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 »  Home  »  Intermediate Articles  »  RSS  »  8 reasons to RSS

8 reasons to RSS

By Craig Cahill | Published 05/27/2008 | RSS |

RSS is the next mainstream medium

You either love it or you don't understand it. If you live or work online, you've at least heard of it. I describe it to newbies as a "variation of email updates" and it is, for both the reader and the writer. My name is Craig; I'm an RSS addict.

Being "addicted" to RSS might sound ridiculous, but I'm not addicted to the act of RSSing, I'm addicted to the benefits of RSSing. And here are 8 of them:

1. RSS is like a endless supply of the "Hottest 100 Industry Tips Ever".
If someone offered you the latest tips, the greatest freebies, the best how-tos, the Top-5 Top-5s of all time and the most important, industry-relevant news flashes ever, would you want them? You can learn nearly everything you need to know online these days. Using RSS, I subscribe to some key websites that hand-deliver me content, tips and news that I would pay good money for. It is possible to surf and search the web to find some of these articles, but it's impossible to do it on the scale that RSS allows you to.

2. RSS is free
RSS is free.

3. RSS is like SpeedPPC of the news world
We would all love the ability to do a day's work in a few minutes of real time. And keeping up with any industry can really take its toll on your productivity. So being able to consume my entire industry's daily news in the smallest time-frame possible is something that I've become totally dependent on. With the power of RSS I can scan the headlines of 1,000 articles, read those that interest me and ignore the ones that don't, all in 10 or 20 minutes. I'm always up-to-date, quickly.

4. Google Reader
Rarely is a tool enough of a benefit to warrant undertaking some entirely new technology. Introducing Google Reader. Now I'm not writing this to sell you a tool (especially considering it's free anyway), but Google Reader is so much more than "just" an RSS tool. When you discover a single tool that does the job of several other tools combined, you throw those other tools straight into the web 2.0 trash pile. Using Google's RSS reader I can bookmark, tag, email, back up, share and publish/republish articles with a single mouse click (or shortcut key for you keyboard ninjas). Google Reader is an all-in-one power tool.

5. RSS is the next mainstream medium
This is not entirely true, yet. Especially with the current communication "fads" like Twitter and Facebook hogging the "fad" headlines. But their longevity is as questionable as their suggested worth. With these fads you spend more time accepting "friend requests" and telling the world what you're "going to do", rather than actually doing anything. RSS is a productive platform that will stand the test of time.

6. RSS is like Facebook
RSS is like Facebook, but without the need to sign up, invade privacy or annoy your friends into signing up and then invading their privacy.

7. RSS is that automatic, maintenance-free tool you've always wanted
Where email relies on the traditional "send and receive" format, RSS is more automated and less formal. Whether you send RSS content, or receive RSS feeds, it's all automatic. It involves minimal setup and maintains itself.

8. RSS is a mobile solution
Mobility is in. You need only Internet access for total RSS "updatedness". Using an RSS Reader, you can log in anywhere in the world and stay up-to-date with the very latest content from any website you have subscribed to - news, sports, stock info, search results, product news, reviews, blogs. You name it, and it's RSSable.


The RSS platform itself is as impressive as any single element of it. It's a no-brainer to use and like everything in the web world, you can explore it to endless depths of complexity. I'm no RSS "expert", but I sure understand the power of its simplicity and the addiction of its effectiveness.

The best place to start using RSS is through our very own AssociatePrograms.com feed http://www.associateprograms.com/articlerss.php.

Comments

Comment #1 (Posted by Tony Dean) |
Hi,
I am the author of "RSS Traffic Attack" an ebook for the internet marketer to find the code I devised to put images and colored fonts with colored background in feeds. I myself put out several feeds which from the very beginning have sent floods of traffic to my various sites I have detailed in 'items' in the feed.

It is a sad fact of life still that most marketers have not truly understood the power of rss feeds, they still rely only on email to get their offers across to the buying public even though they understand that most marketers emails don't get opened and read, that's if the 'spam filters' will let them through!

Most of my traffic comes from the rss feeds and second place is the 'organic traffic' from search engines - speaks for itself surely?

[I agree Tony. RSS is largely misunderstood and grossly underrated. But I believe like many "real successes", it will continue to grow quietly and survive where most of the loud "fads" fail.

I'd be very keen to read your ebook, so feel free to send me a copy.

Craig.]
Comment #2 (Posted by Graham) |
Well, I think I understand the benefits, But what I don't understand, is how do you go about setting it up? I have a word press blog which I think has an RSS facility, but I just don't yet understand it. Only been doing this kinda thing for 3 months now and am trying to find ways of getting more traffic to my web site & blog. Is this the answer?
graham

[Hi Graham.

That's a good question. And you'll like the answer too. Because if you are using WordPress, everything is preconfigured for the RSS to work, so you don't have to set anything up.

To understand the RSS publishing process, I suggest subscribing to your own RSS feed. All modern web browsers have an inbuilt RSS Reader. So simply view your website using Firefox 2, IE7 or Safari, and click on the RSS icon (orange square) in your address bar. This will load your RSS feed into your browser. Click the "subscribe" button and you are now subscribed.

Now every time you update content on your website, your browser will automatically notify you of the updates. Obviously you already know when you update your own website, but you can subscribe to as many RSS feeds as you like. So look out for the orange RSS icon in any website that you visit. You will soon understand how the RSS world works.

I'd like to write some more articles detailing the tricks and power of RSS, so if there is enough reader response, that's exactly what I will do.

Craig.]
Comment #3 (Posted by bertelle nicolas) |
Hi,
To do quick, i'm a webdevelopper from a while.
Its interesting to see how you consider the power of RSS. How could you find a real link between Facebook and RSS ? It's not the same thing, mean really not.
Facebook is commercial organization wanna talk about localize advertisements and RSS is a XML specification. I think what you think incredible is to let the visitors access via a XML feed (RSS or other specification), feed which represents the content of the website, blog, etc

I will help you more to dream more, in any XML file you can add as much specifications as you want. Mean you can combine RSS and localizations, media specifications like on the french video website dailymotion, i guess in youtube too.

At all your website is interesting and i'm eyes open to see that some of us are in affiliates programs on the web since 1998. sounds like a incredible longevity :-)
regards from France

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