Today I set myself up with a free membership to bloglines. What is bloglines? According to their website… “Bloglines is a FREE online service that helps you subscribe to and manage lots of web information, such as news feeds, weblogs and audio. Bloglines tracks the information you’re interested in, retrieves new stuff as it happens, and organizes everything for you on your own personal web news page.”

Personally, I am using bloglines to organize the various blogs that I read daily. What I do is take the RSS feed links from my favorite blogs, enter it into their website, and that’s it. Now, every hour they will search those blogs for updates and provide them to me inside their online membership area. No more surfing the web, now the web comes to me!

I once asked a fairly computer literate friend of mine if he used RSS. He replied “No, I get most my news from the T.V.” It’s amazing how many people still associate RSS feeds with only major news stories. He didn’t realize RSS allows you to keep updated on any topic there is a website about. Any blog or site out there that has a RSS feed will allow you to subscribe and stay updated with it. Whether it’s general news, pet training tips, Ipod accessories, sports, or Internet Marketing.

One thing to remember about RSS News feeds is that you don’t have to read every single article. It’s not like email where you have to open and read each one. With RSS feeds you can easily scan the headlines of the articles, choose the ones you want to read and simply delete the rest.

If you want to keep on top of your niche then RSS is simply a must have. Using bloglines provides you with an easy to manage system for managing all your RSS news feeds. It’s completely free, fairly simple to set up and use, and packed full of various features.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Stay updated on future posts by subscribing to my RSS Feed.

Feedster, My Yahoo, AOL, Bloglines, Pluck, Rojo, Google. It’s slowly happening. The RSS button options on the side of blogs is slowly growing larger and larger. Like the Blob, it’s taking over entire blogs, sites, and possibly the world! Okay, maybe an exaggeration, but I think you get my point. There are just so many different ways to sign up and read RSS feeds that for blog owners it’s getting near impossible to accommodate everyone with an easy one-click solution.

Today I spent 3 hours setting up my RSS page. (Edit: I have since done away with the RSS page in exchange for the simplicity of a few buttons on the right hand column.) I decided not to clutter up every page of my blog with funky buttons for every RSS service under the sun, so I have dedicated an separate page for it. As you can see, the list is quite extensive and always growing larger. Since I am using FeedBurner I will be able to track which RSS readers are most popular with my subscribers and will eventually only accommodate the 10 most popular.

There is a great tool that I have been using to create these buttons over at TwisterMC. Yet, even on his page there are over 20 different RSS buttons you can use and 8 different ways to bookmark a page.

So what do I suggest? Well, I first off recommend using FeedBurner as it will allow you to track what the most popular RSS readers your subscribers are using. Then, either set up a dedicated page like I have done for several RSS buttons, or only offer the top 5 or so on the side of your blog. In my opinion having too many is a waste of space, tacky, and bad for the overall design of most blogs.

Here are a few other websites related to this topic…

• Free RSS Button Graphic Tool
• Why Are RSS Feed Buttons Orange?
• Great article on placement of your RSS Feed Buttons.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Stay updated on future posts by subscribing to my RSS Feed.