———————
I’ve been out of the loop for the last few months as many of my regular readers know. Working on other projects and not wanting to fill up the world wide web with unnecessary ramblings.

Today I want to share an internet marketing strategy that I initially wrote about in Stampede Secret 2.0, and now hear other trainers teaching (which I’m happy about because this is an elegant way for savvy marketers to drive traffic and increase brand awareness within their target markets).

As an aside, I took the Stampede Secret 2.0 package off the market a few months back when I picked up a demanding corporate assignment and couldn’t focus on the marketing or personalized attention some of my users required. However after receiving many email requests for the course I edited the book (with a stronger focus for niche marketers), and have just today put the ebook back for sale at a price more people could afford. (see http://www.stampedesecret.com/web20/guide for more details). Keep in mind that this is a strategy guide – it’s up to you to determine where you implement the strategy and you have to put your thinking cap on to do so. I’m not about to tell you that one site has all the answers for all the markets online.

Back to the original reason for this post…

Andy Beard wrote about this website today (gooruze.com) and touched on the technique I shared with marketers earlier this year – repurposing your blog’s rss feed on Web 2.0 enabled sites.

I first discovered this hugely beneficial technique on the very busy PlugIM website, then again on Squidoo, and then on BlinkBits and now (via Andy’s direction – Gooruze Preview).

Of course there are countless other places to repurpose your feed content (without penalty and niche market specific) to drive traffic and obtain immediate backlinks to your website – those listed above are just some of my favorite, generic, and/or internet marketing, related.

If Gooruze looks to be up your alley, sign up, add your blog’s feed to your profile (and your photo of course), and be eligible to win $10,000 in Adwords clicks during this early-launch phase. And while you’re there, take a page out of Andy’s power user idea – add your StumbleUpon feed to your profile as well! (A link to it is found in your StumbleUpon user page – lower left orange RSS icon).

Drop me a line and let me know your results in 30 days or so!

Laura Childs

Repurposing Your Blog RSS Feed is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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Last month I clicked one button and a new RSS Feed was created for me.

The content was all my own words, and contained my own affiliate links but I didn’t do any extra writing or use any new software to create it.

As if that wasn’t enough of a treat, when I went to promote the feed to the RSS directories two days later I found that 80% of the directories returned this error message to me:

“We already have that RSS Feed URL in our database.”

Okay, so I am getting older, but I’m not senile yet! I knew I hadn’t submitted that feed…

This was just getting too easy.

How did all this happen? What was the magic button I pushed?

It was in my auto-responder account – a service I use to keep in touch with subscribers anyway. But now, due to that one click activation, I have the potential to attract a lot more visitors, a lot more subscribers and much more income as a result.

I didn’t need a blog to do it. (Actually you don’t even need a website!)

All that’s required is an autoresponder account that allows you to not only email your subscribers but also to publish that same content to an RSS Feed on their server. Every time you add a message, the RSS Feed is updated. It doesn’t matter if the links within are to affiliate sites or your own web pages – although I personally prefer to have all links pointing back to my sites.

But here’s where I really love this RSS Feed creation technique…

Not only did I just click one button, one time, to create and maintain my new feed, but I didn’t even need to promote it to the directories. You see this new feed is hosted on the auto-responder’s site and the search engines know about it within days (in my case it was only 2 days).

I’m guessing, but this likely happens for one of two reasons:

• the autoresponder site is so well respected by the search engines and directories it is spidered repeatedly throughout the day for new content, or
• because the autoresponder service is so efficient it automatically promotes my new feed on it’s own,
• or both.

No matter how you slice it this is a huge time saver, a nice bonus to having an autoresponder account, and a great way to draw in some fresh visitors to your links and keep your search engine popularity high.

The two top auto-responder services online are Get Response and Aweber. I’ve used both, they’re both similar in the perks they offer, but I stuck with Aweber because I always receive efficient, personalized emails to my questions, have used the online chat and help function during business hours, and my emails make it to my subscribers.

Now if you need help setting up this auto-create, near perfect auto-submission of a new RSS Feed using your existing content from within your own auto-responder account and you’re using Aweber, don’t hesitate to leave a comment here asking for help – I’ll walk you through it in more detail.

But if you’re using GetResponse, I’ll have to leave you in the hands of their support staff – I haven’t had an account with them for over 6 months and much has changed since then!

Do not sit on this. It will take you less than 5 minutes to click that button and have a new feed that looks after itself! At the very least it provides off-site links (from your autoresponder server to your web pages) always a good strategy for search engine positions!

———————-

Finally, before I leave you for the day….

The ‘other side’ of using your auto-responder account with RSS.

a) you have a blog (any blog, hosted anywhere),
b) you want subscribers,
c) you add a link in your blog,
d) every time you post to your blog, your subscribers receive an email.

You can read more about that on this page Easily Manage Blog Subscribers and Why Not to Use A Plugin For Blog Subscribers

———————

I know this is going to be confusing for some people. Please don’t hesitate to ask for help. An autoresponder account is truly one of the top key ‘tools’ to online income success. Use it to its full potential and you’ll be richly rewarded!

Laura Childs
www.smartzville.com

Easy RSS Feed is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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“My primary aim of purchasing this ebook is getting more traffic to my website. I already have an RSS feed setup on my website. But maybe I am not doing it correctly…”

I’m including my response below because I think it may help many of my readers…

Hello again! Great to hear from you…

I must not have received your last email because I respond to every one I get – I try to do this within 24 hours but it’s been so busy here I’ve not gotten to some within 48 hours – we’ve got a very sick friend we’ve been carting back and forth to the hospital (a 3 hour drive each way), plus Christmas so close now, and my volunteer involvement with the local children – it’s a crazy time of year!)

I had a look at your site’s RSS Feed. It’s script-sound, but you may just need to start submitting the feed url to the RSS directories. The software will do this for you in about 20 minutes to over 50 directories.

However I do have a few advanced tips if you’re interested…

Do you have much knowledge of keyword research?

Basically the same steps you take to determine the best keywords for your website are the same steps you’d take to optimize your rss feed. You’ve got to find and target a highly searched for keyword term or phrase, without a lot of competition, to ensure your feed draws the traffic you desire.

Once you’ve uncovered about 10 sets of good keywords or phrases (this involves some research) , you’ll want to see what kind of RSS competition (not website competition) you’re up against, and then ensure that you are always one step ahead of your competition.

By one step ahead I mean assessing what they do then doing it “one better”.

“One-better” techniques might be:

(a) updating your feed more often,
(b) adding one or two extra keywords in your feed, or
(c) beefing up your total text within the feed.

So, with keywords chosen, here’s how to find the RSS competition…

1. go to yahoo.com
2. without entering anything into the search box at the top of the page just click the Yahoo Search button.
3. you’ll then see a link to Advanced Search
4. pop your keywords into the “Show Results with:” box, then scroll down to the “File Format” selection and choose RSS/XML from the drop down list.
5. scroll back up and click the “Yahoo Search” button.
6. the result you get is yahoo’s top RSS listings for your keywords.

To view any of those top listing’s RSS Feeds simply click on the “View as XML” text link under each listing.

Now, you may never make it to the #1 spot, but if you can be in the top 5 you’re in good stead.

This is where assessing your site’s RSS competition comes in…

Find the site and the site’s feed that you know you can beat. (As a general rule there are sites you’ll likely never beat – the real big shots in your niche. For instance if your site is about home decor you’d be hard pressed to beat out bhg.com, about.com, ivillage.com).

If the top competitors are too fierce for the keywords you have chosen, move down your list of keywords and check out the competition for those keywords.

When you’ve found a site’s RSS feed that you can beat, assess it by asking:

• How often do they update?
• How often do they use the keywords in the text?
• How much content do they provide for each item?

Now just do it “one-better”!

• If they update once a week, you’ll update the items in your feed twice a week.
• If they use the keywords 5 times in the entire feed, you’ll use the keywords 6-8 times. (Test this factor. If their feed reads as a keyword-stuffed feed, then lessen your use of the keyword and see if that works better.)
• If they’re publishing two sentences for every item in the RSS feed, then you’ll have three sentences.

To wrap it up:

a) determine keywords for your site and feed
b) find your competitors
c) assess the competition
d) one-up them

Hope this helps. If you have any questions feel free to enter them by leaving a comment below.

Merry Christmas to All!

Laura Childs

Getting More Traffic from Your RSS Feed is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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It’s a pretty intense topic, with multiple variables so I’ve been holding off. Still I wonder if today is the best day to introduce the topic, with Christmas so close all of our minds are on the season (and not necessarily on making changes to our online businesses).

But this note is of the utmost importance for your business. Why? Well if you’ve studied any course of marketing you’ve likely heard it a million times “The Money Is In The List”.

Of course this isn’t ALL about making money online.

It’s:

• part ‘staying connected with your readers’,
• part ‘website promotion’,
• part ‘keep them coming back’.

How can you accomplish this easily, affordably, and effectively? I’ve tried a number of ways but in the last few weeks I’ve been experimenting on a few other sites (blogs) using my auto-responder account.

Loyal readers can sign up on my blog to receive automatic update notices…

I used to do this with a WordPress plugin (Subscribe2) but I wasn’t really comfortable with the plugin. I always worried about maxxing out my numbers, the database growing too large for me to consistently backup and manage, staying in canSPAM compliance, and other concerns.

The subscription rate for this Marketing Help blog is growing daily. There’s a subscribe box in the right column (on every page) and every three days when you close this blog’s window you’ll notice a pop-up asking in a much more noticable fashion if you’d like to stay in touch. Subscribers sign up, receive a verified opt-in email (that keeps me in compliance), and they’re instantly notified whenever I post a new article here.

The nice part is that not much else is required on my part.

I simply make my post to my blog and my autoresponder account over at Aweber handles the rest. Their system scans this blog’s RSS Feed (every WordPress install has them) and when it finds an update it adds the message to my Broadcast message folder. When I’m ready to send the message out I hit the Queue Now button. (This type of control is far superior to me than using the plugin because sometimes I’ll write 2-3 messages per day on a blog – sometimes I don’t write for weeks) using Queue Now I am in control of when the update is sent out.

How to Set Up A Blog Email Notification List

This is really easy.

1. Login to your auto-responder account.
2. Start a new list (just for your blog subscribers) or select an existing list you want to add blog update notifications to (I don’t suggest this unless you’ve notified your list that you’ll be sending them blog post updates first).
3. Click on the Messages tab.
4. You’ll then see a link to the Feed Broadcaster.
5. Within the Feed Broadcaster page you simply enter in your blog’s RSS feed url (you’ve got one if you’ve got a blog – you might just have to hunt around to find it).

Note: If you’re hosting on blogspot make sure you’re publishing a site feed (in your blog’s control panel click “Settings” then “Site Feed” then ensure the Publish Site Feed option is set to Yes, and you’ll find the Site Feed URL displayed directly below.

Feed Broadcaster is compatible with the following:

1. RSS 0.9 through RSS 1.0
2. RSS 1.0′s modules
3. RSS 2.0
4. Atom

You can make some modifications in how the post is worded (title of the email, date posted, your signature file, etc.) but that’s really all there is to it.

Now every time you post an article to your blog, Aweber will find it and add it to the Broadcast section of your account. When you’re ready to send it out, it’s just one click away!

Laura Childs
More detailed information here: Automated Messages to Your Blog Readers

P.S.: Next I’m going to talk about another way to promote your website in the search engines and across multiple websites using that same auto-responder account, one click to set up, and the messages you’re already sending to subscriber’s anyway.

This is a backwards-compatible technique that:

1. creates a new RSS Feed
2. that you won’t even have to promote
3. AND you’re going to see your content popping up all over the web.

Which will:

• send traffic and,
• search engine positioning goodness,

your way within days (yes, DAYS! with my testing and tracking).

Stay tuned!

P.P.S: The subscribe2 plugin text wasn’t too ‘user-friendly’ and didn’t solicit many visitors, it always read something like the message below. Using my autoresponder account my readers are given a much more descriptive and enticing email to click through to (if you want to see the new and improved messaging, then you should sign up! You can unsubscribe at any time.)

————

You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted.

A new post , ‘Email Lists for Blogs’

You may view the latest post at

http://www.smartzville.com/marketing-help/?p=124

See you on the site!

Laura Childs
laura@smartzville.com

————–

Email Lists for Blogs is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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I sure hope so because as more and more people realize how easy it is to get website traffic, targeted visitors and increase their subscriber count simply due to one little file – the more competition you’re going to have to face.

In the last year I’ve heard many success stories from RSS Feed publishers over at the Stampede Secret website – some are published on the home page, many are not – but nearly every one of them had an ‘aha!’ moment when they realized how incredibly simple and non-labor intensive this type of marketing really is.

Many who are now using RSS to boost their search engine positioning and website traffic are now wondering “What else can we do with RSS?”

That’s one of the reasons pod-casting is becoming so popular…but there’s more…only I don’t want to get ahead of you in this post.

I know a lot of people have been put off by the price Joe Vitale and I are charging for our RSS Feed information and there’s little I can do about that. Those customers, buying an exclusive product, demand and deserve attention – and time, after all, is money. There hasn’t been much that I can do about the high cost of that product and course (unless I want to be overwhelmed answering countless emails for pennies per hour), but I have put together another great deal and I think you’re going to like it.

I’m talking about an ebook that teaches you all you need to know about RSS (and even some stuff you don’t need to know, but might want to know later on) PLUS the software you need to promote your RSS feed to the RSS submission directories.

You can read the entire article I wrote about it here: RSS Feeds for Website Promotion.

Or keep reading…

The eBook is good. Extensive. Complete. You won’t need to email me asking specific marketing questions (which is most of the support I give on Stampede Secret).

The software is simple and will save you hours of time. I mean it. It used to take me well over an hour to promote my RSS Feeds to the RSS submission directories. The software does it for you in less than 15 minutes. You can even do other work while it submits your feed.

The price is unheard of.

Please don’t discount the value of the information or the software due to the low price. I’m selling it at this price to help you. And the fact that it’s part of my mission statement at Smartzville. To get information to people who need it, at the best possible price.

How much you ask? $27. Again, worth 10 times that given the time you’ll save, the resource you’ll have and the power that knowledge will give you when you apply it to your website promotion efforts.

Go now. Get it. Put it to use. And let me know what you think, right here, in public. I know you’re going to be thrilled.

To your RSS Success,

Laura Childs

RSS Feed eBook and Submission Software

RSS Feeds – ebook and software is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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Why? Because it shows you, step by step, how to make Adsense money with blogs. On auto (practically) past setup. The theories, the steps, adsense formatting tactics and more are shared.

Michelle Timothy and Kelvin Hui have written and released their joint project, “How to Profit From AdSense with RSS to Blog.”

Kelvin’s testimonial (on Michelle’s sales page) has been causing many people to email both Michelle and Kelvin more than they can stand. So they wrote a pdf on how Kelvin used R2B to make thousands of dollars.

You’ll get the full story in the report, but you have to be an RSS2BLOG owner to get the report. They show you how to set up a blog and the RSS2BLOG for best results. In eight steps you’ll be ready to go.

If you’re not already using this software to generate your blog and automatically post targeted AdSense ads, plus mixing in some of your own copy, then you’re missing out on a very easy revenue stream.

Click here for the details….

Blog + Automation = Big $ is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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Using RSS Feeds in Blogs

One of my favorite ever RSS software applications – RSStoBlog – sent me a free pdf today (just for being a subscriber) outlining how Kelvin Hui made $600 in his first 2 weeks with the software in Adsense profits alone. It’s not a pitchy report and it’s only for customers as an unadvertised bonus. Thirty five full step-by-step pages with walk-throughs and screen shots. (You can now guess what I’ll be doing with the rest of my week…)

The Point Is…

We’re all gearing up again. The kids are back to school, the beaches are closing, and Christmas is right around the corner. We all need to start making more money with our websites, get higher positions in the search engines (so we can make more sales) and generally just be a lot more efficient about our work. If you’ve been thinking about either one of the programs above I strongly suggest trying them out now, before the prices go up or before you miss out on the extra reports.

To Your Continued Success,

Laura Childs

Secret Bonuses… is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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The software that I told you about back then was released at the same time as a similar tool.

And that ‘other tool’ crashed and burned with some really harsh results for the users. (I warned them, they didn’t listen.)

But the software I told you about sailed on through with shining colors and, in the past two months has even gotten better!

Which is why I’m asking you to look again…

• Look again at a software creator that poured her profits back into her business to give her users (you and I) something even better than could have been imagined.
• Look again at a marketer who answers her emails promptly, who offers refunds in a flash, who helps with installation, and who is happy to share her personal rolodex of contacts and ideas.
• Look again at software that is so versatile, so efficient, and such a time saver.

If you want exceptional and versatile, look again at RSStoBLOG – The Pro Version.

When I downloaded the Pro version I was literally out of commission for contact and site development as I tested all the fantastic new ways this software could be used…

I won’t go into PRO’s new features, Michelle’s sales letter does a fine job of that, instead I hope to show you some of the ways this software can be used to make your job as a website owner or online marketer easier.

I’ve tried to cover all the basics for you…5 different website owner styles and how this software can help with promotion, organization and income generation.

—————————————————–

1. You have an html, php or asp based website, that could use a higher page rank and more traffic.

   Michelle’s going to give you access to a sitemap creator that will crawl your website and provide you with a fully coded script that you’ll cut and
   paste into your RSS2BLOG software.

   What happens next? Your RSS2BLOG will post links to your pages on a free blog (blogger, msn, etc.), and ping the blog crawlers. This is the fast, free and easy method to set up in-bound links to your website – a highly acclaimed search engine optimization technique called ‘blog and ping’.

2. You have a blog that earns you income with google adsense but you don’t always have time to write content and keep it fresh.

   Use RSS2BLOG to post rss feed content available online from a variety of sources to your blog which will keep the search engine spiders and traffic flowing.

3. You have a series of blogs on a variety of topics and have tired of switching hats all day long writing fresh content on so many topics.

   Pre-write your posts per topic for the week, insert them into RSS2BLOG and let the software post and ping for you. I do this with a few of my blogs.

   For instance I have a creativity related blog and a home financing blog. I began every work day writing an article on creative advertising then one for home finances. This can tire a person out pretty quickly…

   Now I write 7 articles on creativity on Monday, and spend the rest of the day on other promotions. On Tuesdays I put on my home financing hat and write 7 posts for that blog. Every day those two sites are posted to with fresh content without concern or interaction on my part.

   Need to spend a day at the beach? Or a week in Orlando? No problem, your sites will be looked after.

4. You want the power of an affiliate site, with a high search engine ranking.

   Now this one is fun…right now you can have access to a number of ‘datafeeds’ from a variety of mechants selling a long list of products.

   Using the videos that Michelle supplies, plus your RSS2BLOG software you set this up to post one item per day (or more, or more often) to your blog complete with price, product image, order link and your embedded affiliate information.

   The search engines love this as your site/blog is being updated every day.

   One key tip here – add a few words of unique content to every product that you’ll post so that your site doesn’t end up being an exact replica of the actual merchant site.

   Michelle will give you an excellent resource to buy these data feeds pre-formatted and ready to go for $19 and up, but you can also grab feeds from
   www.shareasale.com and edit them to your liking. (Editing some merchant feeds can be a pain in the butt, but if you choose to do this yourself you can input your unique content while you format the feed for RSS2BLOG use.

   And, if all that sounds like ‘geek-speak’ don’t worry, Michelle’s audios and documentation will walk you through it.

   Now, I loved the datafeed capabilitiy in version 1, but for some reason I had trouble with it in the PRO version. If this happens to you ask Michelle to send you the old file set to use for datafeed posts.

5. You have a number of related websites with blogs or rss feeds, and spend a large portion of your day promoting or optimizing each site.

   This is where RSS2BLOG use goes into hyper-drive on marketing strategy…

   Set up your RSS2BLOG software to post aritcles from each of your RSS Feed or blog feeds into one centralized ‘hub’ blog.

   Now, instead of promoting your network of sites one at a time, promote the ‘hub blog’.

   Why? The page rank you generate with promotion and optimization of one site, will filter down into all of your websites, and the traffic (real people visiting the ‘hub blog’) will direct itself to each of your sites.

———————————

Finally there is one big plus to the PRO version that I can’t shut up about…
It’s about random posting times. If you saw my earlier RSS2BLOG sites you’d notice that I published like clockwork.

Every day, except Sunday, at 1:40 pm. A big red flag to the search engines that automation is at work. I worked around it by changing those posting times and doing manual posts every so often, but there is no longer a need for that. The PRO version randomizes posting times for you now.

Your Marketing Success Partner!

Laura Childs

p.s. You’ll see on the sales page a link to buy the old version of the software at $100 off. You can take that option if you like, but it is more difficult to set up, has many less features, and a lot of the ‘plus features’ I talk about in this post will not apply. If you’re going to buy the software, buy the Pro version – the current version – you’ll save time and money in the long run, get better results and it is a business expense anyway.

RSStoBLOG – Look Again is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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Made me wonder…perhaps not everyone knows this stuff already.

So let’s talk about it some…

There are many blog services and software and there’s no way I can cover them all, but I will talk about the top three – Google’s blogger (blogspot.com blogs), WordPress and MovableType.

It pains me to write this because so many readers are using ‘blogger’ blogs, but it is the least powerful and least editable of the three and I have serious concerns about the free service now more than ever.

I’ve aggravated some people in the past by speaking my mind and gazing into my crystal ball, so I’ll climb out on a limb again with my thoughts…

Please, if you are running your business using a blogspot hosted blog, start moving out now. Grab a domain name for under $5, a hosting account for less than $5/month, and rebuild that blog on your own domain. Spam blogs are populating the blogspot sphere and less and less credibility is being given to blogs hosted there – by the search engines and by visitors who actually look at urls.

Yes, I do have a few blogger blogs myself but they are not my flagship blogs, they are my testing beds, my research spaces, my aggregators, and I expect little from them other than to boost my page rank a bit and send me the odd visitor…This is too detailed to describe here, just take my word for it, if you’re serious about your blog then give it a home of it’s own.

Here’s what I see…

7 years or so ago when you did a search in yahoo all kinds of freeyellow and homestead and other free hosting sites would come up in the results. Remember back when everyone and his brother had a website with these ‘free’ pages? AND the darn things got hits and visitors and were listed in the search engines! They are all still there – but when was the last time you saw them show up in a search engine listing? Free is fun, but it isn’t always best in the long run.

I’m running out of time today, but I’ll finish off this post regarding Pinging and Blogger blogs first…

1. Blogspot hosted blogs only ping weblogs.com when you add a new posts.
2. Blogspot hosted blogs have the ping command turned off by default!
3. Blogspot hosted blogs do not have an ‘area’ where you can add ping engines.

Already that’s 3 strikes against blogspot.com’s blogs regarding one of the most powerful blogging techniques known to blog publishers.

However, here’s a little you can do to correct this right now…

Turn the ping on…

a) Log into your blogger account at www.blogger.com

b) Click “Change Settings”

c) Click “Publishing”

d) Where it says “Notify Weblogs”, set to “Yes” (and Save Settings)

And PING! for more exposure…

e) Go to www.pingomatic.com every time you add an item to your blog and insert your blog url into the box (you’ve now just pinged 12 of the engines).

More on WordPress and Movable Type next…

My best!

Laura Childs

p.s. for even more exposure and fun, do this as well in blogger from your settings…

Get Your Feed Url…

f) Click “Site Feed”

g) Where it says Publish Site Feed, select “Yes”

h) Copy down the Site Feed Url on that page.

i) and submit that url to the rss directories…

Your Blog’s Ping – Can You Hear It? is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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Here’s the 2005 post…

A number of great tools are hitting the market for blogging power users…

They’re not cheap by any means and each one seems to vary in it’s purpose and flexibility.

These are auto-submitters – posting RSS feed items to a blog – without any interaction on your part, past the initial set up.

This is bound to be a long review so I’ll keep it short as much as I can. If you have specific questions feel free to post them below…or skip down to the Sample Sites resource box below to get a quick 3 click feel for the power of these two programs.

The two auto-posters I’m reviewing are BlogPower and RSS2Blog, they are both $247.

Both have videos on the sales site:

BlogPower’s videos show how to use the software with Directory Generator websites (a $250 extra purchase). This is scaring off a few people as Directory Generator sites are usually quite spammy in appearance and nature. There has been a lot of buzz in the forums lately that DG sites are dropping in income production for site owners as well as losing their coveted search engine placements.

It’s important to note here that BlogPower’s use is not restricted to Directory Generator sites even though they are being showcased on the set up videos. However, you will need to have a website with many pages in place to get good use out of BlogPower software.

RSS2Blog’s video shows how to use the software with Google’s Feeds. Not a good idea since Google frowns upon the practice.

It’s important to note here that RSS2Blog’s use is not restricted to Google Feeds – so don’t let that video or this information prevent you from ordering.

Program Use in General:

BlogPower works best promoting websites that already contain many pages. RSS2Blog has no such restriction.

This is where the two cannot fairly be compared…

• BlogPower is touted as software that will get your website indexed by the search engines quicker.
• While RSS2Blog’s purpose is to gain high rank and post relevant news to a blog, resulting in off-site links and affiliate or Adsense income (dependant on how you set up your blog to earn an income).

It seems that everyone is doing a dance around BlogPower’s effectiveness at getting their new site’s listed in the search engines in 2-3 days. Hmmm…if that’s all the program has going for it I’d say don’t waste your money. You can get your new website indexed by the search engines with a no-cost RSS Feed pointing to a sitemap on your new site. As a matter of fact, save yourself $150 and send me your sitemap url with $100 to my PayPal account. I’ll add your site to my rss feed and get you indexed in less than a day. I did it just last month with a friend of mine’s site – took me 10 minutes – and his site wasn’t even closely related to any of my niche topics!

RSS2Blog does what BlogPower can do in this respect plus a whole lot more. For instance if you build a blog on a free site (i.e., blogger.com, msn space, etc.) and edit the template to link back to your site, you’ll enjoy both the power of offsite links coming in, plus a regularly updated blog that will get high ranks from the search engines. That ‘rank’ will leak into your main site and you should notice a traffic increase as well.

Installation and SetUP…

BlogPower is very slick, polished, and easy to set up by simply following the videos. The most time you’ll spend is trying to figure out your SMTP settings and finding the RSS Feeds to use. By default BlogPower runs on your computer (although a nifty server-side script has now been included) and uses your email account to autopost. If you aren’t online all the time, or if you have a slow system or connection – this may be a problem.

RSS2Blog is also easy but it runs off your web site – whether you are online or not. There are about 4 settings to insert for each installation (blog name, blog url, etc.) and again the most time consuming part is finding RSS Feeds to use. RSS2Blog posts from your website through a cron job. Yeah, that one got me too, and I’m part geek! “What the heck is a cron job?” It turns out that this is very simple – I used an off-site resource to set this up. My added cost is $15/year for 5 websites and I’ve been using it for two weeks now without one glitch. Off site cron jobs are just this – enter three variables onto a webpage – your posting page, the times you want it to run, and if you want to be sent a copy of each post. Done. Dead simple.

How RSS Feed Items Are Handled by the Two…

There is one major difference in the way these two software programs use RSS feeds and this shouldn’t be missed or overlooked.

• BlogPower has you define your feed items during setup for automated posting.
• RSS2Blog has you simply point out the main feed url to grab posts from.

My concern over BlogPower’s way is that most site’s RSS Feeds are consistently being updated. Even in my own feed I completely turn over the content every two weeks. If a BlogPower user was linking to one of my items there’s a pretty good chance they’d end up with a file not found in their software if they weren’t fast enough. RSS2Blog doesn’t have this problem as it grabs items that are currently in the feed you originally pointed to.

What Are These Programs Good For?

As stated above these two programs both submit RSS feed posts to a blog – BlogPower’s main goal is to ensure the search engine spiders end up on your doorstep. RSS2Blog’s main goal is to ensure that the blog it submits to is regularly updated and as a result will get and maintain top page rank, traffic and income (if that’s what you’re after).

So, if you’re consistently launching new sites with many pages BlogPower may be of good use to you. But if you fit into any one of these categories:

• Have an existing blog with good page rank but you’ve lost interest in the topic? Yet you don’t want to shut it down or let it die…
• Want to set up a few automated income streams by having an automatically posted blogs running google adsense?
• Want to set up a content-rich site(s) linking into your existing site, boosting your page rank and traffic?

Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would think twice about this. Whether it’s Adsense income, affiliate income, or boosting traffic and page rank for existing or new sites, RSS2Blog is a winner in my books. And, the bonus alone is worth the cost of the software as audio, transcripts (and my example below) will show you how to use retailer’s datafeeds with RSS2Blog to make easy income by auto posting to a blog.

To Your Continued Online Success!

Laura Childs
www.smartzville.com

—————-

Sample Sites:

* RSS2Blog automatically posting products with affiliate links embedded visit http://country-living.blogspot.com – you’ll see how I use sidebar links to give my new and old niche sites some traffic and page rank, plus earn affiliate income from products regularly updated without my interaction.

* RSS2Blog earning income with Adsense and helping with traffic and page rank using ‘top of page links’ see: http://niche-marketing-news.blogspot.com

* BlogPower blog set up to link back to a Directory Generator site. http://spaces.msn.com/members/fly-fishing/.

————————

Resource Links:

Read more about BlogPower at blogpower.com (and no, I’m not providing a link because I don’t want to be held responsible for you buying and using it in any way).

Read more about RSS2Blog here.

Blog Auto-Poster Show Down… is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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Two new RSS and blogging tools are hitting the scene this week. Either one of these could boost your site’s rank and traffic considerably.

At first blush these two will look the same, but there are some major differences you need to be aware of before you consider clicking that order button.

First of all, should you buy either of these tools?

The answer, whether you have a blog or not, is a definate YES.

If you don’t have a blog in your area of expertise then set one up on blogger and run one of these tools – at the least you’ll gain off-site link points from the search engines. And Adsense income if you’ve signed up for it.

These tools both scan online RSS NewsFeeds and post them to your blog. The outcome is an active, regularly updated blog without a daily ‘hunt and write’ time investment on your part.

If you’re a purist for relevant content for your readers and don’t want to take risks with your search engine ranks read on…

BlogPower vs. RSStoBlog

BlogPower submits a scheduled string of posts. If you think that google or any other search engine won’t see the footprint, then I leave your site’s positioning in your hands.

RSStoBlog mixes up number of posts - this appears more ‘natural’ to the search engines. And, in the upcoming release will also randomize the timing of posts!

BlogPower runs on your desktop. If you have an older machine or a slower connection or for that matter turn your computer off when you’re not working, this could be a problem.

RSStoBlog runs on your server. While you rest, work, or take a vacation, without using up your desktop resources.

I’ll write more on these two powerful programs in a few days, and I’ll do my best to answer any questions you may have (just drop me a note), but I did want to alert you to these tools and try to give you some ‘insider information’ on the major differences in the two.

To read more about RSStoBlog click over to http://www.smartzville.com/automate.htm

To Your Success!

Laura

Automated Posts to Your Blog is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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“What % of the general population RSS-es? Surely only techies or computer literate.”
“Do you think my visitors would have RSS and understand blogs and how to set it all up?”

———————

I think we’re up to 14% of all internet users now reading RSS in some form. It’s climbing every month. And nope, not just techies. My 11 year old has a bloglines account (no installation/set up required) where she performs most of her online searches now for both school and hobbies. She says the results are better than what she gets in google. Not as many spammy garbage pages in the results. She’s computer literate, but not abnormally so. Just an average 11 year old – I know she’s average for 11 in computer literacy because I do a lot of community service at her school.

Your RSS feed will attract your target market if you’ve got the right keywords in place. What is your visitor typing into the search boxes on google and yahoo? Figure that out, use it wisely with some strategy and PRESTO you’ve got targeted traffic. (There’s a report on site-specific keyword strategy relating to RSS feeds in The Stampede Secret Member’s Area for subscribers.)

But, here’s another beauty of having an RSS Feed on your site…Your target market doesn’t necessarily need to have a Bloglines account or an RSS aggregator to discover you as a result of your feed. Your search engine rankings for your keywords will increase due to the feed on your site. Your visitor will find you faster with standard search engine results.

The bottom line is do your keyword research, a 1 hour site strategy, and get posting to your RSS Feed to reach more people in your target market!

Truly,
Laura Childs

RSS Questions… is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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Feedburner and Adsense in RSS topic discussion here…

After all, if you’ve got relevant content, whether it’s in a blog, website or RSS Feed, you should be able to earn some money on the click through.

It’s time to give up trying to control your visitors – no matter what venue they visit. The way I see it people will eventually leave you at some point and if they haven’t bought your product or checked out your recommended service, then you may as well show them relevant ads and make a buck or two on their way out the door.

So here it comes…Adsense in RSS. Still in pre-launch beta and everyone’s really hushed about it.

Feedburner announced yesterday that they now fully support Adsense advertisements (as well as amazon affiliate, yahoo search marketing) in your RSS Feed. If you’re interested in more info and keeping up to date on this new trend add the link to your favorites and check back occassionally.

One trend-setter, back in October 2004, served up Adsense via his RSS Feed and got banned from google as a result. Hmm, sometimes blazing the path isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Now that google has caught up to the movers and shakers perhaps they’ll let him back into the program.

Be careful out there!

Laura Childs
www.smartzville.com

Google Adsense for RSS is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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The best RSS Feed to create for your website is in XML language.

People don’t read XML files in their HTML browser as a rule. They read XML files in software or an online service (i.e., a news aggregator or bloglines.com or my.yahoo.com).

There’s no good reason to run both a blog and a manually created RSS Feed off the same site, especially when you’re creating html pages at the same time! If you’re running a blog (hopefully it isn’t a blogger blog) then an RSS Feed is being generated for you without any interaction on your part (other than consistent posting to your blog). If you’re creating html pages or already have html pages on your website then just add an RSS Feed into the mix pointing to pages on your site.

Do this right and you’ll see many more visitors that fit into your target market on your site.

Adding a new item to your RSS Feed is a 5 minute job and I’m not kidding.

1. Download the software I recommend to make this entire process easier.

   It’s a free 30 day trial. The RSS software has a similar interface to the online tool that you’re using in the member’s area, but is much smoother and there’s no denying that updates to your RSS Feed are far, far more efficient using the software!

2. Each site you own will each have one RSS Feed that will be loaded with your top keywords scattered throughout the text. This is entirely dependant on keyword research and your site strategy.

   You will submit that one RSS Feed to the RSS directories and never think about that horrid task again. The directories will spider your feed from time to time.

3. For the first few weeks, every 3-5 days you will add a new item to your RSS Feed.
4. Further, anytime you add a new html page to your site, you will add a new item to your RSS Feed linking to it. This gives you the advantage of a blog without actually having a blog. The directories will notice the new RSS Item and as a result visit the new HTML page and will add that new HTML page to their directory. Do you see the beauty of this? You are no longer sitting around waiting for google to come by and ‘find’ new pages on your site. Google loves to discover new content on a regular basis. Even if all the new content is simply an RSS item linking to an old page.

And those are my secrets of the day…

Laura Childs
www.smartzville.com

How to RSS…for Newbies is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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This is a gift from Rok over at the Marketing Studies website.

Even if you think you’ve got RSS pegged now, I urge you to at least download and skim it.

And, if the ‘RSS puzzle pieces’ aren’t fitting together for you yet, this book fills in the blanks.

It will answer ‘Why’.

It will answer ‘What’.

It will answer ‘How’.

‘Which’ only takes us to page 11 of 28 information rich text pages and easy to follow flow charts to help you make sense of RSS.

You can read more about Rok in the pdf but here’s what he says about this report…

“Misunderstood by most marketers, overlooked by many end users, it (RSS) has the potential to power the entire internet marketing mix…

“The purpose of this report is to demonstrate just how RSS can help you improve your bottom line and show you how to integrate it within all of your internet marketing and publishing activities.”

Let me know if I can help you with any questions you may have about RSS.

Download this Free RSS Report now.

To Your RSS Success!

It’s all about RSS – Free Top Notch Info is a post from: Make Money Online by Marketing Your Business

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