What Is RSS?

How does RSS syndication work? Say you publish a new web page about a particular topic. You want others interested in that topic to know about it. By listing the page as an “item” in your RSS file, you can have the page appear in front of those who read information using RSS readers or “news aggregators” (explained more in my sidebar article, RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content). RSS also allows people to easily add links to your content within their own web pages. Bloggers are a huge core audience that especially does this.

What does RSS stand for? There’s a can of worms. RSS as introduced by Netscape in 1999 then later abandoned in 2001 stood for “Rich Site Summary.” Another version of RSS pioneered by UserLand Software stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” In yet another version, RSS stands for “RDF Site Summary.”

History buffs might be interested that there’s been some rivalry over who invented RSS. This is why we have both different names and indeed different “flavors” or versions of RSS. Mark Pilgrim’s written an excellent article, What Is RSS, that charts the different versions with recommendations on which to use. I’ll also revisit the version choice you’ll need to make. But first, let’s look more closely at some basics of what goes into any RSS file.

How Easy Is RSS?

I’ve been exploring RSS because it was time that Search Engine Watch offered its own stories in this manner. I’ve read several tutorials about making a feed, and they generally suggest that it is easy. They often offer code that you can “cut-and-paste” and link over to specifications that I actually don’t find that clear.

For example, the RSS 2.0 specification has an “cloud” element that’s optional but which a lay person might still wonder if they should use it. Meanwhile, heaven help the person who stumbles into the RSS 1.0 specification and its complicated RDF syntax.

Sure, making an RSS file IS easy for many. If you understand HTML, you’ll probably understand enough to do a cut-and-paste from someone else’s RSS file to make your own file. Don’t know HTML? Start a blog, because several blogging tools automatically generates RSS files.

As for those non-technical people using WYSIWYG page building tools or personal home page building systems, have faith. Even you can build an RSS file from scratch, as long as you dispense with some of the extra features you probably don’t need. We’ll go through how to do this below. Later, I’ll also mention some tools that will even do some or all of the work for you.

The RSS File

At the heart of an RSS file are “items.” No matter what version of RSS you settle on, your file will have to include at least one item. Items are generally web pages that you’d like others to link to. For example, let’s say you just created a web page reviewing a new cell phone that’s being released. Information about that page would form an item.

To enter your item into the RSS file, you’ll need three bits of information:

* Title

* Description

* Link

The title and description of your item need not match exactly the HTML title tag of the web page that the item refers to, nor the meta description tag, assuming you use these (don’t know what they are? See my How To Use HTML Tags article). You can write any title and description that you think will describe the page. However, using your page’s title and meta description tag certainly makes it easy to copy and paste to build your RSS feed.

In the case of our example page, let’s say this is the information we settle on to define it as an item:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Now we have to surround that information with XML tags. These are similar to HTML tags, with the exception that unlike with HTML, there’s no set definition of XML tags. Anyone can make up a particular XML tag. Whether it is useful depends on the program that reads the resulting XML file. In the case of RSS feeds, they have their own unique set of XML tags that are defined. Use these correctly, and then anything that reads RSS will understand your information.

Did that make your head spin? If so, don’t reread — just carry on to see how simple it is. First, open a text editor like Notepad. We’re going to build our RSS file using it.

For your title, you need to start it with the tag, then follow this with the text of the title, then end with the tag. It looks like this:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

For your description, you do the same, starting out with the opening tag, then following with the actual description, then “closing” with the tag. Now you have this:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

Next, we add the link information, beginning with , following with the actual hyperlink, then closing with . That gives us this:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Now there’s one more thing we need to do. We actually have to define all this information as forming a particular “item,” which we do using a special item tag.

You place the opening item tag, at the top or start of all the information we’ve listed. You then place the closing item tag, , at the bottom or “end” of the item information. The finished product looks like this:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Congratulations! You’ve now made your first item. There’s a bit more to do to finish our RSS file. First, what if we have other items we want to syndicate? Then we simply add more item elements, just as we did above. You can have up to 15 items. New items tend to be inserted at the top, with old items removed from the bottom, to make room for new stuff.

With our example, let’s see how things look if we add two more items:

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Sanyo Tablet PC Amazes!

I was dubious about the new Tablet PCs, but then I saw the latest from Sanyo. Wow, cool looks and it works!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/sanyotablet.html

Canon MegaTiny Digital Camera Too Small

OK, there is a limit to just how small is too small. Canon’s MetaTiny, no larger than a quarter, simply is too little to use properly

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/metatiny.html

Having defined items we want to distribute, we now have to define our site as a “channel.” You’ll use the same tags as with the items: title, description and link. However, this time the information will be about your entire site, rather than a particular page. That means our channel information would look like this:

All Gadgets Reviewed

If it’s a gadget, we review it. Learn what gadgets are hot and what’s not!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com

Now, how does something reading our RSS file know that the information above is for our “channel” when it looks just like item information? Simple. As long as we don’t surround this information with an opening and closing tags, it won’t be seen as item information but rather as channel information. That gives us this:

All Gadgets Reviewed

If it’s a gadget, we review it. Learn what gadgets are hot and what’s not!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Sanyo Tablet PC Amazes!

I was dubious about the new Tablet PCs, but then I saw the latest from Sanyo. Wow, cool looks and it works!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/sanyotablet.html

Canon MegaTiny Digital Camera Too Small

OK, there is a limit to just how small is too small. Canon’s MetaTiny, no larger than a quarter, simply is too little to use properly

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/metatiny.html

There are a few last things we need to do. First, we need to add a tag at the very top of the file saying that this is written according to the XML 1.0 specifications. Right under this, we also have to say what RSS version we are using.

So far, everything we’ve done is compatible with UserLand’s popular RSS 0.91 version. However, it also matches UserLand’s latest RSS 2.0 version, as well, so we’ll define the file as meeting that specification. This will allow us to add other neat features in the future, if we want.

Finally, after the RSS tag, we need to add an opening “channel” tag. That gives us this at the top of the file:

At the bottom of the file, after all the items we want to syndicate, we have to insert a closing channel and RSS tag, in that order. Those look like this:

This means our complete file looks like this:

All Gadgets Reviewed

If it’s a gadget, we review it. Learn what gadgets are hot and what’s not!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com

Nokia 3650 Combines Phone And Photos

I’ve been playing with the new Nokia 3650. Finally, someone has got the combination of a cell phone with digital camera capabilities right!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/nokia3650.html

Sanyo Tablet PC Amazes!

I was dubious about the new Tablet PCs, but then I saw the latest from Sanyo. Wow, cool looks and it works!

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/sanyotablet.html

Canon MegaTiny Digital Camera Too Small

OK, there is a limit to just how small is too small. Canon’s MetaTiny, no larger than a quarter, simply is too little to use properly

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/metatiny.html

Mind Blowing Options

Everything shown above is the bare basics you need to create a file and start syndicating content from your web site. However, there are additional things you could do.

For example, rather than your entire web site being a “channel,” you could actually have different content from within the web site be defined into separate channels. That’s something I’m not going to explore in this article, but some of the resources below will guide you through this, when you feel more comfortable.

As hinted at, RSS 2.0 allows you to insert all types of additional information into your feed. It can make your head spin to look at these and decide what to use. The easy answer is, don’t bother with anything you don’t know. Not every aggregator supports all the options offered. As long as you provide the minimum information suggested above, you should be fine.

Did I Choose The Right RSS Version?

Earlier, I’d mentioned there are different versions of RSS. Even though we entered the bare minimum of information, it turned out that we were able to have a file that was easily considered to be RSS 2.0, the latest version promoted by UserLand and which is widely used.

Indeed, the Syndic8 site reports that the most popular format of RSS by far is RSS 0.91 — and though we’ve used RSS 2.0, our file as shown is entirely compatible with RSS 0.91. In short, we’re in safe company.

What about that RSS 1.0 version that I said was complicated. Well, it is complicated. However, some people might want to make use of some of the special capabilities that it offers. If you are interested in it, then check out the official specification.

Saving The File

Now that we’re done adding to the file, we need to save it. But what name shall we give it? I’ve looked and not seen any guidance on this. I imagine that’s because as long as the file is valid (more below), it probably doesn’t matter what it’s called.

To make my own decision for Search Engine Watch, I decided to imitate what I saw out at UserLand, which promotes the RSS 2.0 standard that we used. UserLand’s example feeds all ended .xml, so let’s do the same. As for the first part, that really can be whatever you like. For our example, let’s say we just call it feed.xml.

Now that our file is saved, we can place it anywhere we want on our web server. Let’s say we put it in the root or home directory. Then the address to our RSS file would be:

http://allgadgetsreviewed.com/feed.xml

Validating The File

Now our RSS file is done, but did we do it right? To find out, we need to validate it. Use the aptly named Feed Validator service. Simply enter the address to your RSS file, and you’ll be told if everything is OK — or if there’s something wrong you need to fix.

How about a quick preview of how your new feed actually looks? Then pay a visit to Wytheville Community College News Center. Again, enter your feed URL, and you’ll see the clickable headlines and story descriptions nicely assembled inside a box.

The service will also generate a JavaScript code that you can post on your site. Anyone copying the JavaScript can automatically have your feed syndicated into their pages — pretty neat!

Get Syndicated!

Now that your file is validated, you want the world to know about it! To make this happen, visit the RSS directories and search engines listed in the RSS: Your Gateway To News & Blog Content article. They generally offer submission pages, where you can inform them of your feed.

You also want to make sure people who come to your web site see that you provide a feed. It’s very common to post a link to the feed somewhere on the home page of a web site. If you have a dedicated news page, you may want to put it there, as well.

You can link to your feed with an ordinary HTML link. However, many sites use a small orange XML icon to link to the feed. I’ve also seen some sites use blue RSS icon. I could find no standard about using these. So, to be safe, I did all three with Search Engine Watch. Look on the home page, and you’ll see how it’s done (and help yourself to the icons, if you need them).

Finally, it’s good to “ping” one of the major services that track when web logs and RSS content changes. By doing this, you ensure that other sites that monitor these know to check back at your site for more content.

Weblogs.com is one of these major sites. Enter your site’s name and the URL of your feed into the manual Ping-Site Form, and it will know you’ve updated your feed. The Specs page explains how to set up automatic notification.

blo.gs is another major change monitoring site. It is supposed to receive any changes that come from Weblogs.com, so you shouldn’t need to notify it separately. However, if you want to be on the safe side, it’s easily done. Use the ping form, which also explains how to set up automatic pinging, as well.

Tutorials & Resources

RSS Headline Creator allows you to skip coding and manually choose the number of headlines you’d like to include in your file, up to the 15 maximum allowed. Then a form with boxes that you fill out will be made. Enter the right information, then push the “Make The Code” button. Your RSS file’s code will be generated, for you to copy and paste into a text editor and save.

How To Get Your Web Site Content Syndicated is a Dec. 2002 tutorial by Kalena Jordan and Dan Thies from which I drew inspiration to get my own feed going.

Syndic8’s How To Section lists a variety of tutorials that discuss how to build RSS files.

Content Syndication with RSS is a book by Ben Hammersley that was just released in March 2003. I haven’t read it, but everything I’ve heard is that it should be excellent.

RSS Resources Directory from UserLand categorizes helpful information related to RSS, in different categories.

Postscript: Search Types: Blogs & Feeds and SEO: Feeds are sections of the Search Topics area available to Search Engine Watch members with lots of information on the topic of feeds since this article was originally written.

http://freeadvertise.co.nr

If you’re wondering why it is very important to create multiple niche websites, the answer to your wondering is quite simple. But first, think of how easy it is for virtually any webmaster to create a website and just have Google slap whatever ad they want on it. That’s going to cause some issues. The first issue is that the individuals visiting the site are not going to be interested in its content. When they’re not interested in its content, they will hit their back button before they even finish the first sentence on the page.

Niche websites present visitors with content that they are interested in. They are there because they either saw some piece of marketing that you did regarding your niche, or they found you through a search engine. In the meantime, your Adsense ads are relevant to your niche. Your visitors are going to read your content, see your Google Adsense ads, and then click those ads to get more information or get what they want. That click puts money in your pocket.

Creating Multiple Sites

If creating niche websites sounds like a good idea, considering you’re going to achieve a higher quality of traffic, then you need to know how to create multiple niche websites. However, there is only one way in which you’re going to do that and that is by using Adsense templates.

Adsense templates make multiple niche websites possible because the templates are already made for you. You have places for your ads and for your content so that everything is laid out in an attractive and exciting way for your visitors. They are going to be able to make heads from tails, which is something that they have a hard time with when it comes to most niche websites that they visit. With your site, they’re going to be able to easily surf it, and they’re going to do what you want them to do and that is click on your ads.

Multiple Niches

Just make sure that you cover multiple niches with your multiple niche websites. This gives you the ability to appeal to many different audiences and not just one. Even if it seems like one site is just making little dollars and cents, add multiple niche websites in there and all of the little dollars and cents will add up. By utilizing Adsense templates, you’ll be able to get your websites out there quickly, which means you’re going to be bringing in the dough faster than you think.

For first time bloggers, a free blogging web site is a great way to get started in the blogosphere. Popular blogging web sites like blogger and eponym allow users to set up and host a blog without paying any fees at all.
This encourages people to start blogging, because the fact that one of these sites can provide you with all of the tools that you need to get your blog up and running without spending any money means that you have nothing to lose by starting a blog. The fact that it is so easy to find a way to blog for free is one of the reasons why so many people who have never had any other kind of web presence before find themselves drawn to blogging.
By signing up with a free blogging web site, you may find it easier to get listed in search engines that you would if you were starting your own blog from scratch. For example, google runs the free blog hosting site blogspot and crawls its pages very often looking for updates, so if you have your site hosted by blogspot you are almost guaranteed to be listed on google’s blog search engine.
This easy access to search engines can take some of the work out of promoting your blog, and can help you gain a following with a minimum of marketing effort. Setting up AdSense on your Blog is a breeze, and you can complete the whole process in less then an hour. Free $97 Adsense Secret Ebook on Adsense Tips here.
If your blog attracts a large readership, you may want to consider moving your site. Many people feel that being hosted by a free blogging web site gives a blog a kind of amateur flavor that is fine for a new member of the blogosphere, but is not appropriate for a high-profile blog.
Having your own domain can help you make your blog feel professional, and finding a company that will host your domain is not difficult or expensive. Once your blog takes off, you will probably be able to sell enough advertising space to be able to afford to buy a domain and pay for a hosting package, and still have money left over. However, it does not make sense in most cases to invest in these glossy luxuries before you have a sizable readership.
Starting your blog on a free blogging web site is a great way to build a following before you spend any money on your blog. If and when your blog becomes popular and you are ready to take the next step and purchase your own domain, your readers will follow you to your new home. Most people can make their AdSense Blog sites veritable cash cows! Free $97 Secret Adsense Book at http://www.honestreview.info/adsense/index.html
The fact that it is possible to use a free blog host like blogspost, blogger, or eponym as a kind of incubator for your blog is great news for bloggers everywhere.

Benefits for Online Marketers

RSS is certainly the hottest online marketing tool today and this is the time to put it to maximum use. Lets take a look!

FREE!

RSS though absolutely vigorous, is as yet hugely under-utilized which is why most RSS services are free and waiting to be used by you. Then why not use them to your advantage?

Ranging from free aggregators, RSS creating software, feed indexing and tracking sites, closely everything required to compose and manage an RSS feed is available explicitly free of cost! Assign the almost of it while it lasts.

With little effort, you can use RSS innovatively to expand traffic to your web site. Before long these services will all cost money, so turn started now.

Recommend Web Site since Free

As detailed later, several search engines are offering to index your RSS feed likewise with your web site if your visitors involve your RSS feed in their search engine exact accounts.

So that sample, a Yahoo! policy states that it will spider your RSS feed and web site if a visitor to your site includes your feed in his/her My Yahoo! account. Yahoo! is doing this within 48 hours of such an occurrence a amazingly fast indexing time for Yahoo! To top it all, this happens without costing you a penny! You can remoter speed up the process by subscribing to your RSS feed in your My Yahoo! account.

In other words, using RSS gets your site listed in popular search engines faster than the usual site listing procedure and it doesn’t cost a thing.

Advertise (with Care)

Before plunging into sending product promotion newsletter through your RSS feeds, make a bona fide subscriber base. Offer them useful information that will safehold them hooked to your feed. Later, you can subtly insert unobtrusive ads related to the feed topics.

Since case, once the users be conscious of that you are an expert in Internet Traffic, the members of your RSS feed will check Internet Traffic products you sponsor or make reference to in the feed. Such contextual marketing is bound to receive hits and some hits will turn into sales!

In this respect, RSS feeds are a bona fide tool to construct a buzz about an upcoming product, e-book, discount sale, or a new enhanced service relating to the feed topic.

Podcast Your Content

Time and again you will come across a word of warning about using fancy content or basics other than text in an RSS feed. From a technical stance you can use HTML, audio, video, and images in a feed to enhance the impact of your message.

Podcasting is the ability of devices especially the Apple iPod to deal with all kinds of digital data other than music (which is what it was designed for). Generally speaking a Podcast is like a recorded radio program, something informational that a user can store on his iPod and listen to later.

With Apple doing roaring firm marketing iPods and establishing a global personal device defined, podcasting is the future of RSS. A Feedburner study indicates that number of podcast listeners elevated from 13500 in January 2005 to 24000 the next month. The number of podcast feeds went up from 750 in December 2004 to about 1750 within two months. Absolutely of these podcast supporting feeds rank among the first 50 RSS feeds on Feedburner with some boasting of up to 3000 subscribers.

These numbers are going nowhere but up.

So how do you assign money from all this?

Generating Revenue from RSS

Using Google AdSense

Optimize your web site since keywords and phrases and use Google ads in your RSS feeds through Google AdSense to accomplish additional income. So that this purpose, Google has recently introduced the Google AdSense program since feeds.

Refer to other Google AdSense policies so that feeds available at:

www google com / support / adsense / bin / answer.py?answer=20134

Direct Wholesaling

As is the count with inserting ads in RSS feeds, cautiously endorse direct marketing and entice the readers who are into impulsive shopping.

For this approach to work, you must first endorse the rate highly of the content you present through your RSS feed. The readers should accept you as an expert in your field and obtain you trustworthy. Then and only then you can offer them related products and services, and they are potential to buy.

When the time is right to move on to marketing through RSS, confirm that what you are retailing directly complements the newsletter you integrate in the RSS feed.

Serve your RSS subscribers correctly and they will turn into paying customers.

Fetch Paid for Exclusivity

If you are excited in a specialized field, you can reach paid since the single and exclusive content you can deliver through RSS feeds to the people who share the same activities.

Niche markets typically have very little information and public involved in such areas are always on the lookout of new news. If you can satisfy this interest, subscribers will not mind paying a reasonable membership fee to access your expertise.

Another way of making money from niche markets is to search through all the related feeds and incorporate them together to form a large useful resource. Your subscribers will thank you since compiling all the newsletter into a single place which is really the meaning of the aggregation. Yahoo Pipes, Google Mashups, and TrafficBoosterPro V2 are examples of this structure

Marketing Affiliate Products Generally

Whether you are an associate of a widespread affiliate program or yourself run an affiliate program with many and various levels of affiliates and clients, you can advantage tremendously by using RSS.

Promoting Amazon Products

Amazon is one of the biggest and most popular online stores since a wide extend of products. If consumers want to buy something, they frequently first check it out on Amazon.

You too can advantage from Amazons popularity. RSS assists you in informing your clients about present versions, bestsellers, and discounts. With RSS, you can even help your subscribers track the elements they are concerned in. Prepare and send customized RSS feeds to unequal clients so they do not spend time going through details of many and various part on Amazon.

Promoting Your Products Auctioned on eBay and Other Auction Sites

Use RSS to boost your products that sell through auction sites like eBay.

Creating an RSS Feed

Creating an RSS is most as ready as reading one.

- Manual Creation

- Software-based Creation

- Customized Creation

Regardless, show sure you have enjoyable content.

The next part will be about: “Creating an RSS Feed Manually”

If you can’t wait till the next part release, or you can’t discover the prior 3 parts please download the extensive report from our web site in the downloads area.

Are you one of those individuals looking to Google Adsense as a way to make money online? Are you tired of trying to figure out how to make money with Adsense? Well, it is time to sit down and sigh a breath of relief because you’re about to learn what it is you need to do to make money with Adsense.

When trying to figure out how to make money with Adsense, you are dealing with one of the most popular topics on the Internet today. There are a lot of people out there just like you, so you’re going to have to beat them to the punch. But don’t get discouraged because there are a lot of them. The truth of the matter is that you are about to learn things that they may not know, which means you can be the profitable one.

So if you’re wondering how to make money with Adsense, check out these useful ideas below:

So are you still trying to figure out how to make money with Adsense? You may have a better idea now as to how to make money with Adsense and do it well. Make sure you have Adsense templates, multiple Adsense websites to use those templates, the right audience, and the right content. With all of these things together, you’ll notice that you’ll be bringing in the cash in no time.