RSS is the midus touch for marketing

[dan]

If you start looking into RSS you may get hung up or confused by the many terms associated with this wonderful tool. What it is called is not as important as what it can do. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication -- not important -- what it can do as a marketing tool is.

In it's broadest definition RSS does two things.

1. It sends out data to RSS readers. When RSS pages are updated, the updates are sent to the RSS readers automatically.

2. It reads RSS information -- as mention above, known as RSS readers.

I know some of you more technical people are going to get hung up on #2 and tell me that it is not RSS but I want to define RSS in broad terms so it is useful and understandable for new webmasters.

Lets use some examples for #1 above. My php gallery creates a RSS document that can be read by RSS readers. The only problem is that the generated content is controlled by the member's input. I'm sure there is a way for me to go in to the script and control the RSS output, but as is, the output is not very useful. However, I'd rather have it than not have it.

Now lets talk about having your own RSS reader for your site and using the input to generate content (#2 above). Just like my gallery generates content, there are other sites that generate content that I can use to my advantage. Especially when this content is coming from some of the more prominent sites like yahoo.

The beauty of this content is that when the site updates their content, my RSS page is automatically updated. I did not have to lift a finger.

As an adsense user, this generated content by other sites can help with adsense revenue.

Here is one of my RSS pages:

http://www.filipinaeyes.com/entertainment-news/religion.php

This page is from yahoo generated content. You can see that adsense ads reflect the content of the RSS page.

Before I elaborate any more, I hope you are catching the significance of this. The content generated for the above link was generated by yahoo. All I had to do was install a RSS reader on the page that reads RSS content. Every time yahoo updates their content, the page is updated automatically.

If you understand this, hopefully you can see why RSS may be a good marketing tool -- especially for adsense.

I have several RSS pages on my site.

Here is one from the NY Times:

http://www.filipinaeyes.com/entertainment-news/NY-times.php

Here is another one from yahoo on sex talk:

http://www.filipinaeyes.com/entertainment-news/filipina-sex.php

(note: yahoo has tons of RSS subjects).

To make this happen, each of my pages has a RSS reader to read the RSS content from that site.

Let me touch quickly on RSS readers. There are basically two kinds. There are off line or desktop RSS readers and there are online or website RSS readers. There seems to be tons of off line RSS readers. I wanted an online RSS reader.

I finally settled on a program called CARP. You can download a free copy, but like most freebies, it has limited functions. For the $30 I got the paid version that has paid for itself many times over.

If you are interested go here:

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/

When Filipina Eyes went FREE and started using adsense, I first researched for a RSS reader for my new website format. I knew that it's benefit of generating content for adsense, plus it saved me time by not having to create the content, was a must for my site.

Now that I have told you about it, I need to make a note to myself and make some more RSS pages. It is easy to set it up and forget since it runs itself. But since I initially set it up, I'm sure there are tons of new RSS links that can help with new content pages. All I have to do is copy one of the pages I already created, plug in the new RSS link to another RSS site, add my adsense code and I have a full page of content that helps make me a dollar or two.

For me, I feel that RSS and Adsense is a marriage made in heaven.


Cheers

Any comments or feedback, please post in the Feedback Forum.