“Won’t RSS Feeds rob your site of traffic? Matanong lang. nyaha.”

This was an interesting question brought up by Choldmhist which he left as a comment on my post “Setting up RSS on Your Blog”.

RSS has proven to be a really helpful and useful feature to bloggers over the past years. Instead of scanning through your blogs for updates, RSS makes a life easier by automatically sending all the content of a reader’s favorite blogs to a feed reader of their preference.

(Don’t know what I’m talking about? Learn more about RSS and Feeds here!)

There is only one slight drawback in using RSS, however. Readers are less inclined to visit blogs because they already have the content being sent to them automatically. In other words, they have no other reason to visit your blog anymore.

So regarding Choldmhist’s question, yes, RSS does rob a blog of its visitors.

Aha! So it was you who has been robbing my blog! To think that we trusted you!

So, why are other blogs insisting of having RSS when it has a negative effect on a blog’s visit rate? Why is Pinoy Blogero still offering those free customized feed buttons when he already knows the harm that RSS can bring to blogs?

I have already finished two feed button orders from last week. Here are the free backlinks that I have promised to those who have ordered their customized feed buttons from PinoyBlogero.

But first, some announcements regarding this topic:

Please note that I have changed the time allowance for me to finish a feed button order. I found out that it would be hard for me to make feed buttons while attending to my duties as a student and a blogger. So instead of one day, you will have to wait for 2-3 working days before getting your feed button.

Also, I would like to remind everyone that in order for you to get your customized feed button for free, all you have to do is make a review of my blog and keep the link back to my site intact.

A simple review would suffice but I would really appreciate it if you could make a full review of my site stating your own comments and recommendations. Making a feed button takes time and effort and I am expecting a little compensation for my efforts.

If you really can’t make a blog review, just tell me beforehand, we could work something out.

Now on to the backlinks!

LakbayPilipinas Blog – Yep, another travel blog who asked me for a feed button. I have already made a design for them (see below) but it seems that the design was a little to lonely/peaceful for the overall feel of the blog. So I have decided to create another design for them soon, but this time, I am thinking of a livelier theme than the present one. Pahiyas festival perhaps?

PinoyBlogoSphere – Upon joining PinoyBlogoSphere.com, a number of great opportunities opened up that has contributed greatly to the growth of my blog. Which is why, I didn’t have any second thoughts in accepting their orders for a customized PinoyBlogoSphere.com feed button.

If you want to see other feed buttons that I have finished, you could check out the first batch of customized feed buttons

.

Pending Orders
Here is the list of orders that I have received this week. If you don’t see your name here, please resend your feed button order to my e-mail, I might have deleted it by mistake.

Lisa Rode
Rhea Joy Ong Yiu
Mello Villareal – Redesign for LakbayPilipinas Blog

To those who are interested in ordering their own feed buttons, please refer to my post on PinoyBlogero’s Customized Feed Button Service.

Thank you very much! I hope that these feed buttons can help increase subscribers for your blog!

Ever since I have started accepting customized feed button orders here on PinoyBlogero, I have been getting emails and messages from readers on where they can get their own RSS feeds for their blog. It seems that the RSS phenomenon only caught the attention of some bloggers probably because of my free customized feed button service.

I have already covered the topic on the importance and usefulness of RSS on a blog not long ago. In this post, I shall be helping you in finding where you can get your own RSS feed and how to set it up to broaden the opportunities for your blog.

Where to get RSS
There are many RSS providers that out on the internet for a blogger’s disposal. The more prominent ones would be Feedburner and Feedblitz. These providers aggregate a blog’s posts and sends them to its subscribers.

Signing up for a service is really easy. It is only a matter of filling out necessary details of your blog and they will do the rest. After signing up, you will most likely end up with a URL similar to this:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/pinoyblogero/vfEm

The URL that will be given to you will be your blog’s feed. If you would check out this URL you will be sent to a page where your readers can choose the feed reader they would like to send your blog’s feed to.

There you have it, it is as easy as that. Now we need to put it up on your blog.

I know my post is a little late. I had a date with my girlfriend the whole day and I didn’t have time to make a post. I need a break too, you know.  We grabbed a ticket to the movies (Pirates3 was so cool) and enjoyed some shawarma, sisig, and sinigang for lunch. It was nice because I had chance to take a break from all those time spent in front of my computer, waiting for the next post idea to hit me.

And now that I am back to the confines of my workplace. I decided to make a short post update to meet my quota for the day. I hate missing one day of posting, it makes me feel guilty inside.

————————-

After three days of posting my announcement on accepting orders for customized feed buttons, I have already recieved two orders which is really great considering that my blog is still not widely known yet.

Anyways, I have promised on my post that whoever has ordered their free feed buttons from me with recieve a free backlink from PinoyBlogero. Here are the links along with the feed buttons they have ordered.

Byahilo: Ito ang trip ko! - Join Enrico Dee in his travels around the country. His blog is full of colorful pictures from his journey, portraying the beauty of the Philippines.

Byahilo Feed Button

Bruce Reyes-Chow - Reyes-Chow has one diverse personality which he shows openly to the public through his blog. A pastor with a little twist, as he somehow puts it. Pretty cool, really.

Reyes-Chow Feed Button

To show my appreciation to my “Buena Manos” (tama ba?), I have also included a little gift along with their ordered package. Which you could view at the following URLs.
http://img167.imageshack.us/img167/1586/byahilogifthp9.jpg
http://img406.imageshack.us/img406/3417/reyeschowgiftnn3.jpg

To all those who are interested in ordering their free customized feed buttons, please refer to this post, Get A Customized Feed Button For Your Blog From PinoyBlogero. All the details are in there.

I’ll be waiting for your orders!

I was planning to make an article on how to increase a blog’s RSS subscribers as a follow-up article for my first RSS related post entitled RSS: Knocking On Pinoy Bloggers Doors. However, Rob from the “Advice for Bloggers” blog has already beat me to it with his post, How I got 350 RSS subscribers in my first 30 days, which is really worth the read.

 So, instead of making another post that will basically say the same thing, I just decided to take some interesting points from the points that he has given and add my own personal opinion, which you can see below. If you want to see the whole article that Rob has made, check it out here.

Entice Your Readers to Subscribe – One of the first things that you should do after getting your RSS, is to promote it. Rob says that you should always remind readers about your RSS at the beginning and at the end of every post, which is a really an effective method.

Concentrate your efforts - One good solid advice that I think I should be doing. If you want to increase your subscriptions, one must allot some time in promoting it.

Don’t flaunt your Feed Count unless it’s around 500 – Showing your feed count too early has a negative psychological effect on the visitors of your blog. If they see that the numbers are too low, they tend not to subscribe thinking that your feeds are not worth subscribing to. In some cases, this tends to be true. So before showing your feed count, let it reach a number near the hundreds.

Subscribe to RSS – Rob, had this laid flat. If you want to subscribe your own readership, why not subscribe to other feeds as well? Who knows, maybe the blogging gods may reward you for your good deed. So, what are you waiting for? Why not subscribe to my feeds?