Making money with RSS FeedsWritten by Sandra Stammberger
First it was banner ads, then Google AdSense and now, latest way to make money on your web site could very well be RSS feeds. Say what? I said: RSS is hot and you should be using it to drive eyeballs to your site. Here's how it works:Depending upon who you ask, RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary". Regardless of what you call it, RSS is a way to automatically publish (syndicate) someone else's content on your web site. Now don't worry, that's not same as stealing someone else's content. There is nothing illegal about using RSS feeds. In fact, publisher of content wants you to have it show up on your site and that's why he or she makes it available as an RSS feed to begin with. So what's in it for all parties concerned? Using RSS is a win-win for both publisher of content, who gets their name out to potentially millions of sites and you, web site owner who is pulling content onto your site. Content, by way, means anything that a publisher decides it means. Typical content includes news headlines, new product update notices, blog summaries and lots of other stuff. It's "content" portion of equation that's good news for you. Show me money One of best features of hosting RSS feeds is that it gives your site an endless source of freshly updated and relevant content. This content acts as natural search engine spider bait which they will fill their little tummies on and come back for more every day. Their appetite for fresh content keep your rankings up.
| | The Power of Topical Search EnginesWritten by S. Housley
What are Topical Search Engines? Simply put, topical search engines are search engines focused on a specific industry, sector or topic. While many marketers are scrambling for links, any links, an area that is often overlooked is topic-specific search engines. What many don't realize is that these engines do produce traffic, and they often contain traffic that is very targeted. Anyone who has taken time to analyze weblogs and track sales sources will likely see that targeted traffic converts at a significantly higher rate than non-targeted traffic. A savvy online marketer realizes that often, quality of visitor is far more important than quantity of visitors. Web marketers should focus their energies on attracting targeted traffic whenever possible. For example, if you sell saddles, advertising on a site related to horses or advertising on a topical search engine like http://www.horse-stall.net will bring significantly more sales than advertising on a generic web site or search engine. Niche engines are considerably smaller than general search engines but they can still be quite lucrative. The small size of a niche or topic-specific engine ensures that there are few competitors, and advertisers are generally willing to pay a little more for focused traffic. Advertisers appreciate unique benefit of reaching a very targeted audience who have a higher likelihood of purchasing their product or service. As a result, topic-specific search engines and directories are a burgeoning market. There is far less competition in niche directories and dominating a specific market segment and establishing brand recognition is significantly easier. It is virtual suicide to attempt to compete with behemoth search engines like Google. Web-surfers are interested in simplicity and efficiency, which translates to as few clicks as possible. This is an area where Google really cannot compete with a topic-specific search engine. Creating a simple, clear navigational structure of related content while cross-promoting related products or services will increase site's value.
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