Open Journalism For All - News, Documentaries And Information Services

While syndication has many applications, we will deal specifically with its use for blog content and some technical information will be included at the end of this article.

If you have any interest in blogs or weblogs as a publishing format, then you have undoubtedly come across the term R.S.S.

Under normal conditions, the content of a web page is limited to one domain, and the visitor to it. To allow the use of content on a larger number of sites, syndication is employed.

This is where RSS comes into the equation. A site owner or blogger using his site as a pulpit for any number of topics can make his content available via RSS. Once done, his comments or content will be fed to the news aggregators for syndication/delivery to those interested in such content.

What is RSS?

“RSS” stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. It is a standard for publishing regular updates to web-based content.

It is a simple technology for sharing and distributing content like data, news headlines and other web page content with other webmasters and users.

RSS is like email in that it is used to collect and deliver content you have opted to receive. News aggregators collect the “feeds”(syndicated content) from a blog and publish it. If you have an RSS Reader you can subscribe to the ‘feed’ and receive current up to date content from your favorite content source.

Using this standard, a blog owner/web publisher can provide updates, such as the latest news headlines or weblog postings to those interested in such content.

With RSS, the blog owner could update his/her readers with new content and use RSS as a means of organizing his content into a more accessible form to the benefit of anyone wishing to use it.

Use it, not simply read it!

Uses for RSS:

Get your site listed in search engine and RSS directories.

Use RSS to update your websites with fresh, relevant content - automatically - without writing a single word. You can turn RSS feeds into customized HTML and display the feed on your website.

One of the great benefits of displaying RSS news feeds on your website is that it boosts your position in search engines.

RSS will automatically notify the search engine spiders that you’ve updated your website content.

RSS gives you a new marketing venue to display your ads, messages, and news directly onto your subscriber’s desktop! It will also build your credibility and Brand Name online - with little effort!

With RSS: If your favorite sites have RSS feeds, you can subscribe to those feeds in an RSS News Reader. The reader will automatically check all the sites you’ve subscribed to and show you new updated content when it is added.

Potentially hundreds of other websites can publish your news and articles. This will provide free exposure and free traffic as a consequence.
News Reader Search - Google search of RSS News Readers

CaRP - Show RSS feeds on your website (Freeware)

Grouper - takes news search results, web pages, and more, and turns them into RSS feeds. Once you have the data in RSS format, you can view it with an RSS aggregator like NetNewsWire, or use an RSS parser like CaRP to display it on a webpage.

Jawfish - web service, which converts RSS to _JavaScript

A news aggregator is “software that periodically reads a set of news sources, in one of several XML-based formats, finds the new bits, and displays them in reverse-chronological order on a single page.

RSS is a document format that is XML-based.

RSS feed or news feed is essentially a file in RSS format.

R.S.S. is a programming language and stands for Extensible Markup Language derived from S.G.M.L. or Standard General Markup Language.

A Parser is a computer program

Judy Webb is a marketing strategy analyst with http://myautobot.com You may reprint this article if done in total, including the resource box.

Q: I am so sick of all the spam that is sent to my business email address. I spend an hour every morning just trying to sort out the good email from the bad. I know I could just delete it all, but I’m afraid I’ll accidentally delete email that might be important to my business. Short of unplugging my computer, what’s the best solution for dealing with spam?

A: I feel your pain. I, too, miss the good old days when the only time you’d spend an hour dealing with spam was trying to pry it out of the can.

Due to the nature of my business, I get a lot of unwanted email. I’ve been working on the Internet since 1995 and my email address has been publicly exposed for most of that time, so I am a spammer’s delight. It is no exaggeration to say that I used to receive more than 400 email messages a day. Out of those 400 messages about 10% were from people I knew, 10% were from people I needed to know, and the rest were from people that I would like to track down and field dress with a very dull knife.

Spammers, they are called… the scourge of the Internet… the digital kin of the lowly telemarketer and dreaded junk mailer.

After listening to me complain about spam for months, my lead engineer burst into my office a few weeks ago and announced, “I’ve solved our spam problem! I’ve installed a spam filter on our server that will prevent spam from getting through.”

Great, I thought, now I can find something new to complain about.

I wondered what I would do with the extra two hours a day this wonderful spam filter would give me. My joy quickly waned when within a day my email went from 400 to 40. It was the saddest day of my life. Sitting there staring at my empty email box I suddenly felt very alone. At that moment I realized that not only had I come to expect the morning deluge of email, but I had come to find comfort in it. The spammers had become my friends. They wanted me to get rich quick and brighten my smile. They wanted to enhance my love life with generic Viagra and give me great deals on miniature cameras, low interest loans, waterfront property, and more. And the sheer number of folks concerned about the abundance (or lack thereof) of my anatomy was incredibly heart warming.

And the ladies that sent me email were so nice. They were worried that I was lonely and offered to cure my loneliness if only I gave them a credit card number. How sweet is that?

After a few days the withdrawal symptoms ceased and I was happy to be free of the majority of the spam, though to this day I’m afraid that I might be missing out on something grand.

You and I are not alone, Anna. According to a recent study by eMarketer, the average Internet email user now receives 81 emails a day, and nearly one quarter of them are spam. Spam now makes up more than 40% of all email and costs U.S. companies more than $10 billion annually. Seventy-six billion unsolicited e-mail messages will be delivered in 2003.

So how do spammers get your email address in the first place? It’s easier than you might think. While some spam comes as a result of online purchases (yes, there are companies that will sell your email address no matter what their privacy policy says), that’s just one of the ways spammers get you in their sites.

Spammers use “spider software” to crawl the web and harvest email address, so if you have a personal or company website that has your email posted on it, sooner or later a spam spider is going to grab your address and add it to the mill. Likewise when you sign up to take online surveys or receive email newsletters, you are potentially exposing yourself to spammers.

How can you reduce the amount of spam you get? Many people think that you can’t fight spam, so you should just accept it and move on. In other words, you can not fight the Borg, so smile and be assimilated into the fold. While spam is hard to eliminate, there are things you can do to lessen the amount of spam you receive and it’s impact on your daily business life.

First, stop clicking on the “unsubscribe” links at the bottom of spam emails. While some of the links are valid and will get you removed from spammer’s lists, other are actually there just to let the spammer know that your address is valid. Click the link to unsubscribe and you might actually see the amount of spam you receive increase.

Second, it’s a good idea to have at least two e-mail addresses. Use one for personal or business use, and the other for surveys and online purchases.

Third, consider installing a spam blocking software on your computer or company network. There are a variety of spam blocking applications on the market that range in price from free to a hundred bucks. Though none of them will completely eliminate spam, they can greatly reduce the volume you receive. Search the Web for “spam filter” and investigate the ones that you feel are right for you.

Your Internet Service Provider should also offer an anti-spam application, but be careful how you use it. I have a client who recently increased the sensitivity of their ISP spam blocker to the point that nothing was getting delivered to their company email accounts, including their own company newsletter. They had effectively built an email brick wall that stopped the spam and everything else. Not a good idea.

Before investing in a commercial spam blocker you might also try adjusting the email filtering settings in your email software. Microsoft Outlook, for example, lets you set rules for handling incoming mail. The same is true with Outlook Express, Eudora, and Apple’s Mail OSX. Each have built-in filtering features that can help eliminate unwanted email by parameters you set.

One thing to remember is that if spam didn’t work, it would quickly go away. In other words, if spammers weren’t profiting from sending unwanted emails they would go do something else.

Probably become a telemarketer or credit card debt collector.

Whether you use a commercial product or rely on your existing email software to filter out spam, just be careful that you don’t batten down the hatches so tight that you no longer receive any email at all.

Here’s to your success!

Tim Knox

We asked 58 Top Internet Money Makers: If you lost is all tomorrow and had to start from scratch, what would you do to be back on top in the 30 days? Their answers just might make you rich!

http://www.prosperityandprofits.com
http://www.dropshipwholesale.net
http://www.30dayblueprint.com

In today’s modern times, the incidents of identity theft is on the rise. With access to the Internet and the sharing of personal information online criminals have a easy time finding the information needed to steal your identity.

Once you are a victim of identity theft is can be extremely difficult to recover. Getting loans, and making investments are almost impossible once this type of crime has occurred. As a victim there is very little compensation or help you can receive which will help in the recovery process. You are responsible for your own credit repair even though you were a victim of a criminal act. There are several simple things which can be helpful in recovering from identity theft.

Identity theft comes in different intensities. Certainly, on the minor side of this type of theft is when someone steals your credit cards and rings up a high bill. This is often easily fixed through direct contact with the credit card company. However, once all of your information (social security number, birthday, and other personal information) is taken, the criminal is able to step up fake credit card accounts and run your bills up quickly.

The act itself is easy. With a mere phone call or internet access a criminal can easily get hundreds of credit cards in your name. The longer the criminal activities goes unchecked the worse the damage is to your credit. Especially if there are large purchases and loans from lending companies. Clearing your credit with lenders is extremely complicated and hard to do. There are many questions, forms, and literally hoops they will need you to jump through to begin the recovery process. It is worth it, the ability to have a bank account, get a loan, and invest is something everyone has the right to do.

If you are a victim of fraud the first thing you need to do is call the lending institution and put an end to the activity. Have all your credit cards canceled by contacting the companies and having a new account established and new cards issued.

You may also consider calling all companies which you have done business with and let them know your current situation. This way any suspicious activity can allow you to be immediately notified. If your social security number has been used there is a governmental help to clear up the problems ( http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft ). They understand the need to have a clean credit score and a usable social security number.

Make sure that if you have an investments at all you contact your financial advisor and secure all your stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Criminals can easily cash these out, especially if they have access to your online accounts.

Once you have been notified that someone has stolen your identity keep good track of all the fraudulent activity that you can. Make sure you take names, write done dates, and get letters of confirmations from all companies you speak with. The more documentation you have the easier it will be to recover from this terrible and devastation crime.

You all tear your hair out in frustration every time you see your inbox crammed full of spam again. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself where you get so much spam? This isn’t to suggest that spam is your fault but… if everybody hates spam so much then… why is there so much of it?

There’s a simple answer folks. Spam is an industry. There exists an entire infrastructure to support it and be supported by it. From the guys who design the email address harvesting software to the spammers who put together their mailshots to you right through to the ISPs and webhosts who make wads of cash for allowing the spam to pass through their mail servers. Spam is a living, breathing entity - make no mistake about it.

As with any business the spam industry needs customers. Those customers are you - you’re their target market. Every time you click on a hyperlink in a spam email you potentially make money for these guys. If you actually click through and make a purchase you’re making their job truly worthwhile. To remove spam we need to put a cease and desist order on ourselves. Stop opening the emails (spammers know when you do), stop clicking on the links (they know when you do this too) and most definitely do not, do not, do not buy anything, call any numbers or fill in any application forms that you receive via a spam email.

Defeating spam once and for all means boycotting it. The smartest spam blocker or most private email filtering system can never hit a spammer as hard as one thing - take away their source of revenue. Hit them where it hurts them most - in their wallet. No cash = no business = no spammers.

Could it really be that simple? If we ignore them will they go away?

This article was provided courtesy of Spam-site.com which reviews and tests spam filters.

Block Spam and Other Email Threats From Entering Your Gateway
Spam, commonly defined as unsolicited commercial email, is a powerful advertising channel for many products and services. As a result, spamming has become a profitable business, driven by the low cost of sending email compared to other direct marketing techniques. The high return on investment for spammers has resulted in an overwhelming volume of unwanted messages in personal and business email boxes. Consider this: Conducting a direct mail campaign costs an average of $1.39 per person, meaning that a response rate of 1 in 14 is necessary just to break even on a product with a $20 gross profit. Selling the same item via unsolicited spam email costs only $0.0004 per person, meaning that a response rate of 1 in 50,000 gets the seller back to break-even; anything above that is gravy. With profit margins like these, it’s easy to see why spammers will try anything to get past anti spam technology to deliver their messages to your inbox.

Types of Spam Threats
The recent onset of fraudulent spam variants such as phishing and spoofing pose an even greater risk than the spam volume clogging email servers. Spammers use techniques such as phishing and spoofing to fool users into opening messages that, at first glance, appear innocuous.

Phishing
Phishing is a specific type of spam message that solicits personal information from the recipient. Phishers use social engineering techniques to fool end users into believing that the message originated from a trusted sender, making these attacks especially dangerous because they often con victims into divulging social security numbers, bank account information or credit card numbers. In one six-month period from November 2003 to May 2004, phishing attacks increased in frequency by 4000%, and the trend continues upward.

An example of phishing is an email that appears to come from a bank requesting that users log into their account to update or correct personal information. When the users follow a link embedded in the email, they are redirected to a site that looks and behaves like the expected bank website. However, unbeknownst to the soon-to-be identity theft victims, the site is actually controlled by the scam artists who sent the email; any and all information entered by the victim can now be used in a variety of ways, none of them good.

Spoofing
Spoofing is a deceptive form of spam that hides the domain of the spammer or the spam’s origination point. Spammers often hijack the domains of well-known businesses or government entities to make spam filters think the communication is coming from a legitimate source.

Today’s spammers are more crafty than ever before and have begun blending elements of both phishing and spoofing into their messages, further spinning their web of deception. The toxic combination of spoofing and phishing presents a major threat that can trick most anyone into providing personal information to a stranger.

Toothless Legislation
On January 1, 2004, President Bush signed into law the “Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003,” or “CAN-SPAM” Act. While well intentioned, CAN-SPAM has done little or nothing to curb the flow of unwanted email. In fact, an estimated 97% of all spam email sent in 2004 violated the Act, and the United States still dwarfs other nations in terms of the origin of spam, with CipherTrust research revealing that an astonishing 56.77% of all spam comes from U.S.-based IP addresses. While CAN-SPAM was designed to decrease the overall volume of spam, the exact opposite has happened: in 2004, spam accounted for approximately 77% of all email traffic, and phishing attacks continue to increase exponentially, with studies showing an increase of 4000% from November 2003 to May 2004.

Anti Spam Software for the Desktop
The dramatic increase in spam volume has prompted a corresponding surge in stand-alone anti spam software solutions for the desktop, all with varying levels of effectiveness. Some anti spam software uses text filtering to screen incoming messages for known characteristics of spam, while other solutions rely solely on reputation systems that monitor and categorize email senders by IP address according to their sending behavior. Still other anti spam software uses “challenge/response filters” to block unapproved mail until the sender responds (manually) to a challenge email sent to their email account to verify his or her identity.

With so many different methods of filtering spam, no single software-based desktop anti spam solution is capable of effectively stopping spam before it reaches the inbox. The only way to successfully fight spam is to create an anti spam “cocktail” including reputation services, text filters, constant updates and a host of other best-of-breed spam blocking methods. Just as importantly, an effective anti spam solution should reside at the email gateway, not at the desktop. Without protection at the gateway, mail servers waste massive amounts of bandwidth and storage space processing every message, wanted or not, and end users face the unenviable task of deciding what to do with the countless spam messages that successfully reach them.

Take a Consolidated Approach to Anti Spam
Although it takes a person only a moment to process a message and identify it as spam, it is difficult to automate that human process because no single message characteristic consistently identifies spam. In fact, there are hundreds of different message characteristics that may indicate an email is spam, and an effective anti spam solution must be capable of employing multiple spam detection techniques.

In addition to effectively identifying spam, businesses must be assured that legitimate mail is not blocked in error. Even one false positive, or incorrectly blocked email, can have a significant impact on businesses today. Accurate spam blocking requires a combination of tools to examine various message criteria combined with real-time research and intelligence data.

By aggregating multiple spam detection technologies like text filtering, reputation services, traffic analysis and other best-of-breed techniques, and placing the solution at the email gateway in a hardened appliance, enterprises can retake control of the inbox.

Dr. Paul Judge is a noted scholar and entrepreneur. He is Chief Technology Officer at CipherTrust, the industry’s largest provider of enterprise email security. The company’s flagship product, IronMail provides a best of breed enterprise anti spam solution designed to stop spam, phishing attacks and other email-based threats. Learn more by visiting http://www.ciphertrust.com/products/spam_and_fraud_protection/ today.

RSS feeds seem to be the breakout technology for the year. With more users turning to them for driving traffic to their site, it’s no wonder that a trail of RSS feed spam is following in the wake. A careful editing of your RSS feed could make the difference between being classified as genuine content or RSS spam.

RSS search engines are just beginning to pick up steam. As more RSS feeds become searchable, the number of visitors will increase and spam is sure to follow. It is an unfortunate side effect of free communication. While RSS users can typically unsubscribe to feeds they deem as spam, browsing with keywords in an RSS search engine is where the problem arises.

RSS spam largely consists of three main types most often found in the RSS search engines. The first type is keyword stuffing.

Keyword stuffing involves filling each RSS feed article with high-value keywords for a specific topic. The articles are not intended for human visitors, but instead for search engine robots to direct traffic to a target web site. This RSS spam technique is nothing more than an adaptation of the typical keyword-stuffed web page, often banned by major search engines.

The second type involves RSS feed link farms. These RSS articles often contain very little content, if any, other than a simple keyword. Their main attraction is the feed title. Clicking the feed title takes the user to a blog containing tens or hundreds of other blogs and RSS feeds, each directing to more links within the farm. The goal of this type of RSS spam is to trick the user into clicking advertisements or directing them to a product web site.

The third type is the creation of fake RSS feeds. These appear as legitimate, but often duplicated, article content. Whether they provide value or not is certainly debatable. These feeds are usually created in mass, using automated scripts, and appear similar in nature to the link farms. By attracting the users to seemingly valuable content, they hope to gain advertisement clicks or product web site traffic.

Your RSS feed might happen to fall into one of these three categories. While you may currently be experiencing increased traffic from the RSS search engines, these directories are working on filtering out the RSS spam techniques. However, you can still take advantage of RSS feeds and their power by following an RSS-friendly guideline.

Refrain from using automated scripts to create online content used by your RSS feeds. Instead, write your own original thoughts, product descriptions, and reviews. It takes a little more time, but the search engines will value this content much more highly, your visitors will appreciate the unique content, and the subscription count to your RSS feed will grow. It is also important to keep your feed updated with changing content as opposed to using a static feed, which remains the same. Search engines value dynamic feeds and will likely rank you higher as a result.

There are tools and services available, which aid in keeping an RSS feed updated with your changing content. Such services include FeedFire for converting your web site content to a periodically updated RSS feed or software such as FeedForAll for creating and editing RSS feeds.

A successful RSS feed is very much the same as a successful web page. It may take a little more time to digitize your thoughts, but the end result is well worth the effort. By avoiding the tricks in RSS feed spam, you can help make the difference in quality of feeds and enjoyment in your readers.

About the Author:
KSoft is a software company specializing in Internet products including RSS Submit http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html, software for submitting RSS feeds and pinging blogs to over 65 RSS directories.

Has Google finally embraced RSS with their new XML
powered Sitemaps program? Well, sort of, but it seems
more like a hug than a strong impassioned embrace!

It does use XML technology which allows for the
crawling and updating of your site’s web pages.
You can even include your entire web site (all urls)
with this indexing program. For anyone targeting the search
engines, especially Google, this program (still in beta)
is a MUST HAVE.

If you require timely updating of your most popular pages
Google’s new Sitemaps may prove indispensable. It’s a little
premature to assess the importance or impact of Google’s
new program but anyone wanting to give their site a
competitive edge should be gearing up.

How it works:

There are several ways to set-up a XML Sitemap, perhaps
the easiest way is to use the open-source Generator which
you can download from Google. This is a Python file that
you can upload to your webserver and this generator
will create a sitemap from your ‘URL lists, webserver
directories, or your access logs’.

It would probably be wise to check with your hosting provider
to see if they can accommodate this Generator on your webserver.
It you have a small site there should be no problem but if your
site runs into the 1,000’s of URLs or pages — check to see how much
bandwidth such a system will take up. It’s better to be safe
than sorry!

Once done, you have to then submit your newly generated XML Sitemap
to Google and the search engine will use this XML Sitemap to
update and index your site whenever you make changes on your site.
You will need to have a Google account.

You may also submit text files containing URLs from your web site
to be included in Google Sitemaps but these text files will have
or will be given low priority for the time being.

To get started on your own Google Sitemaps Account you can click here:
Google’s Sitemaps

What’s great about it:

Besides seeing Google finally grab the RSS wildcard, it
gives you better control of how and when the search
engines update your web site pages. Perhaps, the most
important aspect for Internet Marketers, you can now assign
the importance that’s given to any of your particular
pages. As most marketers know, certain pages on your
web site are more important than others; these pages
earn money, build your contact list, or direct your
site’s visitors in the right direction. In other words,
you can now place more emphasis on your web site’s
‘bread and butter’ pages. A BIG Plus!

With Google Sitemaps you can decide the importance
placed on these pages by using the priority XML tag.
This rating system is relative, it only relates to
the pages on your own site.

Likewise, you can also indicate how frequently your
pages changes by using the changefreq XML tag. More or
less instructing Google when your page will be updated
or changed. This is a win-win situation for everyone;
Google gets the freshest content for its users and
you gain more control of the frequency of the updates
done with your site or web pages. This may have a direct
influence on the profitability of your web site.

For those who are actively marketing thru the search
engines and keywords — Santa may have come a little
early this year. Of course, the jury will be out for
awhile but Google Sitemaps will probably have a
positive impact on your bottom line.

What it means for Google:

For those of us who have been following and watching
the RSS wildcard for the past couple of years, it takes
away some of the frustration and a little of the puzzlement
from Google seemingly total disregard of RSS.

RSS is not a fad, it is not a trend and it’s not going away.
Instead, its importance is growing. It is fast becoming ‘the’
way data is moved on the web. One could even speculate that
in the very near future all web pages will have an RSS
component, perhaps a hybrid of ‘XML/HMTL’ or an embedded
XML code that will work with all browsers, search engines
and servers.

For Google to ignore the growing importance of RSS, blogging,
podcasting, broadcatching, the RSS featured Firefox browser,
MyYahoo, not to mention all those orange XML logos popping
up on most of the major sites on the web — is beyond comprehension.
Why Google does not have an RSS search on its main search engine
page still seems baffling. Bringing out a homepage and not
including an RSS feature is just foolhardy (They may introduce
this feature later).

For those firmly in the RSS corner, Google’s continued
disregard for RSS became more than a little frustrating
to observe. It was downright rude! Perhaps Google was waiting
to incorporate RSS in a program like this new XML Sitemaps?
Can this mean that Google has finally accepted the importance
of RSS and they’re starting to make amends? More importantly,
could there still be a few more RSS goodies in the Google Jar
left to be announced?

One can only speculate but when it comes to RSS and Google,
lets just hope this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

—————————————————-
To add RSS to your Site within minutes - download this
simple RSS Report and Guide.

Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of BWMagic’s Free Marketing Tools & Guides

This article may be freely distributed if this resource
box stays attached.
—————————————————-

It’s no secret that the US economy has slowed down, and many jobs have been outsourced overseas. Thousands of companies are still and are being forced to cut costs, decrease benefits, and even lay off employees. Many of those who lost their jobs, wil l try their hand at doing business on the Internet.

It seems however, that lately I’ve been hearing a great deal about the difficulty of doing business online. Put aside the talk about the hype and the scams. They existed from the first day the Internet was commercialized. They are becoming more sophisticated with their promises of earning millions, but as people become more experienced, they quickly see through them.

Fake email addresses, spam and broken dreams will continue to abound until either legislation forces them to do business ethically, or the well of suckers dries up.

Sounds pretty negative doesn’t it. Under other circumstances, it would be enough to put someone off trying to do business on the net. But let’s look at the positive side. I don’t know about you, but I’ve met some pretty fine people on the web. They are honest, hard working and a pleasure to do business with. While there are a few “bad apples” (and aren’t there offline as well), it’s amazing how many friendly, helpful people there are out there.

In the early nineties, before the entrepreneurial invasion of the Internet, the only game in town was the proprietary bulletin boards such as run by Prodigy. Anyone who “dared” become commercial was summarily banned from the boards, and “blacklists of offenders” were actually shared between the board moderators.

But, as commercialism crept in, and the old bulletin boards joined the ranks of the dinosaurs, a whole new strategy started to evolve.

People have learned that you don’t have to create something new or re-invent the wheel to make money online. You can join an affiliate program to get started with a minimum of capital outlay, and a decent income can be made. But the old saying “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” is even truer today.

Sure, you can advertise online for free, but except for isolated instances, there is a catch. Forget the FFA (Free For All) sites where you can post a free ad for your business. They get thousands of submissions hourly, and most only keep the latest hundred or so current, so your ad has a life measured in seconds.

How about the free ads you find in newsletters? If the newsletter has content and a decent subscriber base, they are a great deal. However, many times the only subscribers who receive it are those placing the free ads, and once they check to see if their ad is there, they “click away” and don’t even see anything else.

While you might not immediately learn how to advertise your business, you quickly learn how not to. Email spamvertising is simply a waste of time and money. If it is annoying to you, and the ads are summarily deleted without being read, why waste your money on a similar campaign.

Those who want to do business on the web, and are succeeding, are evolving into a whole new breed of entrepreneurs. They learned from the mistakes that are being made, and have developed a business plan that is working.

So, what is the secret. It really isn’t a secret, and it is as obvious as the nose on your face. People are not stupid, inexperienced maybe.- but not stupid. Treat them with the same courtesy and respect you would like to receive, and you will be amazed at the results.

Unfortunately, many would be entrepreneurs don’t take their business seriously, and will fail. This is not something you can do when bored, and there is nothing good on TV that night. If your bottom line is to succeed, you must take your online business seriously, and the returns you receive will be in proportion to the effort you exert.

Did you know that subscribers to Bob Osgoodby’s Free Ezine the “Tip of the Day” get a Free Ad for their Business at his Web Site? Great Business and Computer Tips – Monday. Wednesday. and Friday. Instructions on how to place an ad are in the Newsletter.

Subscribe at: http://adv-marketing.com/business/subscribe2.htm.

The RSS promise for end-users is simple:

–> a unified one-stop-shop to consume online content, without having to visit dozens of sites every day to see what’s new and without having their online subscriptions interfere with their personal and business e-mail communications;

–> complete control over their content consumption, including a quick, easy and reliable mechanism to unsubscribe from content they do not wish to receive;

–> the ability to receive breaking news as it becomes available, without having to wait for a monthly, weekly or daily recap sent to their e-mail addresses;

–> the certainty of actually receiving the content they want, without the fear of it being stopped by spam filters on the way;

–> the ability to receive rich-media content directly to their desktops, including audio and video content;

–> the promise of providing the tools to make their lives easier, including receiving critical content updates as soon as they become available.

These points are not simple enhancements, but important advancements that can fundamentally change how internet content is consumed. Furthermore, these points themselves prove why marketers need to start implementing RSS now!

To bring the point home, let us inspect some of the content services already powered by RSS.

LIBRARY ELF: MAKING THE LIBRARY EXPERIENCE EASIER (http://libraryelf.com/)

Library Elf helps you keep track of your library accounts in one place and received reminders, such as what library material is due, overdue and ready for pickup. Library Elf uses the power of RSS to help you forget about your library accounts and instead be directly notified of the changes you’re waiting for, directly to your desktop.

INDEED: HELPING YOUR FIND THE RIGHT JOB (http://www.indeed.com/)

Indeed.com provides its visitors with job seeking results from hundreds of sites and then makes the search results accessible via RSS feeds. Users can subscribe to individual search results, pertaining directly to their search keywords to be notified immediately new jobs are available.

FLICKR: SHARING YOUR LIFE IN PICTURE (http://www.flickr.com/)

Flickr is the most popular photography management and sharing service on the web, enabling end-users to upload their photos and then make them available to their friends, associates and family through a wide assortment of content delivery channels, including RSS. By subscribing to individual Flickr feeds from their users, everyone can have direct access to the latest life experiences from their friends.

RSSCALENDAR: SHARING YOUR EVENTS (http://www.rsscalendar.com/)

rssCalendar.com allows individuals and companies to share their personal or group calendars with the rest of the world, letting everyone that matters know of where and what they are doing next, delivering this information via individual RSS feeds.

COUPONS.COM: SAVINGS TO YOUR DESKTOP (http://www.coupons.com/)

Coupons.com brings the best deals and coupons to internet end-users, helping them save money by discounted shopping. As of late, they also started delivering coupons through RSS feeds, giving their subscribers direct access to their latest offerings.

PUBSUB.COM: TRACKING THE WORLD (http://www.pubsub.com)

PubSub.com is an amazing service that allows you to track practically everything going on around the world by matching your keywords with tens of thousands of online content sources, and enabling you to subscribe to your customized search results through customized RSS feeds.

RSSAUCTION.COM: TRACKING YOUR PURCHASE INTERESTS (http://rssauction.com/)

If you’re a regular eBay user, you certainly want to keep track of new products available, which precisely match your interests. rssAuction.com helps users keep better track of eBay by giving them a tool to first create a comprehensive list of product requirements and then delivering the search result through an RSS feed. As soon as new products matching individual interests appear, the user is notified of that through his RSS aggregator, giving him the ability to start bidding immediately and without having to visit eBay every day to find the right products.

UPCOMING.ORG: KEEPING TRACK OF LOCAL AND SOCIAL EVENTS (http://upcoming.org/)

From the Upcoming.org website: “Upcoming.org is a collaborative event calendar, completely driven by people like you. Enter in the events you’re attending, comment on events entered by others, and syndicate event listings to your own weblog. As Upcoming.org learns more about the events you enjoy, it will suggest new events you never would have heard about.”

FEEDBEEP: THE ULTIMATE “TIME-TO-INFORMATION” TOOL (http://www.feedbeep.com/)

Depending on who you are and your current life situation, many content alerts are critical for you. If you’re looking for a job, you want to know immediately when a new one matching your precise interests is available, and so on. While RSS brings this information to your desktop, that might not be fast enough. Feedbeep.com takes internet content delivery one step further, by empowering users to have their critical content updates delivered from an RSS feed directly to their mobile phones via SMS.

RSS EMPOWERS CONSUMERS

The one thing all of these RSS-based or RSS-empowered services have in common is that they empower consumers.

They empower them by getting the content that matters to them delivered directly to their desktops or online content aggregators, but still giving them the power to unsubscribe within moments of not being satisfied with the content they are receiving.

Even more so, these services empower consumers to create social networks and easily share their information with their friends, family and associates on a large scale.

Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

Rok Hrastnik is the author of »Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS«, acclaimed as the best and most comprehensive guide to RSS for marketers by leading RSS experts. The complete guide on RSS for marketers: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/index.html?src=sa11

Today we see the Internet as a global catalog of information, and the Internet thrives on information. But information, which is fresh and new, is more valuable than out dated content. And that’s the reason why most of the Webmasters try to keep their sites updated.

In the recent years we have seen webmasters trying different methods to keep their content updated. However, a new face of online marketing is gaining popularity all over the web. It’s called RSS and its helping webmasters spread their content all over the web, like wildfire.

RSS (“Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summery”), is widely used to deliver content to your website users without any restriction.

For marketing your website and promoting it to target audience, you need creative strategies that build brand awareness, increase site traffic, and ensure that you are the best around in giving quality content. And RSS lets you do it with conviction.

Using RSS for marketing can help you integrate your website with your other marketing initiatives, develop winning strategies to drive targeted users to your site and in the process increase overall traffic and sales.

RSS today is getting very popular. It has changed the face of online marketing because with this technology webmasters can deliver their new latest content which is published on there website to his/her targeted users and also display it directly on their web page.

RSS Feeds are made in XML format, this XML file can be made very easily all by your self if you’re a programmer, as I’m sure XML is much easier then any other programming language. But if you don’t have any idea how to go about with the programming part, there are websites who can help you in making your own RSS Feed for your website, all you got to do is make an account on there website, they will guide you thorough some sequence of steps and your RSS Feed will be ready to get published.

RSS can increase your website traffic very rapidly here are some benefits listed below:

Stop your messages from getting blocked by strong spam filters

Provide New and Fresh Information on Your website, which encourages users to return to Your website.

Automate content delivery to your website users.

The Content can reach your Targeted Users with out Fail.

Drastically improve your search engine ranking and reach your target audience with ease

Boost your lead generation, easily add new subscribers and zoom past your competition that continues to use email.

As the name “Rich Site Summary” suggest that the RSS Feed is the summary of the actual content, without overwhelming the reader with superfluous details. If the reader is interested and wants additional information they can click on the item in the feed to accessing the website which contains additional details about that feed Item, RSS readers aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy for individuals to quickly scan information contained within each feed. Feeds are generally themed, allowing users to opt-in for the feeds that are of interest to them.

So if your website is not having this new technology, get started and join this new revolution.

Ibrahim Quraishi is the co-founder of http://www.rapidfeeds.com, a free online service that helps anyone deliver targeted content to their subscribers through RSS. Sign Up for your FREE account on his site to put an end to blocked messages and add more subscribers.