For the past few years we’ve see the rapidly growing rise of RSS. For those of you who are not familiar with RSS, it stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Essentially it’s a way for websites of all kinds to publish news or information easily, giving the reader access to great information quickly. I am quite familiar with using RSS technology as an entrepreneur and as a user. In fact, at one point I was called an “RSS Evangelist!” I created one of the first sites to combine RSS and Blogging. The site, which I created for $100, was sold one year after its release to a Japanese company for 10k. Not a bad investment if you ask me! Today’s post today will focus on the growth of RSS and it’s rise as an online marketing tool that you can’t afford to skip over.I want to discuss how RSS feeds are fueling a new generation of Internet Marketing. I’m a firm believer that in the coming days, months, and years we’re going to see RSS grow tremendously. For all of us interested in online marketing, it makes sense that we become familiar with RSS and learn how to embrace it as a marketing strategy.
The more I thought about this topic and the more research I did, it became increasingly apparent that if you’re starting a web or online business without using RSS you may already be missing out.
In terms of online marketing, what I really like about RSS, is the fact that it’s an opt-in technology. In other words, if I want your news I simply choose to receive it. It’s very similar to building an opt-in email list. Realistically email is becoming an older and less reliable means of delivering your message. We’re all sick and tried of spam and many of us have become reluctant to share our email addresses with anyone. In no way am I saying that email is dead and RSS is taking its place. My point is that email has become less of the magic marketing tool it used to be.
RSS says that what you’re offering is quality information. Here is how it differs from traditional email based marketing. In email-based marketing your goal is to capture email addresses of potential customers through what’s typically been called a “squeeze page.” The process of creating your own squeeze page is quite simple and I’ll teach you how below.
4 Step Process to Creating Profit Producing “Squeeze Pages”
1) Create something you will give away. This can be anything. Such as an e-book, special report, secret lessons etc. etc.
2) Create a “squeeze page” using a simple sales tactic. “Sign up for my email list and you can have my digital product totally free, no strings attached.”
3) The email subscriber enters their email. You then could also send the subscriber to a page and possibly try to up-sell them. Your chances of getting them to bite are fairly good because now you’re not only offering your free product but now for only a few extra bucks something even bigger and better!
4) Using the supplied email address, emails are delivered through an autoresponder which has been preset in advance (The well-known marketers aren’t actually emailing you personally). The emails will come daily, weekly, monthly and will be used to take you to new sites, sell new products and garnish new sales.
Many marketers will call email marketing a form of “relationship building.” That’s just crap! They have one goal and that’s to get money out of the consumers wallet. As I said earlier, many people signing up to these lists have lost trust opt-in email marketing. With RSS what you’re essentially saying is “what I’m delivering is quality and It’s totally up to you if you want it!” And that’s the beauty of it. Where with email marketing I’ve unsubscribed from email lists only to keep receiving annoying emails! Not only has the marketer ticked me off but has also lost me as a future customer. With RSS, if I don’t want your information anymore I just simply remove the feed from my RSS reader. RSS will force you to be a better marketer.
OK so my top 3 reasons to embrace RSS are found below.
1) Prompt, easy, reliable delivery of your content to your subscribers.
2) RSS Feeds can be easily added and synchronized over hundreds of websites thus increasing the traffic flow and links back to your website.
3) No more use of lousy, pushy sales tactics. Deliver quality information to your users and they will continue to subscribe and perhaps buy products from you.
I hope you enjoyed this little article today. I’ll be speaking much more on RSS in the future and hope many of you start to look for new and exciting ways to use RSS to build income online.
[tags] rss, marketing, ecommerce, home business, internet marketing [/tags]
