Seasoned Marketer

Considering it’s been suggested that only 15 – 20% of the population actually knows what a feed is, I doubt few people know that you can make money from your feeds.

So first of all, when we are talking about feeds, we are usually talking about RSS feeds these days.  And all the blogs out there have the capacity for generate a ‘feed’.  A feed is a way to update any subscribers to your feed via the use of feed readers.

Let’s say you have a blog about Popular Musicians. And you post a new article about a band coming to your area.  What happens is that article updates your RSS feed and feed readers are often times setup to ‘check’ feeds every 15 minutes or so.  It’s kind of like email, except with blog content instead of  a personalized email.  And everyone who is subscribed to your feed will get that update via their feed reader.

There are 3 easy to use and popular feed readers out there.  Internet Explorer 8 has a built in feed reader, Firefox has a built in feed reader and I like feed demon – a free desktop feed reader.  You can easily to subscribe to a sites ‘feed’ if when you go to your favorite site and see that orange ‘feed’ icon. If you click on that, then you can subscribe to that feed.

Reading your feed is easy, for example, with IE 8, all you have to do is go to your “favorites’ and click on ‘feeds’ and you’ll see all the feeds you are subscribed to.

Now, if you have a blog of your own, or a site with an RSS feed, you can place Google Ads in your feed and you get paid anytime clicks on one of those ads.  Really, if you have a blog, it doesn’t make any sense not to use Google AdSense for feeds.  It’s a way to build passive income without much work on your part.

To learn more, login into your Google AdSense account and click on ‘Ad Setup’ and choose AdSense for feeds.  It’s actually pretty easy and straight forward to use.

Anytime you see this organge icon, that means they have an RSS Feed

Amazingly I have seen statistics that show only about 15% of the online users actually know what RSS is.  And that’s a shame.  Because RSS is a really great thing.  It stands for Really Simple Syndication.  And what that really means is Really Simple Distribution, meaning it’s a way of distributing content to anyone via a usually free subscription method.

So just how does RSS work?

RSS is probably most commonly seen on blogs.  For example, on blogs, there’s usually a button that says ‘subscribe to feed’ or ‘RSS’ or ‘Atom’ somewhere on the page.  Also depending on what browser you are using, anytime you arrive at web page that offers RSS, this orange icon shown to the right will light up in the browser.  You can press that button and it will  ask you if you want to subscribe to that feed.

For example, CNN has an RSS feed that they offer for anyone who wants it and it’s free to subscribe to.  And in order to actually read that RSS feed and make sense of it, you will also need a ‘feed reader’ to maximize your use of the feed.  You can use your browser as an RSS Feed Reader.   If you are using the Firefox browser, you can actually install an RSS Feed Reader.  If you have Microsoft Outlook, you can use that to subscribe and read feeds.

For me personally, I like using a Desktop Feed Reader.  And the one I like the best is FeedDemon.  It’s a free feed reader that installs to your desktop.  And what happens is that anytime a feed gets updated, then you get notified by FeedDemon with the headline in a temporary pop up box (you can change the setting too).   FeedDemon actually goes to each subscribed feed about every 15 minutes and checks for updates to that feed.

For other people, they like to use Google Reader.  Or place those feeds on their Google, Yahoo or Microsoft Home page.  If you look around you’ll see a place where it says “Add a feed”.  And in that case, you’ll need to goto the blog you want to subscribe to, click on the orange button and and copy and paste that feed (often ending in .xml) into iGoogle or My Yahoo, etc.

Why would I want to subscribe to an RSS Feed?

Because anytime that web site gets updated, if you are subscribed to that feed, then you’ll be notified dand you’ll be able to read the latest news from that site.

So for me, I am subscribed to about 50 – 60 feeds and each morning i can browse through te feed headlines and read content that I want to read, instead of what the newspapers want me to read.  It’s a way of customizing what content you want delivered to you and ultimately what you want to spend your time reading.

I have some feeds that are strictly business oriented.  I subscribe to blogs and sites that are in my industry, so I can keep track of the latest changes with little effort.  Other feeds I am subscribed to are for personal reasons, like keeping track of college basketball or whatever.

Most big sites, like CNN or ESPN, have very specific feeds you can join, so you don’t get blasted with more information than you can handle.

So if you aren’t subscribed to any feeds, then I would recommend getting a Feed Reader, or subscribe via your home page to some feeds.  And then you’ll see what I am talking about and pretty soon, you’ll be more on top of things faster and easier than before.