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What are Blogs?
Having heard the term previously but not having paid much attention most are just to afraid to show their ignorance and ask the question, what is a blog? Lets face it; the term blog does not conjure pleasant images.

Blogs are web logs that are updated regularly, usually on a daily basis. They contain information related to a specific topic. In some cases blogs are used as daily diaries about people’s personal lives, political views, or even as social commentaries. The truth of the matter is that blogs can be shaped into whatever you, the author, want them to be.

Where Did Blogs Come From?
The roots of blogging can be traced back to the mid 1990’s. Who the very first blogger actually was is unclear, as the art of blogging did not really take hold until 1999. The original “weblogs” were link-driven sites with personal commentaries. The very first blogs were human guided Internet web tours. While initially thought of as diaries or online journals, blogs have evolved into the latest fresh web content.
The Future of Blogs
A buzz word in techie circles, “blogging” is the wave of the future. Whether its a fad, or proves to be a new way to communicate with existing and potential customers it deserves at the very least a cursory look.

Why is Blogging Helpful to Businesses or Individuals?
Just as animated .gifs were once cool, blogging is the trendy thing to do. That does not mean that it is not beneficial to businesses. Webmasters struggling to keep fresh, attractive content on their websites to lure visitors back, have found blogs the answer. Content is a necessity for online businesses, both for purposes of being found by search engines but also because it gives visitors a reason to come back.

Now that we have established that blogs are not only trendy but also beneficial to businesses, its important to understand how they can be used to your advantage. We currently manage and update two blogs on a daily basis. The first is our new business blog at:

http://www.notepage.net/blog.htm

This professional business blog allows us the opportunity to tell potential, or existing customers industry news, updates, or generally how mobile or paging software can be used in specific situations to alleviate problems. The bottom line is we control the content. Its updated daily, which increases the chances that search engines will spider on a regular basis and it helps with page rank because it’s been submitted to all the blogging directories. Initially started on a whim we’ve found it beneficial to report tips, tricks or make visitors aware of new regulations related to the mobile or paging industry.

The second blog we manage is at:

http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/blog.html

This blog is less formal and contains marketing tips, or promotional advice for software developers or online marketers. We found that we had overflow from our monthly newsletter. Generating a daily blog would require very little effort and would assist us in creating fresh content which our readers told us was of significant interest.

Blogs & Your Business
The bottom line is you need to determine how a blog will benefit your business, determine a schedule and adhere to it. Let your readers know what to expect and when to expect it. Blogs provide great supplemental content and direct attention to areas of your business that you want to showcase; you direct the content but let your readers guide you.

Creating a Blog
There are numerous online tools that can be used to create a blog. We found that because of security concerns, it would just be best to use a standard html program. In our case we used Dreamweaver and create daily posts. Its really not much more complicated than typing an email. The content is then sent via FTP to a web server. If you want to test the waters there are online web-based tool that helps you publish to the web instantly. The most popular web based tool is likely Blogger http://www.blogger.com.

Other Advantages to Blogs
While you may initially create a blog for your existing customers, you may find that you can attract new customers by illustrating your expertise in a specific field. There are numerous websites that act as “blog search engines”, be sure to submit your sites to these websites to increase your exposure. This will also help with your page rank and possibly increase the likelihood you will receive decent ranking with Google. You can also create an RSS feed in order to syndicate blog content and gain additional exposure.

 

RSS: The Amazing Profit Potential

All e-mail marketers are experiencing the e-mail delivery problem, hoping that just somehow our messages are going to reach our customers and subscribers this time … and then hoping that they’re going to open them, instead of mistaking them for spam.

The reality usually hits us hard. While e-mail is still the primary and most important internet marketing tool, we need to start using other complimentary tools to get our content delivered.

Most important among them is RSS (Real Simple Syndication), which gets your content directly in front of your readers, without having to »face« any filters along the way.

And it’s easy and even free to use…

The marketing and profit potential of RSS is, simply said, quite amazing. It’s not just good for blogs, and it’s certainly much more than »just another« way of getting your content to your readers. And it’s just reaching the tipping point. There are still only »a few« RSS publishers and RSS usage is growing every day. This is your best chance to get on the wave… To get you started, here’s a quick overview of what RSS can do for your internet business…

1. GETTING YOUR CONTENT DELIVERED
AOL blocks about 75% of the 2 billion e-mail messages they receive daily, and on the average, over 64,7% of all the business e-mail you send is not even opened, let alone read. These two facts are destroying your internet business. But fortunately, RSS has a solution. It gets your content delivered directly in front of your subscribers, prospects and customers, whenever you want and how often you want. In essence, it means that 100% of your marketing messages are delivered to your RSS subscribers, and that’s 100% of possibilities to make the sale and improve the relationship.

2. IMPROVING YOUR SEARCH ENGINE RANKINGS
Traffic is the life-blood of every internet business, and RSS makes improving search engine rankings a breeze. Combined with special web sites, called »blogsites« (advanced blogs), RSS has been demonstrated to bring total newcomers to the market to #1 search positions for their selected keywords, and that without any costs whatsoever. And it’s easy. All it takes is publishing an RSS feed, submitting it to the right places, keeping it updated and using some other little known but easy techniques.

3. GENERATING AMAZING NEW TRAFFIC
But the traditional search engines are not everything that RSS »offers«. Far from it. There are now more than 100 search engines and directories that specialize in aggregating content from RSS feeds. Getting in to them is easy, and each of them will provide you with new »spending« traffic.

4. GETTING YOUR CONTENT PUBLISHED ON OTHER WEB SITES
The traffic doesn’t stop here. RSS makes it easy to publish your content on other web sites, which creates additional exposure and more importantly, brings you new targeted customers.

5. DISCOVERING NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES
But it’s really all about the new business opportunities that didn’t even exist before RSS became popular. Most of these haven’t even been discovered by the majority of marketers yet. We’re talking about new and effective ways of getting new content to your readers, content that will make them buy. Just think in terms of easily delivering daily or even hourly content updates, coupons, customized product updates, audio content (podcasting), video content (videocasting), whitepapers and free reports, and so on.

6. GETTING MORE SUBSCRIBERS MORE EASILY
Because RSS is so fundamentally different than e-mail, getting more subscribers is easy as 1-2-3. The profit potential is quite amazing: just imagine converting more than 50% more of your visitors in to e-zine subscribers…

And much much more…

And the list doesn’t stop here by a long shot. RSS feeds also make for an excellent affiliate marketing tool and help you get the most out of your affiliates, and so on. With this many profit generating possibilities, the even greater benefit is that most marketers haven’t even touched them yet. You can be one of the first, today.

 

Profiting from RSS Feeds

Publishers are evaluating options and determining how they can profit from RSS feeds. The two obvious contenders that publishers are considering to profit from their RSS feeds are: subscription RSS feeds and RSS feed advertisements.

Subscriptions.
Subscription feeds are designed so that subscription fees are charged for unique quality content. Publisher include teaser copy in the RSS feed and readers have to purchase a subscription to see the content in its entirety. The New York Times was the first to introduce the subscription model. Initially the NY Times faced some resentment from users who had become accustom to free RSS based content, but ultimately consumers realize that businesses must achieve profits in order to continue.

The greater the value of the content contained in the feed and the uniqueness of the content will determine the success of subscription based feeds. Simply put, if readers can obtain the same quality and quantity of content from an alternative free source they will. Not unlike magazines, if the content the publisher is providing is unique and valuable, the subscription model will flourish.

Advertisements.
The web has undergone a number of revisions to online advertising models. Banner ads, once an effective way to generate valuable leads are screened or filtered by most novice users. Text ads have become common place and are far less effective than they once were, advertising in RSS feeds was a natural step for online advertisers.

Contextual advertisements or advertisements that relate to the webpage or RSS feed’s content, achieve the highest rate of success. As a result both advertisers and content providers should critically evaluate advertisement placement systems to determine which system produces the highest relevance in contextually based advertisements.

Google AdSense provides contextually relevant ads while Pheedo provides related category feeds. Publishers need to determine which model will produce advertisements that are relevant to the RSS feed’s content and actionable by feed readers.

Hybrid Advertisements.
Other hybrid alternatives for profiting from RSS feeds include optionally giving subscribers the choice. A small fee for many might give subscribers the option to pay for the feed ad-free or view advertisements in the feed. The business model is reminiscent of adware in its infancy where users could use software for an unlimited amount of time. The software had imbedded advertisements and publishers were compensated for ad impressions or click-throughs. If users preferred an ad free version of the software they could purchase a registered copy that would remove the imbedded advertisements.

More on Advertising in Feeds with a comparison of ad serving technologies.
http://www.feedforall.com/advertising-in-rss.htm

Advertising online is constantly evolving. Both content publishers and advertisers are adapting and evaluating new advertising models. RSS feed subscriptions and advertising are merely a step in the evolution of online advertising. Knowing your audience will help publishers determine the most effective model for profiting from content contained in an RSS feed.

 

Daily more and more realtors are turning to RSS as a tool to market homes for sale. The growing RSS phenomenon in the realty market makes perfect sense. Unlike email RSS feeds have a 100% delivery rate. In addition the costs involved in creating and managing an RSS feed are insignificant when compared to the print advertising Realtors spend on each week. Imagine the amount spent each week to promote various properties in circulars and weekly newspapers, compared to the costs associated with updating and managing an RSS feed.How it Works:

Once you have constructed an RSS feed, you will need to transfer the feed to your server. This can be done using a standard FTP client (if it is not built into the feed creation software). The feed is usually placed in the domain’s root directory like this: http://www.mydomain.com/nameoffeed.xml or a subdirectory like this http://www.mydomain.com/rss/nameoffeed.xml.