This option is of course available with Blogger and WordPress. Do you all have any reservations about allowing other sites to post your content so easily?

I mean, if I allowed all my content to be syndicated, people could make an exact replica of my website and I would be doing all the work.

But on the other end of that sword, it seems like it could be a strong way to garner attention/traffic for my website. My traffic is so weak, I need to do more to get the word out about this website and this seems like a way.

Opinions?

I would highly recommend RSS. There are a couple of obvious downsides such as simply syncing your content onto a different site automatically, but on the whole the technology is very useful.

I find it much easier to subscribe to RSS feeds and then look for updates once a day (in a matter of seconds) than visit a site and waste time checking whether there's anything new.

I do highly recommend you enable/use it

Dan

Hey, I dont usually post my website along with my questions but I think knowing what my site is about is relevant.

Theres already a few websites out there that are like mine (more seem to be popping up recently). None of them with nearly the quality content I have. They might have a couple crappy videos then an ad, and no daily updates.

*ADULT CONTENT WARNING* (No nudity but not safe for work)
WWW .Y_O_U_S_L_U_T_S.NET

remove the underscores duh.

RSS feeds are integral to success. Unless it poses a problem to your site, why not use it to get some more traffic?

I personally think that its a great idea to leave RSS left turned on great way of getting links to your site and getting people to make full use of the content you want people to see..

Kyle I vote to turn the rss on as well. It does help get the word out and allows people to keep up to date with your content without having to visit your site. And that is a good thing.

One thing to do in regards to others republishing your content without your permission. Make sure all your posts link to your other posts. Also use an absolute URL in the href instead of a relative URL. Most of the time when someone grabs your content the links stay in. The links will help the search engines know which site is the original and you get some extra low quality links to your site in the process.

I totally agree with these guys. Taking this risk of someone stealing your work is a risk you have to take in this business I think, especially if you want to help increase the traffic you get. I bet if you copyright your content, or at least make it look that way, it would help deter thieves

i highlyrecommened it

I would partly agree with the RSS idea, but with a qualification: "partial feeds only." People will still read your posts if you don't give them the full thing and they want to read it, and if they don't you've saved some bandwidth on both sides (theirs and yours).

Give them 1, 2, maybe 3 paragraphs and then let them read the full thing if they want to.

I don't think that you should worry about stealing your content. I have not found my content being stolen. However, if you do see it being stolen, add a link to you home page with proper anchor text in the first paragraph of your posts. This way you will at least get a link back to your site.

I'm not sure I agree on the partial feeds. I spent some time looking into this and there are very few (if any) people who prefer you to publish partial feeds. There are many who will not subscribe unless you post a full feed.

A big part of the benefit of rss for the user is they can view your content without visiting your site. Partial feeds force them to visit your site if they want to read your content. Take that away and you take away one of the main benefits of rss. It might seem reasonable to assume they'll just visit your site and look for new content, but more likely they'll just find someone else with similar content that does publish a full feed.

There are very few sites that publish content so indispensable to our lives that we couldn't live without them. You want to make it easy for people to consume your content. RSS makes it easier for people to hear your message. Partial feeds take some of that ease back.

I speak mostly as someone who consumes blogs, etc, but I use RSS all the time. It's so **** easy if you find something you like to just add it to your aggregator.

RSS feeds will help you drive traffic to your site.
You can submit your feeds to feed directories. You can add them some forums like this one.

I can't tell you how many sites I've visited, generally news type sites, looked for the RSS link, even viewed source to try and find it, couldn't find it, and never went back again. It's the only way I will keep "visiting" sites that look like they could be useful on first glance.

Originally Posted by Noobstein

But on the other end of that sword, it seems like it could be a strong way to garner attention/traffic for my website. My traffic is so weak, I need to do more to get the word out about this website and this seems like a way.

I'm going to go ahead and agree with everyone else that you should publish an RSS feed. But the logic above is faulty.

You might get repeat readers through your RSS feed, but you won't find new ones. VG said it best, so there's no need to repeat him. But RSS is a tool to keep people interested, not to get them to your site in the first place. You should still have one from the start because when you manage to pick up a bit of traffic you want to better your chances of holding onto it.

Can you tell how many subscribers your RSS feed has? Are there any webstat programs that can tell me how many people read my RSS feed?

Sorry if the questions are noobish as I dont use RSS.

FeedBurner.

Otherwise, not really. Goog tells you how many they serve, but there are about a billion ways to serve RSS feeds. You could look in your web stats for how many time your feed was called on, but when I visit this site, it checks my feed to update the post under my name. So you'd have to subtract every time that happens (I realize you don't have that turned on - just explainin how it works) plus all the other ways people use RSS that aren't just simply to read your posts. Trouble is, there's no way I know of to find out how many of the 150 hits on my feed were "real" and which were spiders and whatnot.

Originally Posted by Noobstein

This option is of course available with Blogger and WordPress. Do you all have any reservations about allowing other sites to post your content so easily?

I mean, if I allowed all my content to be syndicated, people could make an exact replica of my website and I would be doing all the work.

But on the other end of that sword, it seems like it could be a strong way to garner attention/traffic for my website. My traffic is so weak, I need to do more to get the word out about this website and this seems like a way.

Opinions?

I think its worth it because of the boost in traffic you would get.

Originally Posted by Noobstein

Hey, I dont usually post my website along with my questions but I think knowing what my site is about is relevant.

Theres already a few websites out there that are like mine (more seem to be popping up recently). None of them with nearly the quality content I have. They might have a couple crappy videos then an ad, and no daily updates.

*ADULT CONTENT WARNING* (No nudity but not safe for work)
WWW .Y_O_U_S_L_U_T_S.NET

remove the underscores duh.

I don't disagree with the helpful info given above. But the problem is...
I don't see how an RSS feed is going to help you with that site. There's nothing for it to read.
I checked the first 8 pages of your blog and the only content I saw were youtube videos of
girls "shaking their booties". Not even so much as a post title or a brief description anywhere.

I feel that the benefits of syndication are far more than its negative effects

You should go for it