Brought to you by Antone Roundy & Gecko Tribe, LLC

7 Ways To Turn RSS Into R$$

by Antone Roundy
Revised 21 January 2008

© 2006-8 Gecko Tribe, LLC

You may distribute this eBook only in its entirety, without any changes, in either
electronic or printed form. You may distribute it free of charge or as a bonus
accompanying a commercial product, but you may not sell it on its own or as the
primary product without prior written consent from the copyright holder.

To receive a free download of CaRP (my RSS to HTML converter script)

and updates to this eBook, subscribe at:

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/subscribe.php
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 2

Index
About the Author....................................................................................... ..3
Chapter #1: SEO using auto-updating website content.............................4
Tip #1: Use relevant feeds...............................................................4
Tip #2: Don't use JavaScript feeds...................................................5
Tip #3: Use “semantic markup” to emphasize keywords.................5
Chapter #2: Read RSS feeds yourself........................................................8
Chapter #3: Publish your own feeds........................................................10
Chapter #4: Where will the revenue come from?.....................................13
Method #1: Use feeds to get your name out and build goodwill. . .13
Method #2: Use feeds to get inbound links for SEO purposes......13
Tip #1: Keep your feed focused on one topic.......................14
Tip #2: Publish only interesting information.......................14
Tip #3: Publish often............................................................14
Tip #4: Write well................................................................14
Tip #5: Publish summary instead of full-content feeds........15
Tip #6: Tell people how to syndicate your feed...................15
Tip #7: Give explicit permission to syndicate your feed......15
Tip #8: Don't put ads in your feed.......................................15
Tip #9: Don't offer a JavaScript version of your feed..........15
Method #3: Drive traffic to your website, and advertise there......16
Method #4: Require payment for access to the feed.....................16
Method #5: Put advertising in the feed.........................................16
Chapter #5: Don't forget to display your own feeds on your site.............18
Chapter #6: Use RSS together with other communication methods.......20
Chapter #7: RSS Ethics............................................................................22
This Document & The Gecko Tribe Affiliate Program..............................24
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 3

About the Author:

Antone Roundy has been
programming computers since
before the invention of the IBM
PC, when he was introduced to
the TRS-80 in grade school.

He has been working with

RSS feeds since 2002, when he
built the first precursor to CaRP (an RSS to HTML converter) for
use on his own websites and began distributing it for free.

As comments and suggestions came in and features were

added, the “Caching RSS Parser” was officially named “CaRP”,
and a commercial version was created. Since then, Antone's RSS-
related tools have grown to become a core part of his business.

Through his work on CaRP and other RSS tools, Antone

became aware of shortcomings in the RSS format and got
involved in the creation of the similar Atom format. He
participated actively in the IETF Atom Publishing Format and
Protocol Working Group until “Atom 1.0” was finalized, and
continues to comment from time to time on other working group
discussions.

Antone now publishes a variety of tools and websites for

webmasters and internet marketers.
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 4

SEO Using Auto-Updating

Website Content

Welcome! Thank you for joining me in this mini-course on making money

using RSS feeds. I hope that you'll be able to apply a few of the lessons I've
learned over the years to help your websites and businesses grow.

A few of the techniques I'm going to cover require an RSS to HTML

converter – a script that takes RSS feeds, turns them into HTML content and
inserts it into your webpages. Naturally, I recommend the one I created, which is
named CaRP. You can purchase CaRP Evolution here or download a free copy of
CaRP SE when you join my mailing list. You'll receive an email with a link to click
to confirm your subscription. When you've done so, you'll be sent to the
download page immediately.

Once you've installed CaRP or your preferred RSS to HTML converter,

you're ready to start using RSS feeds to get auto-updating content for your
website. Fresh, relevant content from RSS feeds is obviously going to look good
to the people who visit your site. But today, I'm going to talk about maximizing
the Search Engine Optimization value of the feeds.

Tip #1: Use relevant feeds

Auto-updating content is an SEO tool in and of itself, because search

engines reward sites that are updated frequently. While it's true that search
engines may consider old content authoritative, especially if lots of sites link to
it, fresh content is also ranked highly because it's current. An added benefit of
frequently updated content is that search engines will visit your site more often,
so when you post new content or links on a page that is frequently updating
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 5

using RSS feeds, they get picked up and indexed faster.

But auto-updating content for its own sake is only the beginning. The first
optimization you need to make is to choose a feed with content that's relevant to
your site. In the early days, most feeds were about technology, politics, or some
lone blogger's personal life. These days, chances are good that someone
(hopefully someone who isn't your competitor!) is publishing a feed more or less
focused on the exact topic of your website. If you find a feed that covers your
site's topic, but also contains irrelevant information, you can use filtering to
remove entries that don't contain the desired keywords. Syndicating a relevant
feed will give you fresh content containing the keywords that you want your
website optimized for.

For links to places where you can find relevant feeds, visit the resources
page for this chapter:

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/chapter-1.php

Tip #2: Don't use JavaScript feeds

Some sites publish their feeds in two formats: RSS and JavaScript. You
can add JavaScript feeds to your site simply by pasting a script tag into your
webpage. Although it's easy and doesn't require an RSS to HTML converter, you
get no SEO benefit at all from JavaScript feeds. Why? Because search engines
don't execute JavaScript, so they don't have any idea what content the script
displays. If all you use is JavaScript feeds, your website will appear static to
search engines. So be sure to use an RSS to HTML converter that integrates the
feed content into the source of your webpage. You can tell whether that's
happening by opening your webpage, selecting "view page source" or a similar
command from your browser menus, and looking for the text of the feed. If you
don't see it, search engines won't either.

Tip #3: Use "semantic markup" to emphasize keywords

First of all, what is "semantic markup". Make that second. First of all,
what is "markup"? Markup in a webpage means HTML tags. Semantic markup
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 6

means HTML tags that indicate some meaning. An example of a non-semantic

tag is the "DIV" tag. It sets off a block of content, but it doesn't say anything
about the meaning or significance of it's content. An example of semantic
markup is the "H1" tag. The content of the "H1" tag is the most significant type
of header on a webpage. When search engines see an H1 tag, they give the
words in the tag lots of extra weight in determining the topic of the page.
Consider the following:

<h1>RSS is good for SEO</h1>

Has your search engine position gone to the dogs?

When a search engine sees that, it's much more likely to think that the
page is about RSS than about dogs, because "RSS" appears in the header or
headline, and "dogs" just appears in the content. If you can tell your RSS to
HTML converter to put your keywords in the right semantic markup tags (like
H1, H2, H3..., B, STRONG, etc.), search engines will consider your site to be
more relevant to those words.

So how do you do it? If you're using CaRP, the following configuration

code will, for example, put the title of each RSS item in an H3 tag (it will put an
<h3> tag "before the item link" and an </h3> tag "after the item link"):

CarpConf('bilink', '<h3>');

CarpConf('ailink', '</h3>');

Assuming the item titles often contain relevant keywords, that will
emphasize your keywords for the search engines. If you have CaRP Evolution,
you can go one step further and, for example, make specific words in the item
description bold using this code (in this case, the word "pets" will be bolded):
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 7

CarpLoadPlugin('replacetext.php');

ReplaceTextConf(1, 'desc', 0, 'pets', '<b>pets</b>');

The resources page for this chapter has a link to the documentation for the
Replace Text plugin:

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/chapter-1.php

Take a few minutes now to find some feeds that are relevant to your
keywords and set up CaRP to display them on your site using semantic markup.
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 8

Read RSS Feeds Yourself

This may be obvious, but it bears mention that if you want to maximize the
value you get from RSS feeds, you need to subscribe to RSS feeds yourself. If
you're not using RSS feeds to keep an eye on what people are saying about your
company or industry, there are resources available that you may not know about
that can help you stay on top of what's happening out there. If you're visiting
webpages multiple times a day to check for new information, you're doing it the
hard way!

Let's talk about feed sources. Initially, the most common source for RSS
feeds was weblogs. Then "serious" news sites got into the game. These days, all
sorts of companies in just about every industry are publishing feeds – CEOs and
other employees are blogging about their companies and industries, marketing
departments are publishing PR feeds, product update information is available
through feeds, etc. If you're not interested in reading the rantings of your
friendly neighborhood blogger, there are many other sources of feeds that you
might be interested in. Search a feed directory, or watch the sites you visit for
the orange XML button or the new subscribe button (you can see it on the
resources page for this chapter) and subscribe to a few feeds.

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/chapter-2.php

Aside from subscribing to feeds from the original publishers, you may want
to look into search-based feeds that are available from sources like Google News,
Technorati, etc. (links available on the resource page). To keep on top of
"serious" news, do a search on Google News or Yahoo! News and then look for
the RSS subscription button or link on the search results page. Subscribe to
those to see new news search results as they're published.
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 9

To read what bloggers are saying about you, your company, or your
competitors, do a search at a site like Technorati, Feedster or DayPop and
subscribe the the RSS results feed (you may need to register and create a search
feed at some sites). If somebody starts ranting or raving about your products on
their blog, you'll want to know about it quickly so that you can respond when
necessary. And remember, customer complaints are just suggestions in disguise
—seek them out rather than insulating yourself from them, and you'll know how
to make more customers happy.

If you're convinced that reading feeds is a good idea but don't have a feed
reader yet, see the resources page for this chapter for my recommendations and
links to a few free and commercial options.

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/chapter-2.php

Get a feed reader if needed and subscribe to a few feeds now before you
put it on the back burner and forget about it.
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 10

Publish Your Own Feeds

Publishing your own feeds does not have to be a painful experience. These
days, any weblogging tool worth the bits it's saved on can generate RSS feeds, as
can many other tools from forums to wikis to CMSs to help desk systems. If you
don't already have a weblog, go to Blogger.com and create one before you get up
from your computer. (Blogger has its limitations, but it certainly gets the job
done, and creating a Blogger weblog is about as easy as falling off a log. You can
switch to a different system later if you decide you need more or different
features.)

If you don't think blogging is for you, let me share my perspective on a few
possible objections:

"I don't have enough to say/enough time to write every day."

That mattered before RSS, but not so much now. Before, if you didn't
write frequently, you'd lose readers because they'd get tired of checking your
site and not finding anything new. But if they subscribe to your blog via RSS,
their feed reader will tell them when you've posted something new without them
having to check all the time. Many readers are subscribed to more feeds than
they can keep up with, so if you only post when you've got something worth
saying, all the better.

"Blogs don't convey the professional image that I want for my business."

Tell that to Jonathan Schwartz (president of Sun Microsystems), Mark

Cuban (owner of the Dallas Mavericks), Robert Lutz (vice chairman of General
Motors), and a lot of other corporate bloggers. Sure, a bad blog will project a
bad image, but by no means is blogging only for greasy haired hackers.
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 11

"Setting up a blog is too much trouble."

Not necessarily. Go to Blogger.com and give it a try – you'll have a blog up

and running in a matter of minutes.

"But Blogspot.com addresses are too unprofessional."

Not a problem – choose "advanced blog setup", and your Blogger-powered

blog can be hosted on your own site.

Assuming you already have or are going to set up a blog, here are a few
ways to build readership:

1) Get listed in blog and RSS directories. The resources page for this
chapter has links to directories, directories of directories, and tools that can help
you submit your blog to multiple directories at once.

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/chapter-3.php

2) Put "autodiscovery links" in your webpages (instructions below). When

an autodiscovery link is seen by an RSS-aware web browser, it shows a button or
some other user interface element telling the user that there is a feed associated
with the webpage. As of this writing, the majority of web browsers are not RSS-
aware, but when Microsoft releases the next version of Internet Explorer, that
will change. Autodiscovery links are also used by some feed readers when they
are pointed to a webpage to subscribe to the related feed.

Autodiscovery links are small pieces of HTML code which go in the HEAD
section of your webpage. Here's an example:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS feed"

href="http://example.com/feed.rss" />

If your feed is in RSS format, change the "href" and optionally "title"
attributes and leave "rel" and "type" as they are. If your feed is in Atom format,
also change "type" to "application/atom+xml".

3) Link to your feed from your webpage using either the orange XML icon
or the new subscribe icon (which will be used by various web browsers in the
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 12

future). Both icons can be seen on the resources page for this chapter.

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/chapter-3.php

4) Post replies on weblogs that you read with links to relevant entries in
your weblog. Make your weblog part of the conversation.

If you don't have a weblog yet, go to Blogger.com now and set one up.
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 13

Where Will The Revenue

Come From?

It's time for the really fun part of this eBook: let's talk about exactly how
RSS feeds make money.

Making money with RSS isn't all that different from making money with
any other communication medium, but there are a few unique opportunities and
considerations to keep in mind. Here are a few approaches you might take.

Method #1: Use feeds to get your name out and build goodwill

You might decide not to use feeds to make money directly, but to keep your
business in peoples' minds and provide useful information. The next time your
readers are shopping in your market, they'll be more likely to think of you, and
more inclined to buy from you. If you're not concerned about whether readers
view your content via your feed or your website, you might consider publishing
full content feeds (feeds containing all of the content found on the webpage they
link to) rather than using summary feeds to drive traffic to your website.

Personally, I'd rather make money more directly! The good news is that
these methods aren't all mutually exclusive.

Method #2: Use feeds to get inbound links for SEO purposes
Inbound links are an absolute must for search engine optimization, so you
should ensure that your feeds are optimized to entice other webmasters to
syndicate them (ie. post the feed's content on their websites in HTML format).

If you've studied search engine optimization, you know that there's only so
much you can accomplish by optimizing the content of your webpages. That's
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 14

because, while on-page optimization can tell the search engines what your site is
about, only inbound links tell them how important your site is. Unless you have
the only site in the world covering your particular topic, it needs to be both
relevant to the topic and important (as evidenced by many inbound links) to rank
high in search results. Inbound links are SEO silver, and inbound links from
related sites are pure SEO gold.

How do you maximize the number and value of inbound links generated by
your feed? Here are nine key tips:

Tip #1: Keep your feed focused on one topic. If someone is looking for
a feed use to add content to their site and your feed covers exactly the topic
they're interested in, you'll have a better chance of getting syndicated than if
your feed contains information irrelevant to their site. If you publish information
on a variety of topics, publish multiple feeds, each covering one topic area, either
instead of or in addition to a monolithic feed containing everything.

Tip #2: Publish only interesting information. If the temptation arises

to trade quality for volume, consider this: if someone syndicating your feed
decides that the signal to noise ratio is too high, they may go looking for a better
source.

Tip #3: Publish often. You'll have to figure out for yourself the optimal
balance between this and the previous tip. But keep in mind that if someone is
syndicating your feed to get regularly updated content, they'll be less likely to
look for a different feed if you provide new content regularly. If you can't always
publish regularly, publish anyway, but if you can publish regularly, by all means,
do. If you tend to write in bursts, you might save some of your entries as drafts
when they're first writen, and post them to your blog over time while waiting for
your next burst of inspiration.

Tip #4: Write well. “Well” is, of course, defined in relation to your
subject matter and target audience. If your target audience uses lots of slang,
write with lots of slang. Just don't let your writing style stand between you and
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 15

your target audience. Webmasters want content that speaks to their target
audience.

Tip #5: Publish summary feeds instead of full content feeds. There
are two reasons for doing this. First, most people who syndicate only want to
display a summary of each item, and some webmasters won't know how to make
their RSS to HTML converter truncate the content. Second, there are those who
want to rip off the full content of your site and use it as the sole content of their
site. A summary-only feed won't help them do that.

Tip #6: Tell people how to syndicate your feed. Provide a link from
your website or feed to an RSS to HTML converter like CaRP with a brief note
about what it's for. Become a Gecko Tribe affiliate, and get paid for your
referrals.

Tip #7: Give explicit permission to syndicate your feed. Even among
those who know that it can be done, not everyone will be comfortable
syndicating feeds without the express permission of the publisher. Don't wait for
them to ask—post a note in the feed or on your website giving permission to
syndicate your feed. You may wish to include a condition requiring that they
preserve links back to your site in a search-engine-visible fashion (eg. no use of
JavaScript links or 'rel=”nofollow”').

Tip #8: Don't put ads in your feed. Advertisements, especially banners,
are likely to mess up the formatting of sites on which they're syndicated. And
obviously, other webmasters don't want to display advertisements on their site if
you're going to be the one making money from them. Most webmasters won't
know how to filter the ads out of your feed when syndicating it, so if you include
ads, they'll probably look for another feed instead.

Tip #9: Consider not offering a JavaScript version of your feed. A

JavaScript feed has no SEO value, because it's not visible to search engines. The
tradeoff is that JavaScript feeds are easier for many webmasters to use, so by not
offering a JavaScript feed, your feed might get syndicated on less sites, and thus
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 16

bring in traffic from less sites. You'll need to decide which is more important to
you: the SEO value of being syndicated, or clicks from sites that syndicate you.

Method #3: Use feeds to drive traffic to your website, and advertise there

If your goal is to get people to your website so that you can advertise there,
you'll want to either publish summary feeds or include links to related webpages
on your site in the feed content.

Wherever you put the ads, you might consider a variety of options:
advertising your own products, affiliate links to recommended related products,
and AdSense and other ad networks. If you use CaRP to display feeds on your
site, you can join the Gecko Tribe affiliate program and place affiliate links to
CaRP near the feeds.

Method #4: Require payment for access to the feed

Feeds can be password protected just like web pages. Most feeds are
freely available, but if your feed's content is particularly valuable, you may be
able to get people to pay for access to it. If you sell access to your feeds, you
should consider publishing free feeds too in order to ensure that your audience is
as large as possible. You might publish a less detailed version of the same
information and note that more details are available with a paid subscription.

Method #5: Put advertising in the feed

Although advertising is not nearly so prevalent in feeds as on webpages,

the fact that many high-profile feeds do contain advertising suggests that
readers are willing to subscribe to advertising supported feeds. The resources
page for this chapter has links to a few advertiser networks that you can use to
put advertising in your feeds. If you want to do more work and get a larger
share of the pie, you can of course sell space directly to advertisers.

One point to consider when placing advertising inside your feeds: your
subscribers might be more tolerant of advertising if your feeds contain full
content rather than only excerpts. And some systems like Blogger/Google
AdSense require the feed to contain full content before it can carry advertising.
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 17

If you don't have an account with an advertising network like AdSense,

sign up for one today. You'll find a link to the AdSense signup page on the
resources page for this chapter.

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/chapter-4.php
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 18

Don't Forget To Display

Your Own Feeds On Your Site

This chapter is short, but it covers and important content and linking
technique that's often overlooked: using feeds to move information around your
own website. If you have a weblog, use CaRP or another RSS to HTML
conversion tool to display excerpts from your weblog on your homepage in a
"company news" or other relevant section. It's a great way to make more of your
webpages dynamic while helping your visitors find their way to the content
you're producing.

Before I created CaRP, if I wanted to display content from one part of my

site (eg. a discussion forum) elsewhere on my site, I'd write custom code to query
the database where the content was stored, format it as needed, and display it.
After I had CaRP, if the content source was already producing a feed, I found it
easier to use CaRP to display it than to write the custom code. As an added
bonus, whenever I decided to display different content (for which there was a
feed) in the same spot later, all I had to change was the feed URL, not the
database code.

If you'd like to maintain consistent formatting of your feeds as you display

them in various places on your site, and make it easy to update the formatting all
in once place, CaRP's "themes" feature might be helpful. A link to the themes
documentation can be found on the resources page for this chapter.

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/chapter-5.php

Every once in a while, I find that I need data formatted in a way that isn't
available coming from the RSS feed, and then I'll write the custom database
query and formatting code. But ninety-nine percent of the time, CaRP is the
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 19

quickest and easiest tool for reusing my own content in various parts of my site.
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 20

Use RSS Together With

Other Communication Methods

Some people seem to think that RSS feeds are the holy grail of business
communication tools. It's true that, unlike email, RSS feeds don't get blocked by
spam filters (though I wouldn't be surprised to see filters used soon with search-
based feeds or to remove advertising). And once a feed is published, any number
of people can subscribe to it without your having to track their subscriptions.

But email and other communication methods are far from dead. Case in
point: you're reading either an email or a PDF that you received by email right
now, right? A lot of people use RSS today, and now that all the major web
browsers have RSS feed reading capabilities built in, the number is growing
faster than ever. But a lot of other people still don't use RSS and won't or will
only occasionally in the future. Don't limit your reach by sticking to only one or
two communication media.

Rather than competing with each other, different communication media

are most effective when they support each other. RSS feeds to drive traffic to
websites by publishing teasers in the feed and linking to the website. Websites
drive readers to RSS feeds by publishing RSS subscription buttons and
autodiscovery links. Websites drive traffic to eZines through subscription forms,
and eZines drive traffic back to the web with links to related websites. Also,
delivering the same message through multiple channels increases the probability
of achieving the number of impressions needed to move a potential customer to
action.

If you publish an eZine, you might consider offering the same content via a
blog/RSS feed. You might consider offering weblog readers the option to receive
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 21

new entries by email if they prefer email over RSS readers (or just haven't tried
an RSS reader yet).

While it is possible, by giving each RSS subscriber unique password or

feed URL, to deliver a sequence of messages using RSS, an email
“autoresponder” like the one I use to deliver this eBook also works well. You
might deliver the same content using either or both methods.

Most article directory sites allow you to post your website URL in you
byline. You might consider posting some articles and putting your feed URL
there, especially if you are allowed to include more than one URL.

Finally, since I'm on the topic of cross promotion, I should mention the
URLs for a few of my weblog's category pages. You can find links to the category
feeds under the photograph at the top of each page:

Marketing:

http://WhiteHatCrew.com/blog/category/marketing/

RSS and Atom:

http://antone.geckotribe.com/alpha-gecko/categories/technology/xml/atomrss/

Where do you have the opportunity to cross promote your

communications? Links to some useful tools can be found on the resources page
for this chapter.

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/chapter-6.php
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 22

RSS Ethics

I've discussed how to use RSS feeds to generate VALUE. In closing I'd like
to say a few words about VALUES or ethics.

There are a million ethical ways to make a buck. There are a lot of ethical
ways to make a buck using RSS feeds. Unfortunately, some people seem to
prefer unethical methods. What ethical considerations are there in the use of
RSS, and why shouldn't you cross the line?

Before I get into that, the obligatory disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and
nothing said here should be considered legal advice.

When someone produces content, it is automatically copyrighted, which

means that the publisher has the right to restrict reuse. Most RSS publishers
want people to syndicate, or republish, their content (that's what RSS was
invented for in the first place: “Really Simple Syndication”). But not all do. Here
are a few guidelines to consider when syndicating RSS feeds:

● If a feed states that it's for private use only, please don't syndicate it.

● If the feed contains full content, please don't syndicate the entire articles
without permission – just display the first 500 or so characters and let
people who are interested follow the link to the publisher's site.

● If the feed contains advertising, it may not be intended for syndication. At

the very least, please don't syndicate the full content.

● Please always link to the publisher of any content you syndicate (the link to
the full content may be enough, but you might consider naming the source
too).

● Please don't use feeds as the sole source of content on your site – be sure
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 23

that you're contributing something of value and not just mooching off of
the efforts of others.

● Please don't syndicate "scraped" feeds (feeds generated by third parties)

unless authorized by the original publisher.

If you're thinking of crossing the ethical line (unless you've already gone
over to the dark side, in which case, by all means, cross the line back to the good
side!) consider this: would you rather live in a world full of crooks trying to
mooch off of everyone else (including you) or a world full of honest people who
are all contributing value and generating more wealth and abundance to go
around? I don't know anybody – I don't WANT to know anybody – who'd prefer
the world of crooks.

You might think that the world is full of crooks already and one more isn't
going to make a difference, but ultimately, you're either part of the problem or
part of the solution. Be part of the solution. Don't become what you despise. If
you already are, I hope you can see that there are plenty of ways to prosper
ethically, and that you'll redirect your efforts in ways that make the world a
better place for everyone.

Enough preaching. I hope you've enjoyed this eBook and have learned
some new ways to build your business using RSS feeds. There's no resources
page for this chapter, but you'll find more about ethical internet marketing at:

http://WhiteHatCrew.com/

If you know someone who could benefit from a free copy of CaRP SE or this
eBook, please send this eBook to them or point them to the signup page so that
they can subscribe:

http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/rss-to-dollars/subscribe.php

Thank you and all the best to you,

Antone Roundy
7 Ways to Turn RSS into R$$ Antone Roundy / Gecko Tribe, LLC Page 24

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