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09. November 2007:

Exchanging RSS Feeds To Inrease Subscriptions

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Here is a useful idea for bloggers wanting another method of increasing their RSS subscription numbers. That covers just about every blogger on the planet, but this tip won’t help all of them, so let’s set out the requirements before going any further.

1) You will need a Wordpress Blog

2) You will need a free publisher’s account at Text Link Ads

The reason for number 2 above is to give you access to their Feedvertiser technology. The reason for number 1 above is that Feedvertiser doesn’t yet work on any other platform. (Don’t worry if you’re uncomfortable about selling links on your blog, there is no requirement for you to do so in order to use Feedvertising). Here's how it works.....

Once you’ve satisfied the above requirements, you can start participating in this neat little idea to grow your subscriber base by exchanging feeds with other bloggers. Once you have set up Feedvertising on your blog (it’s quite simple to do, just follow the instructions in your TLA members area). you will be able to insert your own ads into your RSS feed - you could use affiliate programs or any other kind of ad, but here, we are looking at exchanging RSS feeds.

You find like minded feed owners, maybe bloggers you are already friends with or someone who has a blog on a similar subject. You place a link to that blogger’s feed at the end of each item in your own RSS feed. This helps people find other feeds they may be interested in and in return for promoting their feed, they recommend yours in the same way. Who you might choose to do this with is entirely up to you of course, but preferably an exchange with a complimentary site is the best way to go, and if you can find a blogger who fits the bill and has a similar number of subscribers, all the better. All you have to do then is place the ad in your feed, something like "JoeBloggs has a great feed about XYZ and you can subscribe to it here" (inserting the appropriate hyperlink to their feed).

Feedvertising allows you to rotate ads, so you have a reasonable amount of flexibility on the frequency that a given ad will appear which is helpful if the people partnering up have much higher/lower subscriber numbers than each other. So that’s it, get out there and start networking :-)

If you don’t blog on Wordpress, there may be alternatives for your blogging platform that will allow you to insert ads in your feeds. Sadly, Nucleus isn’t one of them so this blog cannot yet participate in feed exhanges with anyone. All I would add is this - don’t go mad with advertising in feeds, it really upsets some readers and they might unsubscribe if you bomb them with huge intrusive ads. A small and useful text link as we are suggesting here, shouldn’t upset anyone too much.

Technorati Tags: RSS Feeds, RSS Subscribers, RSS Tips, RSS Help, RSS Feed Exhanges, Promoting Your RSS Feed

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caymanhost  RSS Feeds  4 Comments  No Trackbacks
20. September 2007:

Why Am I Reading YOUR Feed?

RSS subscriptions. Bloggers clamour for numbers and either proudly display their subscriber numbers, keep them a secret, or display them with a virgin like self conscious cringe and apologize for their puny status. This social blogging stigma is evidenced by posts like the one over at Internet Marketing Sucks where the author discusses Faking Your Feed Count.

It's funny really because RSS subscription numbers are only a very vague estimate of the truth, and yet, we set so much store by them. The reasons for that are another story and that's not what I'm about today.

I was reading a post yesterday over at TechTraction entitled Make Your RSS Feed Easy To Find which echoes the same things I have written about here in the past. RSS is still a mystery to many and you need to be mindful of this if you wish to grow your readership.

The drawback of RSS feeds is that for a publisher they are very impersonal and knowing that your feed stats are probably not really accurate means that you remain disonnected to a certain degree. An obvious indicator of growing subscribers is commenting by regular visitors, but again, there are plenty of people who lurk and never participate even though they may be reading and enjoying your blog on a regular basis.

To illustrate the blogs I read via RSS at the moment, I've given you a few screenshots. Is your blog in there? Am I one of your flesh and blood readers? Did you already know that or is it a pleasant/scary surprise? Undecided

There is every chance you've never heard from me on your blog, then again I may have contributed, visited frequently. I'm in the habit of adding blogs that I intend to read more than once into my reader - some stay and some don't because I can only read so much! Why not see if I'm one of your subscribers - if I am, leave me a comment and say howdy, if I'm not, tell me what I'm missing out on - go on, I'm giving you the green light to shamelessly plug your blog. And remember, others may see your name up there in lights and want to subscribe, so make it easier by adding your comment for them to click through on. In alphabetical order, here we go.............

 

Go to  the full post to see more.................. 

 

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caymanhost  RSS Feeds  6 Comments  No Trackbacks
15. September 2007:

Win A FeedGhost Pro License

Yes, we are running a contest and giving away three Pro user licenses courtesy of Stu Smith at FeedGhost which I reviewed a couple of posts previously. For full details visit the page at our hosting site below.

Enter To Win A 12 Month FeedGhost Pro RSS Reader License

Thank you for your support and good luck :-) 



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11. September 2007:

New RSS Feed Reader From FeedGhost

It was only recently that Bloglines launched its Beta reader and I've just recently discovered another very impressive offering from FeedGhost. If you are an avid feed reader this latest entry into an already busy arena, caught my eye with its fresh looking design which is demonstrated quite clearly at their screenshots page.

Although at pains to distinguish itself from Outlook and anxious not to be considered a clone, they do claim an Outlook style for reading feeds, or a "river of news" layout. You also have the facility to tag posts for easier retrieval and searching and you can also search for articles by keyword. If you read a lot of RSS feeds, this is something you really get to appreciate over time, but also something which FeedGhost in its free incarnation won't really help you with.

FeedGhost are offering two versions of their reader, FeedGhost Lite and Pro As you would expect, the Pro version is not free but can be had for just $20 a year which is hardly going to break the bank for most. At the moment you can try the Pro edition for seven days before making a decision to buy. After the seven day trial you will need to register but you can still opt to stick with the Lite version. If you do you will only be able to store 20 feeds, but if that's enough for you, you can use it forever. The Pro version carries no  limitations on feed numbers. Apparently Windows Vista users are particularly happy with the way the program looks - I can't confirm that as an XP user.  

I've not yet seen a need to pay for an RSS Feed reader myself but I'm sure some people will try this and be happy to part with the small fee after the trial period. Organizing and reading RSS feeds is an area where users have a lot of choices already, but it's good to see alternatives and particularly those that offer visual enhancements to improve their display for users. If you're current reader is not so easy on the eye, maybe this will brighten up your RSS experience a little.

TCH

Marketing/Hosting/Autoresponders/VOIP Conference



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caymanhost  RSS Feeds  2 Comments  No Trackbacks
27. August 2007:

Bloglines Beta Announced

Yes, it's not really news to many by now but Bloglines have released a new Beta version of their popular RSS reader. At first glance it doesn't appear to be much more than a facelift, and I admit that it does look a little "prettier" to my jaded eyes.

I noticed that one feature is missing from the old layout and that is the number of Bloglines subscribers attributed to each feed. This will probably upset some people with large subscriber numbers but it may be appreciated by those with very few - what fragile egos we bloggers sometimes have.

There is a neat little tab enabling readers to switch between a full or "quick" view of posts listing only titles which comes in handy and further tabs enable quick selection of which posts you actually want to show in the main reading pane. Some commentators have compared the new look to Google's reader (which I've never tried) and claim there is very little innovation demonstrated in Bloglines latest effort, but, if it ain't broke don't fix it, seems to be the idea here. I've included a screenshot to pad out a rather belated post.

Choosing an online RSS Reader is purely a matter of personal preference, but if the old fashioned look of Bloglines compared to say, Newsgator, put you off, the new look might persuade a few more people to switch.  



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