What is RSS?
============

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it is a way of
allowing your blog visitors to have your blog posts automatically
delivered using a method of their choice rather than having to
manually visit your web page every day to check for updates. This
is particularly helpful when somebody reads many blogs as they can
use a tool called an RSS reader to read all of those blogs in one
place.

Each blog publishes a unique URL which is the RSS feed and this is
what your visitors will need to subscribe to your blog using RSS.
The good news is that all of the blog platforms including WordPress
all have the RSS technology built in so there is very little for
you to do. In fact, if you have chosen your theme well (see lesson
6) then the chances are that you have nothing to do at all.

What you should look for is that the RSS icon is prominently
displayed in the top part of your blog theme. If the reader has to
scroll to see it, pick another one. Make sure the icon is fairly
large and prominent. Basically, you want to ensure that your
reader's eye is drawn towards it. If it is hidden away then it
won't get used.

Take a look at my blog:

http://www.caroline-middlebrook.com/blog/

In the right hand sidebar, just below the large triple-header
section is a rather large orange square button underneath a heading
that says "Get Updates To Caroline's Blog". Most themes will
already have a section like this setup for you and if that's the
case then you're done. Notice that I am using a 3D version of the
RSS icon and you can now find all sorts of varieties of them now.
Check out this amazing list of free RSS icons:

http://www.bloggingtips.com/2008/11/06/free-rss-icon-list/

Full V Partial Feeds
====================

RSS has a feature that allows just a snippet of your post to be
published to your RSS feed and if a reader wants to read the full
entry then they must click through to your website to continue
reading. By default, WordPress is setup to publish full feeds which
means that your entire post is published to the feed.

To check what setting you are on, from your WordPress Dashboard
click on 'Settings' and then 'Reading'.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both methods. If you
provide a full text feed it means that your reader doesn't ever
need to visit your website again - they can get all of your
material directly through their feed reader. Some webmasters don't
like this because it means that those people won't see their ads
that they have on their site. However, all that has changed now as
Google has setup a system to allow ads to be embedded directly in
your feed and I will be discussing that in a later edition.

Now there is something to understand about RSS readers - these are
people who understand the Internet, they know what RSS is, they
have chosen their RSS reader, they have decided to subscribe to
your feed because they want to hear what you have to say and so
they are far less likely to click on an ad than somebody who
arrived at your website from a search engine. Also, these people
are hungry for information which is why they are using RSS in the
first place.

Using an RSS reader allows them to read all their chosen blogs nice
and quickly without having to navigate around a bunch of websites.
If you make your RSS feed partial in order to force the reader to
click through to your site, you are likely to find that many of
your readers simply don't bother to click and may even unsubscribe.
In other words - your content does not get read.

My recommendation is that if you are growing a social blog where
you want to build up an audience of loyal readers who read every
word you say then make the feed full. If you are creating a
commercial blog which is heavily monetized and you are not so
bothered about readership then make it a partial feed.

However, the best revenue from your blog does not come from on-page
ads! When you learn to use your blog to launch much bigger revenue
streams then it doesn't matter if people read your content through
your RSS feed or your webpage so for nearly all cases I would
recommend a full feed. Later lessons cover these revenue streams
in-depth!

Using Feedburner
================

If you use the WordPress theme unchanged then there is nothing you
need to do in order to allow people to subscribe to your feed but
you have no way of knowing how many people have subscribed. If you
care about your subscriber number and want to be able to track it
then the Feedburner service is for you. Here is the link:

http://www.feedburner.com/

Feedburner is a completely free service which is run by Google and
it is extremely easy to setup. Once you have signed up all you need
to do is to give Feedburner the url of your original blog feed and
it will create a new Feedburner url for you. Then you edit your
WordPress theme to use this URL instead.

This is one thing that I did not cover in my videos because RSS is
not necessary when building niche sites. Thankfully, my friend Yaro
Starak has also made some free videos about setting up blogs which
are also completely free. He has several on topics that I have also
covered but his video number 9 explains what RSS is and video 10
shows you how to integrate with Feedburner. Click the link below
for the download page:

http://tinyurl.com/6jx5jm

Google Analytics
================

Google Analytics is a nice piece of software that allows you to
track all kinds of stats about your website such as how much
traffic you have had, what keywords are used to find you, other
links that point to you, the location of your visitors and a lot
more. It's damn good software and it's completely free! Here's the
link:

http://www.google.com/analytics/

Once you have signed up you will need to add a website profile for
your blog. All you need to do here is put in the url of your blog
and perhaps set your time zone if you want. You will then be shown
some code that you need to display on your pages - just click on
the code to copy it to the clipboard.

To put the code onto your WordPress blog, you can do it manually
but that involves editing your theme files and if you change themes
you will have to do it again. Instead, I recommend the following
WordPress plugin which manages your Analytics for you:

http://www.semiologic.com/software/marketing/google-analytics/

The download page above has full instructions on how to use the
plugin so I don't need to repeat it here.

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I teach everyone free, how to Make Money with Free Blogs at my new website www.makemoneybanc.blogspot.com.