their website in a standard way. This list of notifications is called an “RSS Feed”. People who are interested in finding out the latest headlines or changes can check this list. Special computer programs called “RSS aggregators” have been developed that routinely access the RSS feeds of websites you care about on your behalf also organize the results for you. (RSS feeds also aggregators are also every now and then called “RSS Channels” also “RSS Readers”.)

Producing an RSS feed is very simple also hundreds of thousands of websites now provide this feature, including major news organizations like the New York Times, the BBC, also Reuters, as well as lots of weblogs.
What information does RSS provide?

RSS provides very basic information to do its notification. It is made up of a list of items presented in order from newest to oldest. each one item usually consists of a simple title describing the item along with a more complete description also a link to a web page with the genuine information being described. On occasion this description is the full information you want to read (such as the content of a weblog post) also every now and then it is just a summary.

RSS aggregator programs

Think of an RSS aggregator as just a web browser for RSS content. RSS aggregators routinely check a series of RSS feeds for new items on an ongoing basis, making it is possible to keep track of changes to multiple websites without needing to tediously read also re-read each one of the websites yourself. They detect the additions also present them all together to you in a solid also useful manner. If the title also description of an item are of interest, the link can be used to quickly bring the related web page up for reading.

How do I find out if a website has an RSS feed?

It is getting more also more common for websites to have RSS feeds. They usually indicate the existence of the feed on the home page or main news page with a link to “RSS”, or every now and then by displaying an orange button with the letters “XML” or “RSS”. RSS feeds are also often found via a “Syndicate This” link. Text “RSS” links every now and then (there are lots of variations) point to a web page explaining the nature of the RSS feeds provided also how to find them. The buttons are often linked directly to the RSS feed file itself.

Once you know the URL of an RSS feed, you can provide that address to an RSS aggregator program also have the aggregator monitor the feed for you. Numerous RSS aggregators come preconfigured with a list to choose from of RSS feed URLs for popular news websites.
How is the RSS feed file produced?

Unless you are maintaining a website or want to create your own RSS feed for some other purpose, how the RSS feed is produced should not be of concern also you may skip this section.

The special XML-format file that makes up an RSS feed is usually created in one of a variety of ways.

Most large news websites also a good number weblogs are maintained using special “content management” programs. Authors add their stories also postings to the website by interacting with those programs also also use the program’s “publish” facility to create the HTML files that make up the website. Those programs often also can update the RSS feed XML file at the same time, adding an item referring to the new story or post, also removing less recent items. Blog creation tools like Blogger, LiveJournal, Movable Type, also Radio routinely create feeds.

Websites that are produced in a more custom manner, such as with Macromedia Dreamweaver or a simple text editor, usually do not routinely create RSS feeds. Authors of such websites either continue the XML files by hand, just as they do the website itself, or use a tool such as Software Garden, Inc.’s ListGarden program to continue it. There are also services that periodically read requested websites themselves also try to routinely determine changes (this is a good number reliable for websites with a somewhat regular news-like format), or that let you create RSS feed XML files that are hosted by that service provider.

how can i make money with rss?

RSS feeds seem to be the breakout knowledge for the time. With additional users turning to them for driving traffic to their web site, its no wonder that a trail of RSS feed spam is following in the wake. A alert editing of your RSS feed possibly will make the difference between being classified as sincere content or RSS spam.

RSS search engines are just beginning to pick up steam. As new RSS feeds become searchable, the quantity of visitors will multiply and spam is surely to follow. It is an adverse side effect of free interaction. While RSS users can typically unsubscribe to feeds they deem as spam, browsing with keywords clothed in an RSS search engine is where the hindrance arises.

RSS spam largely consists of three main types generally often found in the RSS search engines. The initial type is keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing involves filling every RSS feed article with high-value keywords for a detailed topic. The articles are not intended for human visitors, but as an alternative for search engine robots to point traffic to a target web place. This RSS spam method is nothing more than an adaptation of the conventional keyword-stuffed web page, often banned by main search engines.

The next type involves RSS feed link farms. These RSS articles often contain very insignificant content, if any, other than a plain keyword. Their most important attraction is the feed title. Clicking the feed title takes the user to a blog containing tens or hundreds of other blogs and RSS feeds, every one directing to additional links inside the farm. The goal of this type of RSS spam is to trick the user into clicking advertisements or else directing them to a product web site.

The third type is the innovation of fake RSS feeds. These appear like legitimate, but often duplicated, article content. Whether they provide quantity or not is certainly debatable. These feeds are generally shaped in bulk, using automated scripts, and appear like in nature to the link farms. By attracting the users to seemingly valuable content, they wish to add advertisement clicks or product web site traffic.

Your RSS feed might happen to fall into one of these three categories. While you might at present be experiencing increased traffic from the RSS search engines, these directories are working on filtering out the RSS spam techniques. However, you can still take benefit of RSS feeds and their power by following an RSS-friendly guideline.

Refrain from using automated scripts to create online content used by your RSS feeds. As a substitute, compose your own original opinion, product descriptions, and reviews. It takes a little additional time, but the search engines will appreciate this content much more highly, your visitors will recognize the value of the unique content, and the subscription count to your RSS feed will grow. It is also crucial to keep your feed updated with changing content as opposed to using a static feed, which remains the same. Search engines respect dynamic feeds and will likely rank you higher as a consequence.

At hand are tools and services existing, which aid in keeping an RSS feed updated with your changing content. Such services include FeedFire for converting your web site content to a periodically updated RSS feed or software such as FeedForAll for creating and editing RSS feeds.

A thriving RSS feed is very much the same as a doing well web page. It may perhaps take a little more time to digitize your judgment, but the end conclusion is well worth the effort. By avoiding the tricks in RSS feed spam, you can help make the difference in quality of feeds and enjoyment in your readers.

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