What the Heck is RSS and How Will it Help Me?
RSS, RSS, RSS... you hear the constant chant, but who
really knows what the heck RSS means?
Although it originated in 1997, most folks still don't know
how RSS works, and want to know 'What is RSS?' and 'How will
it help me?'
I had only a very cursory understanding of RSS until last
week, yet when trusted colleagues start telling me that it's
an effective way to get traffic to your site, it was time to
learn more.
So what is RSS?
RSS stands for 'Real Simple Sydication' and is a way for you
to publish (or 'feed') 'what's new' information about your
site. A single item will typically include a headline, a
snippet of content and a link to your site.
Using an RSS feed reader, anyone who has subscribed to your
feed, will be notified when you publish new items to your
feed.
There are many RSS feed readers, also known as
'aggregators', to choose from. I started off with
'FeedReader', which is a freeware application for Windows.
Get it at:
http://feedreader.com
After trying out a few
other readers, I've now settled on 'FeedDemon' which was
written by Nick Bradbury, the creator of TopStyle and
HomeSite.
You can get FeedDemon which comes with a 20-day free-trial
period at:
FeedDemon.com
Here's a good list of the readers available:
http://www.2rss.com/readers.php
RSS is published in XML format. All that means is that the
extension used is '.xml', without the quotes. So, for
example, my new feed is located at:
http://www.netprofitstoday.com/blog/wp-rss2.php
If you go to that page, without using a reader, you'll see
mostly gobbledy-gook. Look closer and you'll see that the
coding starts to make some sense.
Here's an example of how a single news 'item' appears on
an XML page:
<item>
<title>How to Lose 14,000+ List
Subscribers Overnight</title>
<description>Not only can you lose
a guy in 10 days, you could lose
14,000+ of your subscribers OVERNIGHT.
Learn how to avoid
making this costly
mistake.</description>
<link>http://netprofitstoday.com/_npc/2004-12-14.html#mistake</link>
<category
domain="">List Building</category>
<pubDate>Thu, 16 Dec 2004
09:09:07 -0800</pubDate>
</item>
When you use a feed reader, such as those mentioned above,
you'll see the feed in its proper, easy-to-read format.
To create the XML page, I used 'Feed for All', an RSS feed
creation tool. The 'Feed for All' software also comes with
a free trial and is available at:
http://feedforall.com/
Here's how the item above appears in an RSS reader.
How to Lose 14,000+ List Subscribers Overnight
Not only can you lose a guy in 10 days, you could lose
14,000+ of your subscribers OVERNIGHT. Learn how to avoid
making this costly mistake.
The title, 'How to Lose 14,000+ List Subscribers Overnight',
is linked to
http://netprofitstoday.com/_npc/2004-12-14.html#mistake
which readers can click to read the full article.
So far, so good, but how do you get your feed published
so people can read it?
There are a huge number of RSS directory sites. At the top
of the heap in a Google search, I found Robin Good's
'RSSTop55 - Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites'
See it at:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
So, in a nutshell, get a reader, and an RSS creation tool.
Create your feed and submit it to the directories.
Traffic to your sites will increase and so will your
revenues. Real simple (syndication).
This is a cursory overview of how RSS works. I confess that
I did a considerable amount of reading to come to that
understanding.
Here is a resource I found most useful:
Although it won't give you a 'how-to-RSS' explanation, I
also found Dr. Mani's 41 ideas on how to profit using RSS
feeds quite valuable.
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