How RSS Feed is RIPPING OFF your WordPress Blog?
It’s been quite a while that I’ve noticed RSS Feed ripping off your blog..
but not many of you seem to have realized this…
Though very few have taken in, they haven’t been able to deem some fair corrective measures to cope with this problem.
The problem is…
When your readers access your blog contents through RSS Feed, they become more reluctant to visit your blog regularly, because they GET it all from RSS what they WANT from your blog.
This leads to triggering less TRAFFIC to your blog and consequently, yielding less REVENUE than you deserve.
No wonder RSS Feed helps you gain repetitive readers and followers but then, there’s side-effect which can impose serious threat on you…
Do you have any idea?
Can you speculate how RSS feed is harming you?
What do you think are the cons of RSS Feed?
Let’s hear it from you. Let’s hear it from the victim.
Let’s see who have pored over their RSS Feed carefully and realized the harm it has been lending to your blog.
Comment below:
** UPDATE **
After reading the comments below, I realized that most of the people are worried about…
- Their content being stolen via RSS feed.
- People not visiting the blog because of RSS feed.
But, from my analysis, the problem is much deeper…
I have written a free report called “The Dark Side of RSS” which will open your eyes regarding this deeper problem. Download it from here.
Makes sense for sure. But another thing is with all the auto content pullers that strip links and suck yer RSS Feed is just giving other people FREE content without any backlink or monetization coming to you. Sure ya can search and have sites removed but lets say ya have just 50 posts of quality stuff and 25 people pull yer feds and take off yer links thats alot of chasing and C&D letters to write and send
Programmers have been writing content scrapers since the web was born, well before RSS came around. It’s not a hard thing to do.
RSS is not the enemy here. Scammers are.
Yes, scammers are the enemy. But, RSS make it a lot easier. The programmers now have a lot easier format to deal with and same rss scraping software will work for millions of rss feeds available on the web.
We already know there are many softwares which can fetch articles from ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com etc… but all those content fetching softwares are programmed specifically for those websites. If those websites change their format then those software breaks too and needs to update again with new changes.
RSS don’t have such limitation. It’s a standard format and once a software is built it consistently work for all the millions of rss feeds available today.
One simple solution to this is to put a copyright notice at the footer of your rss feed. Something like:
Copyright 2012 – YourBlog.com
Even if the content stealer removes all the links your copyright notice will still be there so the readers will know from where the content is coming from. Also, you can track down the websites using your content by searching for your copyright notice.
Although, it won’t solve the whole problem but it will reduce the impact of the damage.
there really isn’t anything wrong with rss feeds. they can bring traffic to your site/blog if you do two very simple things. 1. write a title and first paragraph that kicks ass and makes a reader want to read the rest and 2. only publish the first paragraph to your feed. no reason to publish the whole darn post.
Nice tip Vanita. But remember your rss feed is competing with tens of other rss feed your reader is subscribed to.
Why would they want to take an extra step to visit your blog and read the rest of the content when they can read similar content via other similar rss feeds who provide the full content in the rss?
Also, providing only partial rss feed, many readers will get annoyed and unsubscribe from your rss, never to come back again.
Pawan, it’s not the topic that makes you stand out from the pack, it’s the way you tell the story. that’s why you need a catchy title and a killer first paragraph. My reader has over 1k subscriptions, i always go for the more interesting title and only move forward to the site if what i read via the reader is interesting. There can be 25 posts in my reader at the same time about the same exact topic….it’s the writer who starts off either entertaining me or teaching me something i want to know while still entertaining me that’s going to draw me in.
You are right vanita , but he can’t sell us his product
if we are in agreement with you. So anything you say he will fight against… lol
I guess there’s pros and cons to have RSS feeds. I think it all comes down to quality content. How about writing a partial post, but use good copywriting to make it “compelling” enough for the visitor to want click through the link to the rest of the article. Then put the completed article into a page. Is there not a way to “not display the page” in your theme’s menu options?
I’m not sure who I agree, but if RSS feeds actually can and do affect blogs, then I think it all comes down to the tactic used. There has to be a way to have the best of both worlds.
I so agree with Vanita….
It all depends upon what kind of article you are writing and your audience too.. If you are running affiliate kind of site…I thing it’s better to keep the feed content full… Though you might have to ignore the fear of rss feed copier softwares…
Else…better to write catchy title and give a kickass intro….And rest visitor will find a way to your site…
I think publishing only the partial information is kind of force mechanism. Most readers assume that they will receive full content in the rss.
They won’t be that happy to just receive the partial content when similar competing blogs might be giving the full content.
they may not be happy, but if it’s “something i’ve got to read” clicking a link to open a browser is nothing.
Did you know that pretty much all RSS readers are capable of downloading the entire post into the reader, even if the RSS feed is only providing the first part of it?
So, why bother? You’re just annoying that part of your audience who are loyal to you. Why do you think they clicked “subscribe” in the first place? So that they would have to click a button every time you posted something new? (Hint: no.)
The point of writing isn’t to get them to your website. The point is to establish a relationship with that person as a customer.
Of course, if your business revolves around hoping people will click on ads… well, all I can say is, I hope you still have a day job. The RSS technology simply makes easier something that programmers are already fully capable of doing already. Scraping content without RSS is dead simple.
You should be thankful that RSS exists at all. The alternative is an internet where content is “consumed” without any hint of attribution.
There is no world in which digital content doesn’t somehow find its way into places you didn’t expect it to go. What you need to do is make sure that anywhere someone reads your content, they will have a good experience reading it (or listening to it or watching it).
If you’re thinking of your RSS subscribers as your adversaries, you’re Doing It Wrong…
Why don’t you have cat ears? Cat ears are way more cool than antennas. You should get cat ears.
Not only you risk your visitors reading only your feed instead of visiting your site…
You are also exposed to robots scraping all your content from your feed and re-publishing it in their own sites!
That’s another big problem. RSS feed makes it easy and auto pilot way for the softwares to automatically grab the content and re-publish them in their own blogs.
I post only summary and one thumbnail. I ran a celebrity gossip site for years and ended up with scrape sites basically republishing my content and google ranking them higher than my site. RSS is a nice counter to show off, but for certain types of sites it does kill revenue.
I am aware that people can take your feed for auto-blogging or curation blog which might stop people from visiting your blog. But you often get a back-link in return.
I only publish a snippet of the content on RSS. So, what’s the harm? Isn’t that the whole idea of syndication?
Not all people using auto-blogging softwares will give you a link back so publishing only the snippet of the content might not work for the auto blogs.
Even if they link back,then why would someone visit your blog when they can read the whole content in the auto blog itself? I don’t think publishing only the snippet is a good idea as I described in the above comment.
I tend to think of it like this, using my travel blog as an example:
The people who come to my blog are one segment of the market, the people who will read autoblogs are another segment of the market. While they may be in the same market niche, the autoblog segment are probably not the market segment I am after.
I just don’t think about it much. It is going to happen and I have seen it happen to me. In my case, it’s not like I’ve a million dollar idea that has to be protected. Though, if I had a million dollar idea, I would probably be thinking about it a lot more.
Yes we do need the back-links and all, but at the same time there are programs out there that can strip out your link to make the post their own…Therefore our time and effort got waste in a sense.
We do need the visitors to come back and visit our website, because we are trying to build a good reputation online.
What good is a website if no one ever visit it? Yes, we need the back-links, as well as the visitors. And I rather have the visitors, because if I post something good on my blog…there are a lot of chances to get the “word by mouth” advertising from others!
Great post…thanks:)
Regards,
Hamilton
“Yes we do need the back-links and all, but at the same time there are programs out there that can strip out your link to make the post their own…Therefore our time and effort got waste in a sense.”
The fact that you published your feed via RSS didn’t make that happen. Content was already very easy to scrape. Any website that wants to take your content can do so, by hiring a programmer for maybe $100. It’s just not a difficult thing to do.
Vanita is right & I would like to add a few more things.
Either you’d have to be the owner of a blog like “webmaster central” or just hang in to it the way it’s doing for you.
RSS isn’t the only option for the readers, there are plenty of new/potential users looking for the blog similar to yours.
I’d recommend the bloggers to keep engaging the new ones, not just focus on the pros or cons of using RSS, in-spite you should retain your focus towards the fresh content, is it getting outdated, why don’t I go for an other one even before the schedule I follow for posting my blog posts?
Think a bit different, you may also include a link to actual post “at the very end or at the very beginning”, something like “Enjoy The Complete Story Here”!
I think you’re standing on both sides of the argument and causing concern where there wasn’t any to start with. You stand point seems to be “you’re damned if you publish snippets or full posts via your RSS feed” but you fail to follow up with a a valid opnion to the argument.
RSS feeds are powerul, very powerul things and if you don’t use them then you’re missing out. It is 100% up to you if you publish full feeds or snippets.
Yes, the downsides are that if you publish the full feed then the scrapers “may” pick up your conent and not give you the credit (back link) for it but most of the blogs that do that are worthless spam which Google treats with the contempt that they deserve. If you use an RSS feed and have it submitted to RSS aggregators then Google will find that content on your site first. This will then cancel out any negative effect of people republishing your content on their crappy little autobog.
The other downside of posting full conent via RSS is that people won’t come to your blog to read THAT content BUT any smart blogger will have links to their other contnet in every post that they publish. Those links will pull the reader to your blog.
I don’t see ANY downside to just publishing snippets via RSS. Making a user click their mouse once to come to your blog to read your full content isn’t exactly hardship is it.
Personally I find your article nothing more than scaremongering about RSS feeds and the entire arguement is unfounded. Why on earth would you try and put people off using RSS feeds??
Publish your RSS feed to every RSS aggregator that you can find. It is the fastest way to get your content indexed by Google.
An excellent insightful posting
Nothing is good or bad so to speak – its in their use
RSS feeds are a powerful agent to use
It would be almost a sin not to use them
Yet the benefits have to weighed and the tool used properly with some thought and care
In the end anything you can do to automate tasks and feed into the giant Google machine is a good function
Nothing is for nothing so to speak
I receive several RSS in my inbox. Sometime a paragraph and others the full post. The first paragraph tells me if I should continue reading.
I like the single paragraph RSS.
I’d also suggest a method to include your site or post link in the post as well. Also a paragraph imbedded about you and your site is not a bad idea either. That way
As the search engines get smarter and smarter, they will figure out the content is stolen.
MaxBlogPress makes a good point. This is another reason to put adsense into the RSS feed, so revenue can be earned even though people dont visit the site.
I’d be interested to know the percentage of the RSS audience in general who is likely to click on any ads in general.
It’s probably exceedingly small.
AdSense = AdCents. And for the tiny amount of clicks that you’ll get it is better to keep ads out of your RSS feeds. Try to engage the reader to click though to your blog where you content is. An RSS feed is a little bit like casting a fishing line. Hook them and get them landed to your site. Some will bite and some won’t – remember, this is a numbers game, right?
It’s a numbers game. Just keep getting visitors to your blog. Some will sign up to your feed, some won’t, so what! Next.
Of those who sign up to your feed, read the snippet or full post, some will click to visit your blog, some won’t, so what! Next.
Not everyone is going to like each of your posts but if they like some posts, they may come back for more.
If you get tied up with, “is this better, or is that better?” you will engage with the law of diminishing returns and you really can’t win doing that.
Very well said
I am the victim of this ,one blog is copying all my posts through RSS feed ,my blog is http://www.makemoneymax.com
this is the blog copying all my hard work here
http://www.gialua.com/category/make-money-online/
This is really very frustrating as all your hard work is copied by all and google give high ranking to other blog ,google can work on Panda but not on this type that costs bloggers much
Can the feed be blocked to certain IPs?
Had never really thought of RSS as harmful, I guess that the kind of people who might want to steal your content are not worth having anyway and it’s difficult to deal with the scumbag element who exist online
I think genuine visitors will continue to come so on balance I would see it as a positive
Thanks for sharing Tony
Rss is a form of advertising, the cost of that advertising is that some people will rip off my feed and that some people may choose to not visit my site but read my articles in their feed readers.
One does not LOSE visitors due to RSS, one simply does not get all the visitors that could potentially have visited the site. That is normal. Usually the end result is a net gain.
The next point then becomes how to maximize the net gain. One way is to monetise the feed and there are ways to do this. Another is to add value to the site that is not available on the feed.
My guess is that Pawan already knows that there are LOADS of ways to monetise the feed and so he is working on a tool to help add value to the site as compared to the feed – am I right?
I agree. The end result is a net gain and now we have to think on how to maximize the net gain. Yes, there’s multiple ways to maximize the net gain and I’m working on it. Stay tuned!
I’m afraid I have to agree with Michael on this one.
Google algorithms have gotten to the point where they can determine where any content comes from originally, and discredit any site copying it.
This why article directories are now considered “content farms” and auto blogs have, for the most part been deindexed.
So I wouldn’t be too concerned about scrapers stealing your content. What I’d be more concerned about is if my content isn’t good enough to draw people to my posts from the RSS so they can comment.
Ken, I think instead of giving all the power to google, we should focus on how to keep the power to ourselves.
Let’s say, google doesn’t exist. Will we still be happy other blogs copying our content? Of course not. Is it worth of time to chase all the content stealer and take action on them? Again, not at all.
We should think on some clever way due to which either content stealer is not able to steal the content altogether OR if they steal it should have not effect to us or make us benefit somehow.
Well Pawan, I wasn’t trying to deify Google in any way. But on the same token, they are a service with an ever improving algorithm system that protects original content by being able to credit its source.
So rather than doing things to work around them, or ignore them all together, we can look at what they’re doing as a starting point to anything else we can do to protect ourselves.
And when it comes down to it, like someone here said, copying the work of someone else is “dead simple” and could be just a matter of copy and paste. So having Google on our side to detect original source is a plus.
So I await your solution, but I really don’t think the problem is all that dire at the moment. I get over 3,500 RSS hits, and if my content is being scraped and reused from there, it’s not affecting my traffic totals or my comment levels very much.
Using Feedburner seems to help prevent the downsides and as stated in these comments, you can monetize your feed and just put out a teaser so they have to come to your site.
Cute. So, Pawan, this is clever of you to set up a situation where we can see clearly the “problems” of rss. I am really looking forward to your “solution.”
Just in the comments, I have learned a lot.
I need to find out how to copyright my feeds.
I only subscribe to rss feeds for convenience. Clicking that little button to go to the site does not bother me and it’s easy. I would not have subscribed to that feed if I was not interested in that blog. So I prefer snippets to see if it is something that I want to read now or wait until later when I have more time. I do read everything or that blog would not be in my reader. This is just a way for me to know something has been posted and if it is vital for me to read now.
I think of it like this – if your content is worthy enough, they will WANT to comment which means they have to go back to your site to do so.
I’m a huge fan of RSS feeds and that’s how I keep up with most of the blogs I read and I hate having to click off to the site. So I have mine on full RSS feed so that people can enjoy the content wherever they are (which is the purpose of the feed).
I’m just happy to have readers either way! Speaking from a blog owner’s perspective and a RSS reader’s perspective, I say let your readers have your full content. If it’s compelling enough to start a conversation/discussion, they’ll come over to your blog to comment!
My 2 cents…
~Kesha
Kesha, it also depends upon how easy it is to start a conversation/discussion. If they are reading in the blog itself then it’s easy to post a comment because the comment form is right there in front of their eyes.
However, if they are reading in the RSS reader then they’ll have to first come to the blog post, then scroll to the comment form and then post the comment.
You are right, if it’s compelling enough then they’ll comment. But why not make other readers comment as well who would have commented if it was easier to comment.
(Think why facebook gets so many comments/status updates?)
I have been thinking exactly that myself. I did find a way to reduce the post to a snippet on my blog.
But, I get so many people subscribing to my RSS feed with weird names and email addresses that I wonder if they are real.
Is there such a thing as spam subscribing?
One way to discourage sign ups is to make your RSS feed icon small and hard to find. I know mine is too big and too prominant. Must do something about it!
Do RSS readers get taken into account when the search engines look at your site? I’m not sure if they can, although Google does own Feedburner so maybe they can pull stats from there if you use it.
The problems with RSS include easy scraping, poor monetization and lack of interaction (i.e. comments). I know the Feedburner has the ability to add some social sharing, so that isn’t an issue.
The benefits is that your content is getting read by people. They are getting to know you and to trust you. You can think of it more like an email list in some ways.
IMHO this is a non-issue. Those reading RSS feeds and not willing to click to visit a site will probably never will. So I treat them as RSS traffic only.
If quality content is a given then the willing ones will visit your site and those stuck on reading feeds will stay on RSS readers anyway. Maybe is better to think how to profit from those readers specifically and ad extra content – ads and so on – in the feed.
I dont really think using RSS feed on one’s WP blog will actually have great effect on one’s blog
If it is true that a visitor can subscribe to your feed and is probably that only read your feed, I believe that their are interesting in your content. Is more probably that if in any time they need something about you write, they contact with you. But well. You must to have good content.
In other hands, also is probably that anyone looking for something that you offer, arrive to your RSS, and again, you capture the interest of them.
I believe that is another way to promote your site, and we must no leave it.
RSS Feed is reducing the traffic to your site, however RSS subscribers are still reading your content. Your name is still out there – people are still talking about your content. It is quite interesting to note comments made using social media like FB. I think the bottom line is if people are talking about your content you are going to get the traffic.
Very true
Oh come on guys, this RSS ‘problem’ is just so non-existant.
This was just a blog post set up to create a spark which gives the author feedback on an issue that doesn’t really exist or cause the problems that you might think it does.
I am sure we’ll see some product launched soon about dealing with the ‘problems’ of RSS.
Here’s a simple solution, publish your RSS feeds as YOU wish and move on to dealing with things that will 1) bring you more traffic 2) increase your conversions.
Spend your time on those two things and forget about what someone may or may not being doing with your RSS feed. You can’t actually stop them and the time you spend trying to work out how you could stop them is time you could be spending on points 1 & 2 above. Those things will make you money.
Worrying if someone is repubslishing your content via your own RSS feed or if someone is going to click through to your site from your RSS feed are just going to waste your time. Trust me, I’ve been full time online since 2005 and I have never, EVER, lost any sleep over any RSS issue.
What about Amit’s problem with an aggregator site ripping off his content?
You don’t need to have an RSS feed for someone to come along and rip off your site. I can take your site, make an exact copy of it and host in on one of my own domains and it would take less than 10 minutes to do so.
If someone wants to scrape/steal your content then they don’t need an RSS feed to do it.
Seriously, don’t sweat these types of things. Use your RSS feed for what it is meant to be used for and get on with building traffic to your site and increasing your conversion – those two things will make you money. Spending time trying to stop one or two people from using your content on their own piss-poor sites will not make you a single penny and won’t stop you from losing any money either.
Move on.
and as a quick follow up on the matter, I have produced my own products and had them ripped off and shared on various forums. People took time to get my products, upload them to a file sharing site and then post in a forum for others to download it for free.
Do you know what i did about it??? NOTHING, not a single thing. I just got on with getting more traffic to my site (paying customers) and increased the conversion rate for the site.
Why did I not spend my time trying to stop people from sharing my products for free in those forums?
Because it would be a waste of time. The people who want my products for free would never have paid for it anyway so even if they had come to my site they wouldn’t have paid for it because they wanted in for free.
People who want things for free never value what they have, they can read a product that’s worth $1,000′s but they will never actually act on the information because they got it for free so it has no value.
There will always be people who steal content online, trust me, spending your time trying to chase them down will be a waste of your time and money unless your a music/film company who could lose millions of dollars each year.
Just publish your RSS feed, the benefits FAR outway any negatives. Use your time more constructively instead.
If the content stealer wants to create a similar blog with good original legal content then they can do so. But why they are not doing that? Because it’s hard to do that.
Exact same thing applies here. Yes, of course anyone can steal any website if they want but why go the hard route when they can do it automatically via RSS feed. RSS feed format is constant and same scrapers will work for millions of rss feeds available today.
If someone want to steal then they’ll steal using the easiest way possible.
I know you are making some point there but in my opinion, I don’t think that is a problem. If you want to use Summary in your feed, you can use something like ‘feed footer’ to instruct your subscribers to click on the post title in order to read the full gist. I can’t remember the exact name given to the ‘feed footer’ of a thing, but it’s in feedburner and I also use it.
And if you choose to use full post instead, then an addition of ‘Adsense for Feed’ can make you some $$$ here too.
On my blog I have a copyright plugin which protects me from content scrapers and content theft. It also disables right click. Check it out how it works on my blog, its easy plugin to install on WordPress.
which one are you using?
That doesn’t solve the problem also. I can still go ahead to your blog and copy your content if I wanted to.
the point is that with RSS, the copying is somewhat automatic – I believe most scrapers will not go to the trouble of copying and pasting manually
If I can see your source code (which I can) then I can copy your content – whether I am a human or a robot
It seems that plugin only prevents humans from manually copying your content at the browser level. And the moment I turn Javascript off… that barrier is removed.
Stopping me copying your content could be a BAD thing too… as it does make it hard for me to use even a snippet of your content if I wanted to post something about your site on mine…
Cheers
Stephen
Stephen, from what I have observed, the content stealer attack on the weaker and easier websites. They are stealing the content because it’s easy and they are doing it in automated way because it’s even more easy.
Why would someone go through the hassle of manually copying and pasting when they can easily and automatically get contents from millions of RSS feeds available? The problem here is not if someone can copy it or not. The problem here is that if it’s easy or hard to copy. If you make it hard then content stealer will go for targeting some other easier websites.
@ Pawan “Why would someone go through the hassle of manually copying and pasting when they can easily and automatically get contents from millions of RSS feeds available? “
In this case, I am NOT talking about automated theft en masse, rather I was commenting on the plugin IBR (above) has used to supposedly “protect” his site content from manually being copied.
And I might want to borrow a small portion of his page if I am ethically creating content on my site and perhaps he has ONE interesting point that I could use as the basis of an article on my blog… and give him a ping pack for the trouble.
By including the barrier to prevent manual copying of even just a small snippet of his work for such a post, it means I may have to type it out by hand (shock horror!) lol
I know for a lot of people that could be enough to stop them quoting his article in the first place.
However to address your “Making it Harder to Steal” point… you can easily go too far with that! Remember that search engines need to be able to spider your content to get it indexed in the first place.
Get too paranoid about all this, and you will end up blocking the legitimate sites from doing what they are supposed to… and what you need them to do.
Why am I not surprised to get an email from MaxBlogPress telling me how they have identified an problem with RSS (that SO many people are suffering from and worried about) and that they’re about to release a report about the problem.
Shock NOT I hear many say. No doubt this will lead to a product about the problem if they report isn’t a “paid for” product already.
Time for me to unsubscribe from this blog as I have now lost all respect for the owner due to them creating panic and fear about a problem that isn’t really a problem at all. I’ve been full time online for more than 7 years and I have seen this marketing tactic too many times before and it gives a bitter taste to my mouth each time I see it.
i agree. i saw it coming. so i unsubscribed to the comments, but i don’t mind subscribing to the blog because other than this hiccup its been pretty good.
Until you’ve had your content stolen by a bigger, older site and watched while they rank for your work, you probably can’t quite understand the angst of some commenters here. I certainly understand it, because it’s happened to me and it’s currently ongoing.
It’s easy to talk about how it’s no big deal in theory, particularly if it’s garbage autoblog sites (that Google isn’t going to rank anyway) stealing your stuff. But when your competition is stealing your content and using it to beat you over the head and shoulders, it’s no longer an amusing theoretical discussion.
Given that we are feeding through Feedburner, you’d think Google would know the difference between original content and stolen content, but apparently the right hand is not aware of what the left hand is doing (or isn’t doing, as the case may be).
MBP may or may not be looking to release a product here. If it’s one that actually helps solve the problem, I will be very interested in it.
I don’t quite understand the irritation over the possibility of MBP creating a product. Uh… they’re in business. We all agree there’s an RSS content theft problem. To this point nobody has figured out a great solution.
What’s the big deal here if MBP is doing some market research on their own site? Nobody is forcing you to read or respond. If you don’t like what they’re doing, move on. Nobody is going to force you to buy anything, anyway.
I’m no “defender” of MBP, but I am a very satisfied customer. And it should be pointed out that MBP gives away very valuable content (and plugins) that it could easily charge for.
As for RSS theft, my business partners and I continue to go back and forth on full feed vs. truncated feed. I’m leaning more towards the latter, these days. Sure, if you don’t provide a full feed, some people will be irritated. But people who truly are interested will click over.
The REAL downside to this I see is if you are feeding to aggregators. They don’t like anything but the full feed…
Regardless of what side you come down on in this debate, I don’t think there is a right or wrong…
It’s a thorny one, that’s for sure.
Let’s turn this around and look for some positives here eh?
Just think about the number of other places not mentioned so far where YOU can actually use your RSS feeds to promote your own website/s.
For example, who doesn’t use RSS to post their latest items to Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo and most of the social media sites?
In fact, you should actively seek out OTHER sites which allow you to do this… e.g. look for directory websites/listings which allow you to publish your RSS feed to them…
If you publish multiple blogs, you should use your RSS feeds to curate your OWN content into one central hub under your banner! Yes… you should scrape your OWN content!
If you are ethical and willing to provide proper attribution and links back, there is no harm in using a plugin like FeedWordPress (in conjunction with Add Attribution for FeedWordPress) to use other selected feeds to add supplementary content to your site.
On most of my WordPress sites, I now publish only a summary of each post to the feed… after agonising over it (snippet vs full) for quite some time as others mentioned above.
But my snippet is slightly different to most… Where I create a special “intro” with a thumbnail image to make it look nicer, and place that into the “Excerpt” field on the post page (check the feed for my link above to see how it works).
RSS can be useful. Embrace that and work it to your ethical advantage.
Cheers
Stephen
I have a site that is not on a blogging format (but rather a wordpress format) and I am quite honestly ticked off because of these robots/spiders clicking on my links as soon as I put out a new link.
I found this plugin called ecStatic and it is amazing all the bots coming in from everywhere including RSS feeds. I am so pissed – I keep killing them but more and more are popping up.
I want it stopped – all of it and the more I kill the more that come along. I really need a better solution as like you said, it is driving away sales. It’s ridiculous.
Linda
** UPDATE **
After reading the comments, I realized that most of the people are worried about…
- Their content being stolen via RSS feed.
- People not visiting the blog because of RSS feed.
But, from my analysis, the problem is much deeper…
I have written a free report called “The Dark Side of RSS” which will open your eyes regarding this deeper problem. Download it from here.
I guess a lot of people would have different opinions.
For me, if I get a RSS and it looks like the article might be really good, I definitely visit the website and read the article directly from the website – and then maybe leave a comment as well. It’s sort of my “thank you” to website owner.
I have no problem subscribing to other people’s feeds, nor offering RSS on my own website.
I’ve been surfing online more than 3 hours nowadays, but I never discovered any interesting article like yours. It’s beautiful worth sufficient for me. Personally, if all webmasters and bloggers made excellent content material as you probably did, the net will be a lot more useful than ever before. “I finally realized that being grateful to my body was key to giving more love to myself.” by Oprah Winfrey.