What Is An RSS Feed and how do you use it?

By Tom | May 14, 2008

This article is for those who don’t know what an RSS feed is or how to use it. I know I didn’t always understand what it was or how to use it.

The Basics on RSS

RSS means “Really Simple Syndication” and relates to an Internet format where blogs and other websites can instantly notify you when the websites content has been updated or new content has been added to the site. This content is called the sites RSS feed.

These feeds can easily be read with the help of an RSS Reader. Most RSS readers are free. The one I use is Google Reader and they have a good tutorial that explains how it works. Some others are RSSOwl, which sits directly on your desktop, My Yahoo, and Bloglines and yes these are free too. You can find many others by just doing an internet search. Your Internet browsers may already have an RSS reader so you may not have to find one at all.

RSS is a terrific tool that automatically keeps you up-to-date with your favorite websites and blogs. It doesn’t matter if they update daily, monthly or yearly you will be sure not to miss it. No more checking their website or blog to see if there is any new information because the information will come to you as soon as it is appears. You can use RSS for viewing news, information, comics and movies - basically anything. I’m sure you can see where having the information come to you can save you tons of surfing time.

Benefits of RSS

Imagine, subscribing to an RSS news feed could basically deliver a personal newspaper with made to order information directly to your desktop every day and it allows you to remove information you don’t want to read. By keeping you up to date about airfares, car rentals, and other online sales it can also be used to save you money. If you have an eBay business you can use it to notify you when you have a bid on one of your auctions. If you buy on eBay you can use it to keep track of your favorite eBay sellers and even have it notify you when a new item you are interested in becomes available on eBay. In other words, it allows you to keep up to date and read content you are interested in when and however you want.

How do I subscribe to your RSS feed?

If you want to know when this blog updates or a new article appears all you have to do to subscribe is click on that orange square located in the upper right hand corner of the blog. When you click on the orange square it will take you to a page asking you to confirm the subscription and which rss reader you will be using. Thats it! Now whenever I publish new articles, videos or audio, you will be notified. This way you don’t need to check my blog every day however if you would like to you certainly may.

Do you want to see what it looks like first? The RSS feed link for this site looks like this - http://feeds.feedburner.com/auctionbizradio . If you click it you will see the output of auctionbizradio. That is the stuff I’ve been talking about. You don’t necessarily have to know how it works just know that it is a great tool.

Here is a YouTub video for you that explains RSS very well. Worth a watch.