Is RSS is the downfall of building relationships and commerce on blogs? First, let%u2019s set the record straight. I%u2019ve drunk the kool aid. I get it. I love RSS and that new orange icon is prett

She’s actually posing the question of how to capitalize on feeds, and how to use them in a way that benefits readers, not trying to bring down the horse.

Definitely not a “definitely stupid” question to ask…

In fact this was the ending of this post -> “What’s the solution? Should we kill off RSS? No way Jose! RSS is a valuable tool. Who wants to remember to click on Favorites on a daily basis?”

I’m beginning to think 1) I should go back to blog writing school or 2) people only read headlines.

You see, RSS helps in increasing the reader base of any blog. People have no time. They seriously can’t be expected to visit the sites every second, so RSS comes in and people click it to view. Ofcourse Full-Text Feeds may sound bad but the fact is that people like commenting and they definitely will come in. The pros outweigh the cons by far.

To answer your question: For me, RSS is a friend. It’s about the “network effect.” I don’t know that we’ll ever make as much money from RSS as the web — it *is* the raw data, after all, with presentation stripped out — but RSS is powerful for building lasting, “sticky” relationships.

With loyal readers come inbound links, buzz (I hate that word), credibility, and the link. And with every loyal reader comes 10 random Googlers who you can make money off w/ ads.

That’s the way I look at things. I don’t want to make money off loyal readers (RSS), I want to make money off random people (Googlers to my website).

I understand your frustration but as someone who wants to be more than a hobbyist, I just feel it’s the best thing to do, given that I already find my feed’s content on a variety of sites. And this really is the early phase of xml feeds.

The bottom line for me is that people have to come to my blog to participate.

One thing I do that might help people like you is write headlines that give a clear indication of what the post contains rather than a cutesy title that doesn’t really communicate contents. That way you realize if there are multiple topics or just one big topic and you’ll have a better idea of whether or not it’s worth coming to the site.

This is a good topic for discussion cause it reminds me to re-evaluate what I’m doing now that I’ve settled in to an approach.

RSS is still in it’s infancy, but as it goes more mainstream then the spec can grow to allow more markup/images/layout/style. Blogging will evolve with RSS and it will be possible to monetize, just in a new and different way.

In this market, things change quickly. Those that adapt and see the possibilites are always likely to do well!

Visitors coming in from the search engines might click on a link or two but it’s the folks who know and trust you who are most likely to click and convert

I think the most likely clickers are the searchers. I come to ProBlogger for the content, not to click on adsense links. Now affiliate links… THAT’S a different story.

50% of my RSS subscribers come from iTunes, which of course *only* picks up my podcast.

Let me revise… less than two years…

How is that spammy when you turn around and suggest having additional material on your blog that’s not available in the rss feed?

That’s just silly. Plus, limiting the contents of the feed really cuts down on the abuse of your it by companies that will rerun the whole feed if possible and add ads. They dont’ bother me because they don’t have my full feed.

You may prefer a different approach but there’s no reason to call a legitimate option spammy just because you don’t prefer it.