RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is a method developed to allow webmasters and online publishers to syndicate their contents easily to other webmasters. For example, if you use RSS to publish your ezine, then other webmasters can easily use RSS to display your ezine/content on their website - automatically.

Without RSS, if a webmaster saw an interesting article and wanted to display it on his site, he would need to copy that article and paste it into an HTML file on his own website. This is a very time consuming and tedious process. However, with RSS, all the cutting and pasting can be eliminated and this process can be automated with RSS software.

RSS is very new. The latest wave started in 2004 (although it’s been around since the late 90’s, but was only in use by the real geeks). One news release from summer of 2004 is quoted as saying, “Google is considering renewing support for the popular RSS Web publishing format in some of its services. This marks the latest twist in a burgeoning standards war over technology that could change how people read the news.” Even the giants such as Microsoft, eBay and Yahoo embrace the RSS syndication format.

Yet there are currently many webmasters and zine publishers still doing it the old way. Companies that don't have an RSS approach in place yet might need to reevaluate the way they are doing business. Their competitors will probably have already implemented some level of RSS support in their web sites. An innovative marketing channel has opened up allowing you to market your products and services. With more and more people using RSS, the market potential is endless.

RSS has thus far, proven itself as becoming the preferred method of distributing news and information online. Those in the know are subscribing to RSS feeds to read news online and to receive the latest updates from their preferred publishers. If you publish a newsletter, you now have another conduit to distribute your news to thousands of readers! Who doesn’t want that?

Not only is RSS easy to use, it also affords you free targeted traffic without any additional efforts. In order for your business to be successful, you need traffic to your website, and lots of it. You need to grab a hold of the people who are interested in your products and services. It doesn’t matter how good your products and services are if no one visits your site. One solution to drive traffic to your site is SEO. You can spend countless hours or spend large amounts of your budget to hire a search optimization expert. Or… you can use RSS to glean similar results.

With little effort you can easily add and display your articles in hundreds of websites - automatically! What could be better than automatic feeds while you sleep! You can stop the tedious article submissions. What’s more is with RSS, you’ll be adding fresh, relevant content on your website. Change the content daily if you prefer. It really is simple. Now Yahoo even has a free RSS directory.

So what are you waiting for? Get with the program!

RSS stands for "really simple syndication", and as the name suggests, it is relatively easy to take advantage of RSS to make money.

There are many ways you can profit from RSS data feeds. To begin with, since this is a new technology, most people are afraid to jump in and learn how to take advantage of it. This makes it a great opportunity for you because there is less competition.

In the same way you generate traffic, subscribers and money by writing and submitting articles to article directories, you can do the same thing with RSS feeds.

You simply create your RSS feed and then submit it to the various RSS feed directories.

The links within your feeds need to point back to your websites, affiliate links and opt-in list pages so that you can make money.

On the Internet content is king and webmasters are always on the lookout for free content. Especially nowadays, with the Google Adsense craze, a lot of Internet marketers are creating tons of websites constantly with page generators and free content.

This is why an RSS feed will be picked up and used on lots of different websites, and the smart marketers that use RSS feeds stand to profit wildly from this situation.

Since you will be submitting the RSS feed to directories, it is important to use an attractive title, including related keywords. This way, people looking for content will find it when doing a search in RSS feed directories.

Now that you have a fair understanding of what RSS is, and how you can create your own feed, here are some creative ways to put the power of RSS to work and bring in profits:

1. Syndicate your RSS feed in RSS directories to be picked up by webmasters looking for free content.

2. Insert relevant affiliate links in your RSS feed.

3. Insert links to your websites and opt-in list pages. This way you build up your link popularity and attract traffic to your websites.

4. Sell a product directly using RSS by including your sales letter in the feed.

5. Use RSS data feed content from other authors to create a content site using a page generator. Once the content site is done you can add Adsense and related affiliate links.

These are just a few ideas to get you started with profiting from RSS feeds. With application of this technology you will come up with various other ideas, and profit even more. The key is to take action and differentiate yourself from the majority of Internet marketers, many of whom are afraid to deal with technology at all.

A content management system, or CMS, is a piece of software that makes it easy to create and manage websites. It is very important for a website's content to be frequently refreshed and updated. Fresh content keeps visitors coming back and can improve search engine rankings. However, publishing new content on a regular basis can become complicated if the webmaster has to make a new HTML page each time he adds an article, image, link or other piece of content. Content management systems have been developed to solve this problem.

With a content management system, there is no need to create new HTML pages manually - the CMS does it automatically. The webmaster simply enters the content into a form, clicks a button and the software generates a new web page. A content management system separates the content (e.g. images, text, links, files, etc.) from the layout. When the webmaster sets up a new website he creates a set of templates for the pages. Whenever he adds new content, the pages are automatically laid out based on these pre-defined templates. This may sound complicated, but in most modern content management systems, setting up the templates is simple. The webmaster will probably use an HTML editor like Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web to create templates for the CMS. They contain all the page elements that are common across the whole site like header, footer, logo, and navigation. Spaces are left in the templates for the CMS to insert content when a new page is generated.

Users who are not confident with HTML need not worry - most content management systems offer some ready-made templates that can be used 'out of the box'. Many open source content management systems offer free templates, which have been submitted by their community of users. It is also possible to buy CMS templates from online template stores. Another alternative is to find a designer to build custom templates.

These are the basic principles upon which all content management systems are based. So how do you choose which CMS is right for you? The first thing to establish is the size of your budget. Content management systems range in price from zero up to thousands of dollars. The no-cost end of the market is comprised of the many open source content management systems that are available. At the high end of the market are the custom built enterprise systems used by big corporations.

For the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on the open source options; there are so many CMS products to choose from in this category that there is bound to be one to suit most needs. Open source software has an open license, which means it is free to use and the source code is available for anyone to modify it.

Some of these open source systems are capable of running complex portal websites with lots of dynamic functionality, whilst others are much more simple. It is important to establish the scope of a website before choosing the CMS. Most websites exist simply to publish standard content. For sites like this, a complicated portal CMS is not required. (We will discuss portals in more detail later.)

Learning how to use a portal CMS can be quite a demanding task because of the complexity of these systems. For most simple websites there is no point in going through this learning process. Instead choose a simpler CMS that will require far less time and technical skill to operate. One of the simplest content management systems is called sNews. Other simple alternatives include most of the blogging software packages (e.g. WordPress, Nucleus, Typo, etc.). Although these are called 'blogs' they are, in fact, content management systems. By default, they have been configured to run blog sites, but by simply changing the templates they can be made to run many other types of website.

There are also many simple content management systems that are not primarily designed to run blogs. These systems will run a wide range of websites (including blogs!) and although the core software is usually fairly simple, there may be add-ons and plugins, which can be used to extend the system's capabilities. A good example of this kind of system is a package called 'CMS Made Simple'.

We have already briefly mentioned portal systems. As well as managing content, these provide all kinds of additional functionality like front-end user registration, polls, forums, ecommerce, mailing lists, etc. They are very powerful pieces of software and, for the advanced webmaster, they provide almost endless possibilities in site creation. However, for novice and intermediate users, the high level of technical ability required may be prohibitive. Examples of portal systems include Joomla!, Mambo, Drupal and Postnuke.

You should now have an overview of how content management systems work and some of the things to consider when researching which CMS to use. It is important to note that there are hundreds more open source content management systems than the handful mentioned here.

The top word for the year 2005 was "podcasting," as selected by the New Oxford American Dictionary. According to one dictionary, podcasting is "the web-based broadcast which works with software that automatically detects new files and is accessed by subscription."

There are two explanations of the etymology of the word, "podcasting." One explanation is that it is a combination of the words "iPod" and "broadcasting," because early listeners generally downloaded audio broadcasts to their Apple iPod mp3 devices. The other explanation is that the root of the word comes from the acronym for "personal on demand," which would be pod. Personal on demand broadcasting becomes podcasting.

Podcasting began as a means to distribute music files, but soon website owners realized that podcasting the spoken word was an important way to increase the amount of useful content on their website. For example, all of the major news agencies that distribute countless pages of written information now also offer their subscribers portable audio content as well.

Podcasting is produced from two separate actions. The first action is to design, create, and record an audio show that is to be broadcast later. An audio file is created and is made available on the podcaster's website in order for listeners to download the file directly to their listening device or to listen to the file as it streams from the website. Additionally, the smart podcaster will make the audio file available through a subscription-based feed. The subscription is generally free, but some podcasters charge a small fee for the subscription. The web feed stores the audio file so that a listener can have access to the file at any time they choose.

The second action is for the listener to periodically check for new content from their favorite shows. The listener can either search for new content or download it to their digital audio device or they can enlist the help of a podcatcher or feedreader. The feedreader will search for new content from the listener's favorite shows and notify the listener when new content is available. The obvious advantage to this system is that the listeners will receive new content without ever having to search for it themselves.

Audio podcasting is an important way for a website owner to distribute their content to their audience. Many people would rather listen to audio content than to read the same content. With the use of portable audio devices, the website content can be enjoyed at a time and place that is convenient to the listener. The website owner will be able to increase the amount of visitors to their website by being able to offer podcasts as an additional source of information.

It was not that long ago that becoming a web page authoring wizard required little more than an understanding of a few dozen Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) tags, and perhaps modest experience with a scanner and a graphics program to generate a corporate logo image file.

The stakes are much higher now. The hobby phase is over. The Internet is a big business. Competition for visitor “hits” is enormous, as it becomes more and more difficult to get your site noticed, much less bookmarked. Sensing that the authoring world wanted more out of HTML then a poor imitation of the printed page, the web browser makers and Internet standards bodies have been expending the capabilities of web pages at a feverish pace. These changes are allowing us to make our pages more “dynamic” – pages that can “think and do” on their own, without much help from the server once they have been loaded in the browser.

In websites, the most important thing that a user, editor or author looks for is the robustness and the maintainability of the site. In static approach for web page authoring, you simply write a different page for all the content in your site and connect these pages with hyperlinks or most probably by using a navigation bar in the main page. It seems like a simple and manageable idea. However, when it comes to add new content or change the general layout of the site, it is almost impossible for you to go through each and every page and edit the code. In the dynamic approach, you use a database as the foundation of your web site. What you put in this database totally depends on what you need to have for your pages; usernames and associated passwords, articles that you are going to use as your content, pictures, files, basically anything that you can think of. This database can be thought as your storage for the elements to build this site. However, it is not you who is building the pages, it is the PHP, ASP, PERL code that you have written or purchased. The only thing that is left for you is to draw a “plan” for the data driven code so that it knows where to put the building elements that are stored in your database. This plan is called the template for the site which is generally created using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Dynamic HTML (DHTML). Once the site is loaded into the browser, dynamic pages in a way “interacts” with the user and generates the HTML pages rather than taking the user from page to page with the help of the hyperlinks.

As one can see very easily, Dynamic Websites seem like the future of the Internet. It saves a lot of time and effort for the authors and also the user from frustration of waiting for the pages to load while visiting a simple site with an interesting article with a lot of pages.

Anyone in the business world knows that when someone asks, “What’s your website address?” you better have a URL to give them. They don’t want to hear “I don’t have one yet” or “I’m working on it”. Having an established, professional looking website, always scores credibility points for the business owner.

Of utmost importance though…it is far better to not have a website than to have a nonprofessional, cheesy looking site. You will do much more damage to your business by portraying your company in a less than top-notch light.

If you don’t have the knowledge, skills or abilities to produce an outstanding design yourself then hire a professional web designer. Web designers aren’t cheap, but that’s no reason to cut corners. Rework your budget or possibly try to barter for all or part of the work to build your website.

You can save yourself time and money if you have your website copy written. Provide your web designer with the text and the layout of how you want it to look. Offer color schemes. Send links to other sites that you admire. Of course, you never want to copy someone else’s site, but by giving your designer an idea for the theme you’d like to have, the process will go much more quickly.

The more work you can you do up front yourself, the easier it will be on your pocket book. Many designers work by the hour. If you want to have lots of links in your website, spell that out clearly. Ask your designer if you should submit your text and ideas in a Word document or if they would prefer it some other way. And make sure to forward any photos you want to use to your web designer. Web designers are not mind readers. Most will do as many edits as you like, however you will be charged for each edit.

There are many "quick and easy" web design companies out there, advertising that you can have your website up in an hour. And there are many canned templates that you can use which are very user friendly. But, keep in-mind that most of these tools are for beginners. They will not provide a professional looking site. If it’s your business, the one you’re trying to make profitable, image is everything. Don’t try to cut corners in this area.

There are two things that can go seriously wrong when you move to a new web hosting provider. Follow this simple guide to doing it all without too many dramas.

A normal move to a new hosting provider can mean huge losses to your business if things aren't done correctly. Specifically:

1. Your new web site doesn't "behave" the way it should.

2. Your email goes "missing" for several days

SETTING UP THE NEW SERVER

Setting up the new server correctly easily solves the first problem.

Set up the new server with your existing/main domain name details (but do NOT change the DNS settings - yet).

Once the server is set up, you can then PARK another/spare domain name at the same server.

For example, most servers with cPanel allow you to easily park one - or more - domains on top of an existing one. If you don't happen to have a spare/unused domain name you can use for this purpose, it won't cost much to register a new .com just for this purpose.

Now, make sure that the DNS information for the PARKED domain at your domain name registry points to the new server.

Once you can see your web site under the parrkeddomainname.com address in your web browser, FULLY TEST IT to make sure all the interactive routines - i.e. search routines, contact forms, forums, feeds, etc., work as they should.

Once you are 100% certain that it works properly, AND you've got your email sorted out (see next bit) then you can organize to have the DNS for your main domain name changed to point to the new server.

BIG TIP: Make a small change to the NEW home page so you can easily tell which site (old or new) you are looking at in your web browser. When you can see the change, it means your DNS has been updated.

DON'T LOSE ANY EMAIL

The problem with a DNS change is that it can take some time to go through - up to 72 hours or even longer for it to propagate across the whole Internet.

During that time, some of your customers will be seeing the OLD version of your site, and if they send you email, it can be delivered to the OLD server.

And you might not be able to check it because your ISP has updated the DNS and you can only see the new server.

AT THE OLD SERVER, simply set up a FORWARD or REDIRECTION to send all your mail to your existing ISP email account, or perhaps even a new Hotmail type address.

For the final time, in Outlook (or whatever email client you use) click on Send/Receive to get any mail that might be waiting on the old server. After this new email (to your old server) will come in through your ISP email box.

Next, set up your email accounts AT THE NEW SERVER. You should ALSO set up redirects here to send any mail it receives to your ISP address. That way, if you're unlucky and your DNS takes forever to propagate, you will still get your new email.

Finally, when you are all ready to go, lodge the DNS change with your domain name registrar to point your main domain to the new server.

WHILE THE DNS IS UPDATING

If everything's been set up correctly, then while the DNS is updating, several things will happen:

1. Any email being sent to the old server will be redirected to your ISP email address.

2. Any email that's sent to the NEW server is ALSO being redirected to your ISP address, so you won't lose any email during this period.

3. Your email client should keep checking the old server until the DNS change goes through. When that happens, it will most likely display an "unable to connect" error message.

4. Now, check to make sure you can see your new server in your web browser.

5. If you can, then change your email settings to the new server settings and check it works both sending and receiving.

6. Now remove the redirections from the new server.

Finally, in about another week or so, contact your OLD hosting provider and CLOSE YOUR ACCOUNT. It's an important step, but so many people forget to do it, until they get re-billed for another month (and lot's of luck trying to get a refund).

If you conduct any business online or maintain a website to compliment your offline business, then blogging is quickly becoming a mandatory part of your future. And if you are not currently blogging, chances are after realizing the potential of these traffic-enhancing goldmines, you soon will be!

Blogs, derived from the words "web log" were originally thought of as simply online diaries a place for people to record their thoughts and inspirations. At first, no one took blogging very seriously and these collections of online thoughts were simply passed off by many as hobbies or creative outlets and nothing more.

But then Google came along and started to recognize the unique and original content that these trite little sites presented and the rules of the game suddenly changed. After all, unique content is what makes the Google world go round, and what better way to command the attention of Google than by creating a dynamic environment with content that is solely your own.

At this stage, a whole new SEO world emerged and in the process, brought with it traffic opportunities like never before. People began blogging on more than what they had for dinner last night. They started to blog about new products, exciting travel adventures and all things related to online commerce.

The evolution quickly continued and today, with RSS feeds, sites like pingoat.com and many other content clearinghouses, blogging is big business and not to be overlooked by hungry entrepreneurs looking to establish a web presence.

What currently makes blogging so attractive is the sheer speed with which blogs and blog posts are able to get indexed in the search engines. It is a simple matter of static versus dynamic and the search engines love the dynamic.

Let's take two different scenarios to see how traditional websites and blogs differ in their index-ability:

Scenario One:

One person creates a website to advertise gardening products and services. Each page of the site contains the traditional information about the company; it's founders, the services they offer and the products they sell. Maybe, at best, the site has articles and content that is updated with some small frequency that are relevant to the avid gardener. When visitors arrive at the site, they have the option of signing up for the company newsletter and receiving valuable tips and new offerings.

In this scenario, the Webmaster or business owner will need to tend to many SEO related tasks in order to get and maintain high search engine ranking for a tight list of selected keywords related to the gardening niche. Not only will this activity require great skill, it will also involve many hours to achieve the intended results.

Scenario Two:

The same business owner as above also creates a blog to supplement their company website. Now, instead of focusing on simply one set of tightly selected keywords, the blog itself remains a broad overview of the gardening niche, while each individual post reflects a drilled down topic within that same niche.

So when the business owner writes a blog post about the benefits of "organic vegetable gardening in backyard containers," this individual post becomes a keyword rich, targeted wonder and when indexed by the search engines has a far greater opportunity to bringing highly targeted traffic to the blog based upon that single post.

Through time, the blog expands with many similar posts that are targeted to sub niches within the broader gardening niche and can even be categorized from inside the blog structure itself. What has now been created in Google's eyes is an extremely dynamic, naturally evolving site that is content rich and niche specific.

When properly constructed and promoted, each time the business owner posts to the blog, that individual post can get indexed in anywhere from two to twenty four hours on average. This opportunity is far greater than any options available at the static website.

Additionally, when the business owner endeavors to have a visitor signup for a newsletter, further segmenting can occur and subscriber lists can be refined and targeted. And because the blog is the front-end showcase to the original website, each blog post has the opportunity to link back to specific and relevant products at the main site.

When properly structured, blogs are the biggest SEO asset to a website that currently exists. The wise business owner will recognize these benefits and when implemented, will enjoy many opportunities that do not currently exist with traditional websites alone.

It does not have to be expensive to get started with Internet marketing. There are so many free tools available, including HTML editors, graphics programs, and competition analysis.

Free Blogging Program

Blogs have become very popular, and the most popular blogging platform is Wordpress. Wordpress is a powerful blogging program that is also a content management system (CMS).

A content management system manages the content on your site. Why is this important? It makes it simple for anyone to set up a site, add content to it, and not worry about it any further. The program manages the content for you, setting it up in archives, categories, and so forth.

There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of free plugins available to make Wordpress incredibly powerful and easy to use. One of the best places to find free Wordpress plugins is at wp-plugins.net.

There are also thousands of free Wordpress templates available. Many of them can be found at the Wordpress.org site under Themes. There are themes that are 2 columns, 3 columns, that accept widgets (which make it very easy to modify the sidebars), and themes of every color and design.

Free HTML Editors

The two most popular free HTML editors are NVUdev.com and Notetab Lite (available at Notetab.com). NVU is comparable to Dreamweaver. It might not be as powerful as Dreamweaver, but provides enough power for most of us who just want to create some basic Web sites.

Whether you use NVU, Dreamweaver, or Frontpage, having Notetab Lite on your computer is highly recommended. Many people use it for editing existing HTML files. It is quick and easy, and it is freeware.

Free Graphics Program

Probably the most powerful free graphics program is GIMP. With GIMP you can edit photos and other graphics. Most people will find that GIMP has all the tools they need.

GIMP supports the most popular file formats: GIF, TIFF, PNG, PSD, and JPEG. It works with Windows XP and Vista, Mac, Linus, and Sun. You can check it out at GIMP.org.

Tutorials for HTML, Wordpress, NVU, and GIMP

All of these programs have tutorials available. There is also a Dummies book for Wordpress if you find it easier to gather information in book format.

Some tutorials can be found at the sites listed above, or you can do a search for "nvu tutorial," "gimp tutorial," or "wordpress tutorial." A popular HTML tutorial can be found at BoogieJack.com. One of the great things about the Web is all of the free tutorials available.

Get Started Today

With these powerful free tools available there is no reason not to get started online today creating Web sites. If you are completely new, try setting up a Wordpress blog first. It is easy, it is free, and it is a great way to get started.

Web hosting or a web hosting company as it is sometimes referred to, is a company that hosts websites for a variety of other companies but it does so on the web host's own computers. Most of the time an Internet service provider (ISP) offers plenty of web hosting services.

The scope of what web hosting can do is tremendous. At its most basic and simplistic level, web hosting involves a web page and small scale file hosting and in this way, computer files can be uploaded by way of either a Web interface or else a File Transfer Protocol (FTP). These files are delivered to the Internet with little if any extra processing required. Many Internet service providers offer web hosting to their subscribers for free or else a small fee. In other cases, web hosting can come about by way of an alternate service provider. Generally speaking, web hosting is free or relatively inexpensive and is sponsored by advertisements.

Web hosting is mainly used for personal homepages, as more complex corporate sites require higher level of database support and platforms for application development such as ASP.NET, Java and PHP. Web hosting also includes a web interface panel such as Plesk, Hosting Controller and cPanel and these make it possible to have e-mail service to install scripts as well as to adequately manage the web server. In some cases, web hosts specialize in a certain type of software or service (as for example, e- commerce) and are used by large corporate establishments to outsource work to a particular web hosting company.

Web hosting involves hosting up time and that refers to the percentage of time that the host is accessible to users over the Internet. Most web hosting companies aim for hosting up time that is 99.9%, which means that over a calendar year, the downtime is approximately 8 hours and 46 minutes. It is important to keep in mind that planned interruptions for any number of reasons as well as server restarts are sometimes a reality of web hosting.

Web servers can sometimes also run Internet hosting services and there are a number of web hosting services that are limited strictly to the Internet. These services include the free web hosting service; the shared web hosting service, reseller web hosting, the virtual dedicated server, the dedicated hosting service, and the collocation web hosting service and finally, clustered hosting. Each one of these types of web hosting options has its good and bad points. Some examples of some specialized web hosting services include image hosting; video hosting, blog hosting, and one click hosting file hosting and shopping cart software.