You may have heard the term RSS, however didn’t know exactly what it was or how to use it. Now you will learn how to use this technology to keep your websites “fresh.”
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site
Summary. It also has been referred to as a “pull” technology rather than a “push” technology. And, in fact, this feature is what makes RSS so popular in terms of today’s Internet usage.
It’s probably hard to argue that anyone who uses the Internet today hasn’t heard of spam. If they have an email inbox it is probably full of it.
Spam, for the uninitiated, is the receipt of unwanted emails from people whom you did not request to receive information. Spam represents the “push” technology. That is, people “push” their email message at your inbox, whether you have asked to receive the email or not.
And that aspect of “push” technology is what many have come to believe is the death of email. It’s arguable that email will still be around for quite a long time, even though there are still people who continue the illegal spam process. In fact, companies are making millions now just providing everyday users as well as huge corporations, solutions claiming to solve their spam problem.
RSS, on the other hand, can be said to be the exact opposite of the email “push” technology. Because you cannot “push” your message to subscribers. In fact, the only way that people can subscribe to an RSS feed is to do so voluntarily. And, at the same time, they can unsubscribe whenever they want.
That’s why it’s called a “pull” technology. Because subscribers “pull” information into their readers and, if the content isn’t what they expect, they can unsubscribe whenever they’d like. So, unlike the email “push” technology, there is no one using RSS that is experiencing an inbox full of spam. All they have to do is to unsubscribe and they will never receive another message from the person who provided the feed.
RSS has become a popular way to make money on line too. And that is due in part to the popularity of the RSS “pull” technology. Here’s one way of monetizing a website using RSS feeds.
Imagine setting up a static one page web site – a minisite if you will. Now, add either Google Adsense code or the new Yahoo version of the Google Adsense style ads that, when clicked by a visitor – you earn cash.
This gives you a nice starting point and, if you optimize your web page properly, there is a good chance you will get a high ranking in the search engines. And, the more people who see your page, the more likelihood they will click on one of the links on your web page and you’ll earn revenue from the click.
But RSS provides an even greater potential. Because by adding an RSS feed to that same web page, you turn a static web page that only contains the information you placed on it, into a dynamic ever changing web page that others will likely come back more than once to read.
After all, once someone has read a one page web site, what incentive is there for them to come back? Plenty, if you use RSS feeds on your web page. It is possible to add 5, 10 or 15 feeds on your once static web page and now, you’ve got a page that automatically updates itself and provides something that people will want to come back to read time and time again.
You can easily convert any web page into a dynamic web page using free RSS creator software. One of the most popular free versions is called Carp and you can download it at this web link: http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/.
Once you’ve set this program up on your website and added the proper code to your website, then you will need to collect RSS feeds that relate to the topic of your web page.
Let’s say that the topic of your web page is flower gardens. You could go to Google News and get their RSS feed code, place it into the appropriate position in your Carp coding you put on your web page and then adjust the code as follows:
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&q=flower+gardens&ie=UTF-8&output=rss
You can also get a similar feed from Topix.net and you’d adjust the code like this:
http://rss.topix.net/search/?q=flower+gardens&xml=1
Now, once you have uploaded your web page, your site will automatically pull in fresh information from Google and Topix about flower gardens. Simply follow this illustration for any web page you’d like to monetize and watch your search engine ranking soar and also your bank account!