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RSS - How to Promote and Profit From Your FeedRSS - How to Promote and Profit From Your Feed

Let me ask you three questions to get you thinking. Does your website offer an RSS feed? Are you promoting your feed effectively? Are you seeing an increase in profits as a result of offering a feed to your visitors?

I'm going to outline several actionable steps you can take to promote your RSS feed both internally on your own website and externally on other websites. Then I'm going to show you a couple of effective programs to generate more profits using your RSS feed. Read what I have to say carefully, and then act on the information. I guarantee you can take it to the bank! I'm not just reiterating what others have said before. I actually acted and performed on my own websites everything I'm about to tell you and the results are awesome.

Promoting your RSS feed effectively requires a two prong approach. Start with examining your own website. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your feed first. Then focus on external promotion second.

The average visitor won't understand what RSS is about, why it would benefit them to use it or how it even works. So there's no point in slapping up the little RSS Syndication logo on your website, linking it to your feed file and hoping people will subscribe. The simple fact is that they won't. You need to spend some time building a page on your website that briefly explains to your visitors what RSS is about and then show them how to use your feed.

Let me show you a solid example. Point your browser to this URL: www.profitgazette.com/syndicate.php On this page of my website I tell my visitors the various ways they can receive my content. Along with subscribing to the newsletter, a visitor is also able to subscribe to the RSS feed. I don't want to overwhelm them so I keep it brief and educate them with four points. "What is RSS? How can I use RSS? How do I get a News Reader? Can I use these feeds on my website?" See also in the top of the left column of that page (and every page on my website) how I give the visitor a quick teaser, mention a benefit to them and give them a link to my "RSS education" page? That's how I get my visitors to discover what RSS is all about. Then if you look in the center near the top of the page you'll see the little orange RSS image which doesn't just link only to my RSS feed file, I actually use a small snippet of JavaScript to make it easy for my visitors to automatically subscribe themselves to my feed with whichever news aggregator they happen to be using. Just mouse over the RSS button on that page to see what I'm talking about. You can download a copy of that JavaScript for free at www.methodize.org/quicksub/

What's next? External feed promotion. There are lots of websites that accept RSS feed submissions. I'm not going to drop a large list of sites into this article but I have put together a large list of them here: www.profitgazette.com/rss-submission-list.php Visit that page when you're ready to submit your RSS feed. I personally submitted my feed to each of those sites and took a brand new website which I own from zero traffic to consistently maintaining an average of 80 unique visitors per day in two weeks from the date of submissions. So that really is a powerful submission list.

Now that you've educated your visitors on how to use your RSS feeds and are well into promoting your feed externally, what about optimizing your feed for the major search engines? Yes I said optimize. Did you know that you can optimize your feed to effectively garner traffic from MSN and Yahoo? Here's how. Do some proper keyword research using WordTracker just like you would when performing a regular SEO campaign. Identify your top 3 key phrases and use them when you write the title and description of your feed inside your RSS file. The search engines will pick up on this and in conjunction with the items inside your RSS file they will rank you accordingly, providing you with an additional stream of traffic you never had before. To alert MSN and Yahoo to the presence of your RSS feed just visit my.msn.com and my.yahoo.com and add your feed to each page. That's all there is too it.

By now you'll probably be asking yourself "How can I make some bucks with my RSS feed?" There are a number of things you can do and programs you can participate in to generate a constant stream of revenue from your feed. Obviously if your website is product/sales oriented you could drop in an advertisement about your products at the end of each item in your feed. You could also apply for the Beta RSS program which Google Adsense is offering to select partners but there is no guarantee of being accepted. Although I have noticed that Google recently updated their Adsense terms of service agreement to include RSS and feed terminology. Perhaps this may mean that the program will come out of Beta soon. See this URL for more information: https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=957 Another search engine which offers publishers the option to earn revenue on ads placed in their RSS feed is Kanoodle. More information about Kanoodle's venture into RSS is here: www.kanoodle.com/about/press_releases/02-28-05.cool

There is so much more to promoting your RSS feed and generating profit from it than what I could possibly hope to cover in an article and it really wouldn't be fair of me to reveal all of the secrets when somebody has already put a lot of hard work and research toward putting them into a paid publication. If you really want to learn all of the top internet marketing strategies for RSS you should purchase a copy of Rok Hrastnik's new eBook, "Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS". I read Rok's book from cover to cover and implemented almost all of what I discovered through him into my websites. The difference is not just noticeable results but a completely amazing increase in exposure and profit margin.

Learn how to do your own online marketing and save money with this free, easy-to-understand web marketing newsletter. Don't waste hours searching for your next, great Internet marketing strategy. Subscribe to The Profit Gazette Weekly Newsletter today.

article source: adzines.com

How An Amish Wood Craft Can Become A Family Heirloom by Freelance Writer -

An Amish wood craft can be the central theme of a bridal shower that will long be remembered as a unique affair. It is often difficult to come up with a motif that will make a bride’s shower one that is different from all the others, so here’s a grand suggestion! Use a beautifully made wooden recipe box as the main component of the event. The bride-to-be will be “showered” with a gift that may become a family heirloom for generations to come. In addition, she will receive many useful and lovely recipes, given to her by dear friends and relatives.

Each guest should be invited to the shower with an invitation that includes a blank recipe card that will later fit perfectly into the box. The invitees will be asked to bring a dish they have made to the event with its corresponding recipe, handwritten on the card. At the bridal shower, the card is inserted into the recipe box. Everyone will get a chance to sample and savor that particular homemade food, as part of the shower’s activities. This theme carries through the entire event, and it also saves the hostess from hours of cooking and baking!

Since the box is one made by an Amish craftsman, the invitation can gently stress that an Amish recipe would a perfect choice to make and record on the card. If an attendee doesn’t have one in her repertoire, she can go online to find innumerable opportunities to make an Amish recipe a family favorite of her own. Then it will become the perfect choice for the shower recipe card. Everything from Amish Friendship Salad, which uses ham, macaroni, carrots, onions, barbeque sauce, and condiments, to Amish Chicken and Corn Soup, which has the delicious ingredients of chicken, onions, carrots, celery, parsley and noodles, can be found. There’s even an old favorite, Amish Chocolate Chip Cookies! Other tempting dishes such as Amish Friendship Bread, Amish Apple Strudel, and Amish Baked Apples, are ideal choices for the recipe box.

Not only is this Amish wood craft giving the bride a cherished gift that she will use her entire adult life, but it can also be a family heirloom that is lovingly given to each generation that follows. As the woman becomes a mother, and shows her daughter, or daughter-in-law, how to prepare certain family favorite foods, that beautiful wooden recipe box, which has taken on the patina of loving handling over the decades, will be the center of a kitchen work table. Children will know it as a magical fountain of yummy foods. Imagine the joy that will be shining on the face of the next bride-to-be, as she is the recipient of this wonderful, everlasting, intergenerational gift!

If a wedding shower is not planned for the near future, the recipe box would make an excellent birthday gift, for bakers and cooks of any household. Instead of using it as the central theme of a wedding shower, it can be the focus of another event, this time a baby shower! It could be given to a mother-to-be, filled with wholesome recipes for baby foods. The possibilities for the gift of an Amish traditional recipe box never end. How about for a young teenager who is turning sweet sixteen? The box could also be a special birthday gift for a young adult who is coming of age at eighteen or even twenty-one. Why not gift a young woman who is starting her own apartment, or graduating from high school or college? This item would also make an ideal farewell party gift to a special friend who is moving away.

The recipe box theme can be expanded at any one of these events to include other Amish wooden crafts. Items such as wooden bowls, rolling pins, and spoons are often handed down from mother to daughter to granddaughter. Not only do they compliment the recipe box in quality, and durability, but also in sentiment. These kitchen tools can invoke beautiful, nostalgic memories of a mother or grandmother, who used the same items to provide sustenance for their families. There is a true nurturing quality that is inherent in the soul of these products. They are family treasures, which are cherished. They have a similarity to prized possessions such as family Bibles.

One might wonder, “Why Amish?” Each wooden piece represents the craftsmanship of an experienced American Amish worker. When one desires finely crafted items made by skilled artisans, who have spent their entire lives working with wood, then the choice needs to be Amish. These American workers know the intrinsic qualities of American woods, including which kinds of wood should be used for kitchen utensils, for recipe boxes, for furniture, etc. In our fast paced society, time usually means money. In contrast, one finds the Amish craftsman, creating at a pace suited to making a perfect product, rather than to a time clock. Quality of workmanship is an ideal as well as a reality to the Amish worker. These items are not made in a foreign factory, but instead, are fashioned by skilled woodworkers here in the United States. High quality American native woods are used to make these products. They are not of the plastic or pressed wood varieties found in discount stores.

So how can an heirloom-quality Amish wood craft be purchased, if one does not live anywhere near Amish country? In years past, someone might have had to travel across a number of U.S. states in order to arrive at an Amish community. Happily, we now have the Internet, and technology has solved that logistical problem. Traditional, well-made Amish crafts can be obtained online. So that wonderful set of wooden bowls with mixing spoons, or that beautifully crafted recipe box, with the lid that closes so perfectly, can all be acquired while sitting in the comfort of one’s own home. The wedding shower, or birthday party, with the recipe box as the central theme can be a definite reality. In order to find a product made by people who do things “the old-fashioned” way, a person actually needs to go to cyber space! One can find there, the world of the Amish people, who craft with true American values, and beliefs, as they make products of lasting, wholesome beauty, suitable to be called family heirlooms.

By a freelance writer sponsored by http://www.amishrecipes.net/ . AmishRecipes.net offers fine crafted, heirloom-quality Amish Wood Crafts: http://www.amishrecipes.net/ . Please link to this site when using this article.

Article Source: How An Amish Wood Craft Can Become A Family Heirloom

How to implement e-business solutions successfully by Andy MacDonald

Getting your business processes online is not an easy job! According to Gartner Group, a renowned research firm, a full 75 percent of all e-business projects fail due to poor planning and unrealistic expectations of new technology. The productivity gains and cost savings promised by e-business solutions are often lost not because of the technology itself but because of improper management of their implementation. In most of the cases, when a massive e-business solution installation goes wrong, the management of the business is to blame. Failure to understand the scale of the project, oversimplification of the project, inappropriate expectations and lack of resource commitment are few of the mistakes made by management that debilitate the implementation and use of the systems.

Pitfalls of E-business solutions installation process

A large distribution company has decided to use a new online supply chain management solution. The people – those who were supposed to use the system – were quite sceptic about the ability of the system, as they did not have enough knowledge and had very little or no training in using a similar system. As a result, it took over a year for the company to bring the solution to its full operation. Productivity suffered severely. The final implementation cost came out to be several times more than initial budget. A large number of companies are reporting to face similar difficulties with the implementation of their e-business solutions.

The problems that occur while a company tries to implement e-business solutions, most likely, include:

Senior managers do not spend enough time and efforts to learn and understand the solutions. As a result, they have no idea how their workers will adapt to this new solution; and fail to set forth quantifiable objectives for them in terms of efficiency and productivity. The end users do not receive required training. As a result, treat the new solution as an added burden rather than a tool to increase efficiency and productivity. In many cases, IT infrastructure is not up-to-date enough and lacks power to support the new solution. Due to inadequate understanding by the management of the e-business solutions that they plan to adopt, often, the time and money allocated to the project are far less than required. Often the advanced Internet based e-business solutions require to be integrated with portion of old systems that the company is presently using, which in turn, sometimes generates software and system incompatibility.

How to avoid pitfalls

E-business solutions are sophisticated systems that encompass significant areas of the company and its relationship with customers. That’s why implementation of these projects should be carried out according to detailed plans.

Preparation

Create a well developed scope. In creating the scope involve all end-users of the solution, not only the technical and business model experts. Get answers to the questions like:

- What is the single most important goal that the company is planning to reach thanks to this solution? - What critical problems the solution is meant to solve? - Are the time and money spent justifies its implementation? - What are the implementation milestones? - How you will know that you have reached those milestones? - Once you got all the relevant people of the company involved in the process, choose an implementation taskforce of experts from all required sections. This team should be responsible for developing the implementation plan. According to this plan assign resources and deadlines. Upon completion of each stage of implementation get senior management involved in order to review the progress.

Education and Training

Education should cover the “why” side of the solution and training the “how” side.

- Identify the people that required getting trained and educated. - Define objectives
- Define training and education criteria and select syllabus - Set the evaluation method - Conduct the actual learning process - Assess their progress

Implementation

Implementation of the solution should take place according to the strict predefined stages.

Upon completion of each stage of implementation get senior management involved in reviewing progress. Conduct reality check!

- How does the solution meet your expectations so far? - Is it doing what it’s supposed to do? - Do you need to revise any of your priorities?

Once the implementation is over, set up a thorough post implementation meeting with the taskforce and the relevant end-users. The important thing here is to identify if everybody involved with the project is satisfied with the result or not.

In order to successfully implement e-business solutions, it is very important that you fully understand the technologies behind it. If require hire a consultant and work closely with her. In the long run, this might save you substantial time and money.

Here are other things to remember:

1. E-business solutions are mere tools. Don’t expect them to radically change everything that you learnt about business processes.

2. E-business solution implementations like any other project require strict step by step project management.

3. Before considering an e-business solution, make sure that there is a sound business need to get it. E-marketplace, Private exchange, Business portal are few of the e-business solutions that help you attracting new customers and markets. These solutions also allow streamlining many of the vital business processes. In your e-business strategy these solutions should be at the top of the list.

4. Keep track of the new technologies and keep an eye to your competitors’ e-business strategies. E-business is an extremely fast moving segment; you should be ready for changes and embrace them whenever it’s necessary.

Andy MacDonald owns and runs his own custom website design company called Swift Media UK which also incorporates intranet design, ecommerce development, affordable website hosting, and also logo design.

Article Source: How to implement e-business solutions successfully

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