RSS Feed Is Ripping Off Your WordPress Blog
Download free pdf report of above video if you prefer reading offline.
[Right Click and choose "Save Link As" for downloading this report]
46 Responses to “The Dark Side Of RSS”
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29. Jun, 2012
[...] that’s not all. You can watch the blog traffic video now by clicking HERE or read [...]
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10. Jul, 2012
[...] interaction. A decrease in comments, a slow down in traffic, and less people linking to you. Bring My Blog Visitors Back integrates with all the popular RSS tools and created an interactive feed. A feed that will show [...]
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BTW your hyperlinks don’t work on your pdf. I noticed they don’t work in Word when I turn it into a pdf. Are you having the same problem?
As to the pdf. It’s a great tease for whatever new product you’ve got coming.
Tom,
I just now checked the PDF link and it’s working fine. Can you please check again and tell me.
Interesting analysis. Personally I’ve not taken much notice of RSS feeds since I don’t use them myself but I guess it’s something I should make time to learn.
JR,
RSS is one of the best ways to get repeat visitors to your blog and build a loyal readership. If you are not publishing the RSS in your blog then I suggest start putting a visible link to your RSS in your blog.
Thanks for the report. I’ll look forward to reading it in relation to my Blogger blogs too, which may also be affected.
Yes, Robin you can use the ideas you get from the report in your bloggers blog too. Stay tuned for the second report.
Thanks Pawan for the report ,I agree with you as it seam logic and I will be looking for part 2
to get the butter of you topic I realy appriciated..cheers
Yousri, I’m giving the final touch to the second report. Stay Tuned!
Interesting report and definitely provides room for thought. I hadn’t really considered this before but it makes sense – I’ve tried software that drags stuff from RSS feeds. The only problem is a lot of what was dragged was a heap of crap and I spent more time managing the imported content than I would have had writing the content in the first place so I dropped it.
But, I still feel a product launch coming on!!!!
Dave, there are softwares out there which can grab really good content from good blogs. The user can choose from which RSS feed they want the content from.
Such softwares have been favorite for lots of lazy people who are too lazy to write their content.
Looking forward to read your summary. With all the comments on this topic on your site and your investigation I am sure I will find usefull indepth info about this. Thanks a lot for sharing.
I am sure this report will make you look the RSS from another entirely different angle and it will be great if you take the good measures to squeeze out the maximum benefit from the RSS.
Also, looking forward for your comment on the report.
i repeat what i said above. your report is very interesting and i am waiting for part 2 to know what are your solutions.
what about photos published on a blog. are they protected or can they be stolen too?
thanks for your answer
france
Usually the content scraper doesn’t scrap photos. They simply link to the photos residing in your website. That’s called hotlinking.
You can protect your blog from this by editing your htaccess file.
Here is a link that will help you in this:
http://www.htaccesstools.com/hotlink-protection/
Too bad this “doom and gloom” report is just a lead in for you to sell some RSS feed plugin. I would have expected better.
Why don’t you talk about who actually USES RSS feeds and how the type of blog you have greatly influences those numbers? Most people have no clue what RSS is or how to setup Google Reader or other apps. Tech blogs are more likely to have RSS followers, but lots of other niches won’t.
Your fear mongering about content scrapers should also state that anyone can come to a site and copy/paste content as much as they want. RSS just “automates” it a bit. Of course, using partial posts gets by this.
You’re getting people worked up over something that’s (for most) a very small part of their traffic and followers. Why not just tell people RSS can be beneficial, but writing valuable content and starting an email list will benefit them far more.
BTW – if RSS is so evil why does this site have an RSS feed??
Karl, it’s hard to cover each and every people while writing a report or creating a software. Same thing will be the absolute must for somebody and same thing may be useless to others.
It’s all about perspective, lifestyle and the goal of a person. Someone might be naturally gifted writer and may tell everyone that they should write to make a living. While someone might hate to write even a single paragraph and will declare writing as the fools’ work.
I believe the bloggers can reap more rewards out of RSS if they understand the demerits of RSS properly.
Regarding the content scraper, RSS doesn’t just automate it a bit. It makes it many times easier and makes highly automated. If you look it from programmer’s perspective then you’ll realize how much easier this RSS have made to steal the content.
I actually liked the report and few months ago I was thinking same regarding the problem with RSS.
If the solution is good then I definitely would like to try it out.
Why expect something for free when someone is putting their time and effort to bring the topic forward and make the solution easy for us who is already suffering from such problem.
Jason, I wrote this report when I saw lots of bloggers facing this same kind of problem with RSS. I hope this information will open the eyes of many and take corrective measures to get maximum out of the RSS.
Content theft is a serious issue when providing RSS – that’s why I’ve been using a “feed-copyrighter-plugin” on all relevant blogs I run for years. Please steal my posts and publish them to your sites – I’m receiving a valuable backlink to my origin-site every time you do.
Haha.. nice tactic. That’s what I think a good comeback.
I could not disagree more with this report.
The author says that most of the people read blogs through RSS but does not provide a number. I know my audience of the blogs I run and I know the percentage of people who is subscribed to those RSS feeds.
As a matter of losing traffic, well, you’re engaging people through RSS. People who read you with such a tool would probably not go to your page everyday to keep track of your content, but are such a fan of your point of view that I bet they would if you called them.
Just sounded a bit sensationalist this whole campaign or putting out such a shallow report… I’m sorry, but that’s what I think.
Henrique,
The avid readers usually read via RSS and have subscribed to many of the RSS feeds according to their interest.
You are right, there’s only small percentage of the people subscribed to the RSS feeds. But those are the people who matters the most.
It’s like 80/20 rule. 80% of your income comes from 20% of your readers. RSS readers are like the cream of the crops who are strong loyal followers of you. They are the one who listens you, who follow you and who support you.
That’s the reason in the report I already told, if you are looking for thousands of untargeted visitors then this is not for you. This is about getting maximum out of the loyal followers by providing them more value. You can find more about it in the second report.
Thank you for this nice critique.
Hi there, Pawan!
I get your point.
But what I see here, from a marketing point of view, is another channel below the line to a peculiar niche of your website. You don’t need to eliminate it: use it.
I have no data about it, but I believe that people that subscribe your feeds are more likely to bookmark you or send some links of your content around. If they don’t, ask them too. Ask them to review your content, update it. Publish pages with link baits only for the RSS readers. Make them feel special…
I’d like to say that I’m a big fan of what you’re doing here. I read you on my RSS and this post was the first one who make me leave a comment on your website…
Nice case!
Thanks, mate!
“…it’s hard to cover each and every people while writing a report or creating a software”
But that’s exactly what responsible writers and marketers do. You can have strong feelings about something, but your readers deserve to know the other side of the story. It’s obvious your goal is to fire up everyone’s emotions in order to create a desire for whatever RSS plugin solution you’ll no doubt revel in part 2 of your report.
Let’s give everyone some good solid tips.
- there’s no way to track how many RSS subscribers you have unless you use a service like Feedburner or something similar
- many people don’t use RSS or know what it is
- tech and IM blogs are more likely to have decent RSS numbers
- don’t panic about your RSS feed until you know EXACTLY how many people use it on your site
- if you’re worried about content scraping then use excerpts in your feed or stop using RSS altogether
- you can only gauge RSS subscriber loyalty by tracking clickthroughs or offering content only via RSS
- RSS is one of many ways to stay connected with your audience
Please don’t use this tactic again for pushing your products.
What is it with marketers like you and your overly emotive language? ‘Stealing’ ‘ripped off’, etc, etc. Blaming RSS on loss of income and Alexa rank is the silliest thing I have read this year. You must be setting your readers up to sell them yet another WP plugin they probably don’t need.
I have been an avid fan of RSS for years, both as a publisher and a reader and I can tell you that for the most part your assumptions are just wrong.
I scan my newsreader everyday which presents me with snippets, if something of interest catches my eye I double click the link in my reader and the web page is loaded right into my reader, just like any other browser tool.
For publishers ‘worried’ about your content, it’s simple. Just publish a snippet, ie, the first paragraph of your posts via RSS instead of the the whole article. This is easy and it will cost you NO money. Make that first paragraph interesting enough to make me load your page into my reader. Yes, it really is that simple. Your readers are valuable. Be creative in getting them to your site. They are not cattle!
Tip: Do. search for Gecko Tribe and check out their RSS philosophy, and no, I’m not affiliated with them in any way.
I’m not suggesting not to use RSS at all. I’m just putting light on the negative side of the RSS.
If you read my report, then you’ll find that I agree that RSS provides value and I also suggest to use it.
But why settle for less benefit when you can turn the negative side of RSS to positive one.
I’m not suggesting not to use RSS at all. I’m just putting light on the negative side of the RSS.
If you read my report, then you’ll find that I agree that RSS provides value and I also suggest to use it.
But why settle for less benefit when you can turn the negative
Well done, you succeeded in insulting me, one of your readers, in one sentence, by insinating that I didnt even read your pdf. See, I did read it. Hence the comment I made. The problem I have with your article is in fact it is just a whole bunch of negativity and fear. Why not really accentuate the positive, as the song goes, rather than this emotive scaremongering? Are you going to be selling a product on the back of this tactic?
I think not everything works for everyone. You have suggested to put a snippet but sometime ago I had switched to only excerpt for the rss feed in my niche blog.
Many of my loyal readers complained about it and unsubscribed. Later I switched again to full feed.
You said you’re report would mention the deeper problem aside from content theft and people not visiting your blog. It reading it in their rss reader instead … I read nothing more than those two problems in the report … So what is the bigger problem?
The deeper problems are the side effects.
For example, if people are only reading via RSS then they are more reluctant to post comments or interact with the blog.
Further, the blog revenue will be less as most of your loyal readers won’t be coming to your blog where you’ll be monetizing the most.
Another problem is that your blog’s page views will be less which in turn will effect your alexa rank and your banners impressions. (If you sell banners then this will impact you a lot)
but with rss reader we can get backlink from there
Yes, that’s one of the benefits of using rss
Thanks for taking the time to share this valuable information. Can hardly wait for the 2nd report.
Interesting and useful, waiting to learn more with second part. Thanks.
Pawan
Another great plugin from MaxBlogPress.
But, appears to be very similar to the Planet Ozh Better Feed plugin released in 2005.
Could you help me understand differences?
Steve,
Better Feed is for modifying rss feed with few options. While “MaxBlogPress Bring My Blog Visitors Back”‘s purpose is to drive the rss subscribers back to the blog by increasing the value of your RSS feed. It will be developed with more features in the coming days which will help you squeeze out maximum benefits out of your current RSS feed.
Good content but too long–me has cookies to eat!!
*nom nom nom*
8-|
Honestly, I’d like to see more facts, and less scare tactics. Oh well. I guess I know what MaxBlogPress is all about now.
“They won’t least bother” ?!?!? That makes zero sense. Perhaps you meant something like “They won’t even bother”?
also, the background music is too loud
Ed, I said RSS subscribers are least interested in visiting the blog.
Take myself as an example. I read lots of blogs via RSS feed but I don’t usually visit those blogs.
Thanks for the comment on background music. I’ll take that into consideration while creating future videos.
I agree with Pawan. I myself usually don’t get out of my rss readers and visit the blogs. If it’s in RSS I’ll read if it’s not then I’m too lazy to visit the blog unless there’s something really very compelling to read
Loved the video. It reasonate with me a lot since I have been wondering about same problems lately. Thanks for bringing this problem in light.
Thank you for sharing, I’ll be watching for part 2.
Thanks for this info. I am looking forward to the solution!