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:
How to Lose 14,000+ List Subscribers
OvernightNot 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.
http://netprofitstoday.com/_npc/2004-12-14.html#mistake List BuildingThu,
16 Dec 2004 09:09:07 -0800
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 are the 2 resources I found most useful:
Paul Short's ebook is a comprehensive work on everything you
wanted to know about RSS and blogging, and probably more.
http://NetProfitsToday.com/rss-paul-short/
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.
http://NetProfitsToday.com/rss-drmani/