I first discovered RSS when I was blog surfing.  I noticed a lot of sites had an RSS button and I thought, “Cool!  I want to get one, too.”  The only problem was that I didn’t know what RSS was let alone where I could get an RSS button for my site.

A quick search on google told me that RSS stood for Really Simple Syndication - which wasn’t much help to me because RSS still seemed to me to be anything but “simple”.  A couple of years later, this is my understanding of an RSS feed and how you use it:

An RSS feed is just one of various different forms that a website’s data can be presented.  Another popular feed type is called Atom.  A feed allows the website owner to offer readers a method of subscribing to their website so readers can be notified of any new updates without having to visit the website. 

For instance, the feed for this blog is:

http://www.internet-homebusinesses.com/blog/feed

How do you use a feed?

There are various “feed readers” available that allow you to collect the feeds of all the websites you frequent.  For instance, Technorati and Bloglines.  There are many more feed readers available - to find them, just google “feed readers”. Personally, I prefer the layout of Bloglines, but to each his own.

Once you register for an account with a feed reader, you can enter the url of the blog or the feed of the blog that you want to be kept updated on.  The feed reader will then check the blogs that you are subscribed to on a regular basis and notify you of any new updates in a method fairly similar to new messages in your email inbox.  The benefit of this is that you can monitor various blogs without the pain of individually going to each url to check if there have been any new updates since you last visited.  If you still want to look at the site, you can click on the links supplied by your feed reader.

In really simple terms, subscribing to a feed is like taking a subscription out for a magazine or newspaper.  Instead of having to go to the newsagency to buy your paper, you get it home delivered.

How do you set up a feed subscription for your blog?

Some blog designs already have an RSS button that allows your readers to get your feed easily.  If you don’t have that, you can set one up for your own blog or website by using Feedburner.  Just sign up for a free account and follow the instructions.  It’s really simple really.

Email Subscriptions

As it says, an email subscription allows a reader to subscribe to a blog and get new posts for that blog delivered to their inbox.  To set up an email subscription facility for your blog, you can also use Feedburner.  There are also other services that provide email subscription services that you can add to your blog, like Feedblitz.  I like Feedburner because it has some other pretty cool features so it’s like a one stop solution.