WHY I LOVE NETWORK MARKETING!

If I had to do it all over again, rather than build an old style type of business, I would have started building a network marketing business!

In the past many people have made fortunes in network marketing, also called multi-level marketing / MLM. Usually only the people at the top, made money with the others failing to achieve any kind of success!

Usually this was the result of a compensation plan that did not reward the average person. Has anything changed over the years, Yes and No. Still this is one of the most fun and rewarding businesses today!

More and more companies are offering products and services that the average person uses. Today we have products such as communication services, internet access, nutritional products, water filtration systems the list goes on. This industry has a high failure rate; most of this is due to the false representations that are found on the internet today.

This takes people that could have achieved their dreams: working from home, spending quality time with their family, financial freedom, and sets them up for failure. Yet statistics have shown that most of the individuals that have stayed in this industry for 10 or more years, have achieved a level of income beyond their wildest dreams! Why do they fail? A lot has to do with the promise of something for nothing.

Some of what you will find is businesses advising you that their new web site building systems will do it for you, guess again. It takes dedication and persistence to grow a business.

Network Marketing Training is so vitally important to your success in a network marketing business. Maybe you have a great company and great training but your not achieving the success you are looking for? Then it is in your best interest to seek additional solid market tested training through an outside source.

So what does it really take to become successful?

The key to being successful is to provide products and/or services that the average person uses everyday. The ideal products are unique or consumable. The internet has made the stocking of products literally obsolete, now with online ordering your customers simply shop at your very own online store. Finding the right sponsor is also the key to your success in this emerging industry.

A sponsor is someone who will guide you and provide the necessary support to help you grow your business. A great many people place way to much emphasis on the company and the flash behind their online presentations and fail to realize the that it is the people within an organization that matter most!

Companies come and go but the friends and business partners will stay with you always.

Next on the list and the most important of what it takes to become successful is proper network marketing training. This is the key ingredient that is missing in most programs.

I can offer you the Best Network Training upline I have ever seen and a winning team to success! Everyone works together.

This company trains you with the BEST products out there! Take a quick look at the videos on this website:

http://www.clubprosper.net

Your Sponsor: Cyndi Parker
Call Anytime!
850-685-6940

FREE TRAFFIC!

FREE TRAFFIC:

Here's a "No Fail Formula" for low cost, targeted traffic, that works...And works incredibly well.

Actually if you do it right, not only is it f-ree, but PEOPLE ACTUALLY PAY YOU 25-50 cents to be on your list!

Let me say that again. People are paying you to be on your list!! Here's how:

First there are 4 tools needed to maximize this strategy. You probably already have most of these tools.

1.A Keyword Software Tool: I use Adwordiser.

http://www.adwordizer.ne

With this tool you can build a keyword list into the thousands in only minutes. You may of heard the saying "Throw enough sh__ up against the wall and some of it will stick." Well it's true. Plus, you'll find some hidden gems. Believe it or not, I've found 3 keywords in the Internet Marketing category, that get thousands of searches a day. Over 100,000 plus searches each, in a month. I'm paying a penny a click :)

2.A Non-Obtrusive Pop-Up that is Compliant with Google. Google doesn't allow pop-ups but you can use pop-ins, (they are a part of the html code and not a separate window), without getting your ads suspended.
I use Pop-In Generator.
http://webmasterautomation.com/pop-in

3.An Autoresponder: I use Autoresponse Plus
http://www.ecom24.com/index.php

Another one that comes highly recommended by alot of people is Email Aces. You can start an account for 2.95, then it's$8.95 a month. http://webmasterauto.emailaces.com

4."Buy Me A Product" by John Delavera.
http://hop.clickbank.net/?resellinfo/delavera
I use this on my Thank You page after someone has subscribed to my newsletter. Presently I have 2 free downloads & 22 products ranging in price from $1.00 to $9.97.
This is where it get's sweet! On my Thank You page I call the "Buy Me A Product" script, a Member's Discount Directory.

Only people who have subscribed ever see this page. It would literally blow your mind on how many people reach that Thank You page and start checking boxes like crazy. I get immediate $20 to $30 PayPal payments from Individual subscriber's on a daily basis! Where do you find products to load your "Buy Me A Product" script with?

Well, I'm sure you've seen those packages put together that offer hundreds of downloads for resale products. For example, here's one http://www.resellerrights.com
All you can download for $47.95. Lot's of different niche's are included, so there's something for everybody no matter what your site's theme is.

You can browse the title's to see if there is something that will work for you. Heck, John will even buy productsfor you if you run across one you want. Just pick a few out, load up "Buy Me A Product", and let'er rip! Test and change the product's around. You'll begin to see which product's sell best.Those are the 4 needed tools.

Once you have built your keyword list into the thousands, you'll need to list them at the Pay Per Click sites listed below. Yes, I do use them all. If your on a tight budget start with the Penny Per Click engines first. These are the biggest and the best for immediate results. Your traffic will start in only minutes! Penny A Click
http://www.goclick.com
http://www.epilot.com
http://www.payperranking.com
http://www.searchfeed.com/rd/index.jsp
http://www.enhance.com
https://adwords.google.com/select/
http://www.content.overture.com/d/
http://www.findwhat.com/index.asp
http://www.search123.com
http://www.kanoodle.com
http://www.mamma.com

How are you getting all this traffic f-ree? Well, Intially your paying to list your site with the Pay Per Click engines. But something is happening on the back end. People are opting into your list. And once they reach your Thank You page they are buying first class, low cost products for next to nothing.

I'm still tweaking my process, but get this......1 out of every 6 of my new subscriber's are spending $20 to $30 on my Thank You page! There's no repore (I know I didn't spell that right :), they don't know me, I wasn't referred, but their spending money and have opted into my list.

When all is said and done. My Pay Per Click campaign is Absolutely F-ree!Correction. I'm making money. A big profit. And building my list f-ree.

I'm not the "sharpest knife" in the kitchen drawer, so I'm sure there's someone that can make this process better.Bottom Line. This Works!

How To Promote Your Site And Make It Sticky!

If you have just designed your own site, then you have probably already realised how hard it is to get visitors to it. You are probably also finding that once you get visitors to your site, you are then having problems in making them return back to your site.

Well there are many ways of promoting your site and also making it sticky so that you can receive returning visitors. To promote your site you can:

Write your own reprint articles that are on the same subject/topic as your sites content.Writing your own articles with your website links contained within your authors bio line is probably one of the best ways to promote your website online.

This is because you can add them to some of the article directories where others then can search these article directories and then add your articles to their site, which will then give you credit in return. . Some article submission directories include:

http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.php
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articlecentral.com
http://www.articlefinders.com/submit.html
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/submitarticle.asp6.

Exchange links with other sites. Exchanging links with other sites take up a lot of work but can give you some positive results.

This is because exchanging links with other sites will mean that your site will get more exposure across the Web plus your link popularity will increase, which is then most likely to give your website better search engine rankings within some, if not, most of the major search engines.

Add your site to some of the free to submit general and specialty web directories. Adding your website to some of the free to submit general and specialty web directories is a good thing as you don't have to provide a link back to their directory.

Submitting your website to free to submit web directories is better than doing link exchanges as your link is more likely to be given higher priority than what it would on a site that has two way linking. A lot of web directories do rather well in some of the major search engines and also has a good Google PR, which means your site should benefit from this.

Do SEOSEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a very important factor to consider when designing your website. This is because in past research it shows that over about 85% of people use search engines first before using anything else to find what they are looking for online.

So if your site has poor SEO then you will not do all that well within the major search engines. If you do well with your sites SEO then you are likely to see some good results from the major search engines.

Some sites even receive most of their traffic from the major search engines.To make your site stickier you can:

Add games to your websiteAdding games to your website is a very good way of making your site stickier. This is because a lot of people like to play games when they are either bored or have nothing much to do. http://games.simplysearch4it.com is an example of a site that has got games added to it just so that it can increase its stickiness.

Add free reprint articles to your website. If you find it hard to find content to add to your site to make it bigger or stickier then a good thing to consider is reprint articles. This is because these reprint articles can be added to your site for free and it makes your sites content larger, which can then increase the stickiness of your website. You can find some free reprint articles at the following categorized article directories:http://www.simplysearch4it.com/article/articledir.phphttp://www.goarticles.com

Add features to your site that many others do not offer. You could look through a large amount of other sites to see what they have to offer.

Once you have done that, you can then see what would be a good thing to add to your site in, which many of these other sites dont offer. For example, http://products.simplysearch4it.com offers a product price comparison directory, which is a feature that many other sites across the web do not offer.

Doing something like this where many other sites don't offer it means that more people are likely to come to your site just to use it.

About the Author: Jonathan White has been involved in online marketing for over three years now and is the Webmaster of http://www.simplysearch4it.com where he also operates the free reprint articles directory at http://articles.simplysearch4it.com

Email Is Not What It Use To Be

If you are active on the web promoting your products, affiliate programs or services, you probably sense where Im going with the title of my article. We all put a lot of effort into our internet business. We all have the same hopes and dreams about where our internet business will go. Unfortunately we are all depended on too many variables that have to be just right at the right time.What is he talking about you might ask.

Lets take a simple example. Listening to self declared gurus of internet marketing they all tell you the same thing. You have to build your list, by that they mean your email list.After following this advice and spending hundreds of dollars in opt-in email leads and maintaining a list of over 5000 subscribers I was pretty convinced that success is just around the corner.This is as far away from the truth as human possible. Im running a newsletter delivered daily and I send additional sales letters to pitch some of my affiliate products.

I track every email with ad tracking and click through analysis.Guess what? Nothing! Sending daily emails and sometimes an additional sales letter would trigger something, at least a wave of cancellations, dont you agree? Well, my conclusion of this mess is that over 90% of the emails never passed the SPAM filters.This is devastating. As you know most people sing up for newsletters through their free email accounts. The few who use their regular email address unsubscribe within a few days.Dont get me wrong, newsletters are great and if done right they can help you to promote your business. I believe the key is that your newsletter needs to be unique and very narrow focused on a niche target.Going back to the email leads issue. Buying email leads from email harvesters it is a waste of money.

Even if they are double or triple opt-in leads. Promoting a copied newsletter is a waste of money. Why bother to promote something that is already promoted hundreds of times?If you are targeting the people who are looking to make money online, your target audience is pretty narrow and they probably have already subscriptions to one or another form of marketing newsletter.Im actually shifting my focus completely and put a newsletter together to help people to get started with real estate investments, especially Florida real estate. As you can see this is a very narrow target audience. If I get a couple of hundred subscribers I will be happy. If youre interested send an email to mailto:pdobler@suncoastrenttoown.com I will let you know when the newsletter will be available.The bottom line of my story is, dont advertise to the advertiser. You just waste your time and money.

Thats the main reason why people getting frustrated with their internet business and simply quit. This is like car dealers advertise solely to other car dealers. What do you think will happen?I know what you are thinking. What happened to him? Didn't he tell us in his article "Where's the Traffic?" that email lists are the cure to non-visited websites? Yes, that's true. I still believe that autoresponders are good business practice to communicate with your customers. I just didn't see the value of buying email leads. Yes, I changed my opinion, which is plain human nature and happens to all of us.I hope this made you think a little bit and if you can turn your business into the profitable margins based on my little advice please let me know. Im eager to hear if somebody actually is listening to what I have to say.

Anchor Text Optimization

Anchor Text Optimization
By Jagdeep. S. Pannu


"Anchor text can significantly improve your page relevance. Optimized Anchor text can boost your site ranking and targeted search engine traffic."

If you have done some serious reading about your website's optimization, you probably would have come across the reference to the phrase “optimization of anchor text”. This article discusses the definition and importance of anchor text and how you can use this powerful website optimization feature to get high ranking in search engines.

What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the visible hyperlinked text on the page. Let's take this example:

Please examine our SEO Case Studies for validation to evaluate our Search Engine Optimization capabilities.

Here the words “SEO Case Studies” and “Search Engine Optimization” are hyper linked to the hidden URLs http://www.seorank.com/seo-casestudies.htm and http://www.seorank.com respectively. The words within the visible links, “SEO Case studies” and “Search Engine Optimization”, are called the anchor text.

In a normally built site, anchor text is usually used to indicate the subject matter of the page that it links to. For example, the text “SEO case studies” indicates to visitors that they can expect to see content about case studies pertaining to SEO if they visit the link. This pattern of usage has been applied in search engine algorithms to enhance the relevance of the “target” or the “landing page” URL for the keywords appearing within the anchor text.

Anchor Text Enhances the Relevance of the Target Page

Please note that the keywords in anchor text enhance the relevance of the target page pertaining to the keywords used. While the relevance of the page containing the anchor text is also enhanced to some degree (because of relevant keywords appearing on that page), the real gainer is the target page URL. Use this knowledge to build the relevance of each page of your site, through optimized anchor text containing important keywords, relevant to the theme of such pages, from other pages of your site.

Search Engine Algorithms like Anchor Text.

The inclusion of important keywords in the anchor text can make a big difference in the final ranking of your site pages. All search engines that matter, give significant weight to the anchor text on your pages. In fact Google even has a special operator: ‘allinanchor:keyword’, which picks up text only from within the anchor text of indexed pages. This further implies that Google’s algorithm is configured to index anchor text as separate queryable data, thereby making it evident, that Google considers it an important pointer to page relevance. Our internal research leads us to believe that weight given to anchor text has been raised recently in the Google algorithm. With these changes, it is possible to enhance your website’s ranking by using the right keywords in anchor text.

It has also been studied that anchor text, whether from external, or internal pages, is important. It should therefore be ensured that significant attention is given to the inclusion of important keywords in your anchor text.

How to Optimize Anchor Text Within Your Site

Anchor text optimization can be deployed throughout your site to enhance the relevance of most of the web pages based on individual page content. You would be surprised, how easy it is, to find suitable instances of hyperlinking structures to make use of optimized anchor text. When linking to internal pages, it is better to hyperlink relevant keywords instead of linking unrelated common words. A common lapse is the hyperlinking of the common words like "here" instead of content related keywords. For example in the sentence:

"Read all about Anchor Text here", the tendency is to link "here" to the anchor text content URL whereas the best way is to link " Anchor Text ".

This is important because you can leverage the hyperlinking of important keyword phrases instead of hyperlinking unrelated text wherever possible. For delivering relevant results, robots are hungry for anchor text so it is always a great idea to hyperlink important keywords to help search engines deliver relevance. Always restructure sentences if keywords don’t fit in anchor text.

Using Keywords in Natural Text to Create Anchor Text

You can also locate (or insert) important keyword phrases in your page’s natural text and link it to relevant target pages of your site. Consider the paragraph below. Notice how highly relevant keywords can be converted into powerful anchor text. Each keyword phrase links to an important relevant section of the same site:

You can also locate (or insert) important keyword phrases in your page’s natural text and link it to relevant target pages of your site. Consider the paragraph below. Notice how the highly relevant keywords ( underlined) can be converted into powerful anchor text. Each keyword phrase links to an important relevant section of the same site.

Search Engine Optimization is an important part of any search engine marketing initiative. Some people believe that submitting the site to search engines alone is sufficient in getting top-10 ranking. This is not true. Search engine submission only announces your site’s existence to search engines. To get a good search engine ranking, it is important that you carry out Title tag optimization, Meta tags optimization and anchor text optimization of your website amongst other SEO techniques.

While the above example seems like overkill, this is just to illustrate how you can accommodate your important keyword phrases by carefully rewording the text of your web pages. If you feel that the standard blue underlined hyperlinks appear ugly on your website, then you can re-format its HTML markup code to change color of the text and get rid of the underline without losing the power of the anchor text.

Optimizing Anchor Text of External Links

Keywords within the anchor text are equally useful from links pointing to your website. If you are pursuing or considering a link building campaign, put some serious thought in writing multiple options of the title and description of the link pointing to your website.

The “title” which is usually used as the hyper-linked text, should contain your important keywords. It is good to work with ten different options of title and description as it not only gives you more room to play with several keywords, but it also helps search engines give you a wider keyword coverage.

When soliciting external links, it is better to provide your own “cut and paste” HTML code. Webmasters like it when a ready to paste HTML code is available for them to use, to provide a link to your website.

Consider the following examples:

Website Promotion & Search Engine Optimization
SEO Rank provides Website promotion and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services for small websites to large e-commerce sites requiring Search Engine Optimization & Ranking
http://www.seorank.com/seo-programs.htm

Search Engine Promotion and Link Building Services
SEO Rank offers Search Engine Promotion, SEO, and Link Building services for small to large online businesses.
http://www.seorank.com/seo-services.htm

Notice how not only each of the title anchor text is optimized to contain important keyword phrases, but also that the description text varies to accommodate more keyword variation. Also, note that each variation has a different landing page URL to boost the relevance of your site’s individual pages depending upon the theme of that page.

Links from external sites help your site to gain relevance for keywords mentioned in the anchor text which boosts your site’s ranking. As the number of such inbound links increase, so will your site’s ranking in SERPs.

Anchor text therefore comes on top of the checklist in your SEO initiatives.

Article last updated: April 02 2004


Related Reading:

http://www.seorank.com/meta-tags-article.htm



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jagdeep. S. Pannu
Visitor Conversion and Website Marketing

GET LISTED IN THE DIRECTORY FOR OPTIMUM LISTINGS!

Getting your site an optimum listing in the Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org) is vitally important as far as search engine positioning is concerned as Google gives a lot of importance to sites being listed in the Open Directory.

In this article, we focus on how you can get your site an optimum listing in the Open Directory. Even if your site is already listed in the Open Directory, you should read this article to find out how you can get multiple listings in the Open Directory.

Before you submit your site, go through your entire site and ensure that there are no missing graphics, no links leading to empty or non-existent pages and no "Under construction" symbols. Also, check for typos and grammatical errors. Furthermore, your site must provide good content. If your site simply contains links to various affiliate programs, you will find it difficult to get through. The Open Directory does not mind sites containing links to affiliate programs, as long as you provide proper content.

You now need to select the two most important keywords for your site based on their popularity. If you don't yet know the keywords which are applicable for your site, have a look at my article on "Choosing the correct keywords for your site", available at http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?4901&keywords.htm In this article, I have mentioned that while selecting the keywords for your site, you should look at both the popularity of the keywords as well as their competitiveness. However, for the purpose of this article, don't worry about the competitiveness - select keywords only on the basis of popularity.

We now discuss how you should write the Title and Description of your site's listing in the Open Directory. You don't really have much choice regarding the Title as the Open Directory insists that the Title be the official name of your site. There is no way around it.

When you write the description, your aim should be to make the Open Directory editor's job as easy as possible. You should not give the editor the feeling that he/she needs to edit your description in any way. The moment an editor starts to edit your description, you risk having your keywords removed from your description.

Your description should be a single sentence which conveys what your site is all about and contains the two keywords you are targeting as close as possible to the beginning of the description. However, your description should not just be a list of keywords - the description that you use should be a proper sentence and should be grammatically correct.

Broadly, here are the rules that you should remember when forming the description:

i) Make sure that the description can tell a visitor what your site is all about. Things like "Have a look at our site" or "Welcome to my site" does not tell a visitor what your site does.

ii) Avoid hype of any sort. Avoid using ALL CAPS or exclamation marks. Phrases like "The best web site dealing with widgets!!" or "Offers the BEST QUALITY, CHEAPEST WIDGETS you can find anywhere" are inappropriate.

iii) Don't capitalize every word in your description - capitalize only the first word. Of course, if some of the words in the description are proper nouns, then you should capitalize them.

iv) Write the description in the third person. Don't say "We offer financial planning and credit counseling services", say "Offers financial planning and credit counseling services.".

v) Don't make your description too long - limit yourself to 15 words at the most. If you are lucky, you may be able to get accepted with a description longer than 15 words. However, longer the description, higher the probability that the editor will want to edit it.

vi) Check your description for typos and grammatical mistakes.

vii) End your description with a period. If the editor has to add the period to the end of your description, she may also end up editing the description, which is not what you want. Your aim is to have the editor accept the exact description that you had written in order to ensure that your keywords are not removed from the description.

Now, we come to how you can select the right category for your site. Go to the Open Directory, and search for the two keywords you have established. Does a particular category come up at the top for both the keywords? If so, go to that category, and see whether the sites present in the category are similar to yours. Also see whether that category has a Description and/or a FAQ. Read them and find out whether that category is applicable for your site. If so, this is the category you should submit your site to.

If different categories come up at the top for the two keywords, go through all the categories and find out which is the most appropriate category among the different categories.

For some keywords, you will find that the Open Directory does not display any categories. In this case, find out which category most of the top sites belong to and submit your site to that category, assuming it is applicable for your site.

Once you have selected the right category, click on the "add URL" link at the top. Type in the address of your site in the first text box, the official name of your site in the next text box, the description that you have earlier developed in the third text box and your email address in the fourth text box. Although the Open Directory says that including the email address is optional, I would recommend that you include it - if, for some reason, your site is not accepted, the Open Directory editor may want to tell you why your site has not been accepted.

What to do if your site is not accepted

After submitting your site, go to the category where you have submitted your site every day and see when your site gets listed. If you find that your site is not in that category, it may so happen that you have been placed in a different category. Type in your domain name in Open Directory's search box and see whether your site comes up in the results. I have seen some sites getting accepted within 1 day and some sites in about 2-3 weeks.

If your site has not been listed after three weeks, then re-submit it to the same category and wait for another three weeks. If your site is still not accepted, then have a look at your site again. Does it contain any missing images or links, links to empty pages or under construction signs? Does it provide good content? Does it have any spelling or grammatical errors?

If you are absolutely convinced that your site is eligible for being accepted by the Open Directory, then the fact that your site is not being accepted may signify one of two things:

i) The editor of that category is inactive, i.e. he/she has not been reviewing sites for a long time.

ii) He/she is your competitor, and does not want to list you.

In this case, the first step is to write to the editor of the category. Scroll down to the bottom of the category to which you are trying to submit your site and click on the name of the editor. If that category does not have an editor, go to the category above that in the hierarchy. For instance, suppose you are trying to submit to the Computers: Consultants: Business Systems category. At the time of writing of this article, that category did not have an editor. In this case, you should go to the Computers: Consultants category and click on one of the editors there. Click on the "Send to editorname" link, and in the Comments field, write a very polite message to the editor.

Tell her that you have been trying to submit your site to the Open Directory and you have been unsuccessful. Give her the complete details of your submission, i.e. the category to which you submitted, your URL, the Title and the Description that you used and the dates on which you submitted. Ask her as to whether there are any mistakes that you are making and whether she would be kind enough to point out the mistakes to you so that you can correct them.

If, after two weeks, you don't get any reply from the editor and are not accepted into the Open Directory, then look for another category which is applicable for your site using the method outlined earlier and submit your site to this category.

Getting Multiple Listings in the Open Directory

If you have already got your site listed in the Open Directory, you may try and get your site some additional listings in it. Begin by selecting two keywords which are different from the keywords you selected earlier. Then try and locate another category which is applicable for your site and submit your site there with a new description which contains the two new keywords you have selected.

If you are lucky, you may be able to get a listing in this new category, especially if the editor of this category is different from the editor of the category where your site is already listed. Again, if the second category to which you want to submit your site is a regional category (i.e. a category applicable to the geographical region in which your company is located), that again improves your chance of getting a second listing. Alternatively, if you were originally listed in one of the regional categories, then getting your site listed in one of the general categories is also possible, assuming that the products or services you are selling are not intended for a regional market only.

However, you have a much better chance of getting a second listing if you submit one of the internal pages of your site to a different category (assuming you can locate a category which is applicable for that particular page), rather than again submitting the home page. Submitting an internal page has the benefit that the Title no longer needs to be the official name of your site.

This allows you to include keywords in the Title. Before submitting one of the internal pages of your site, you should change the title of the page (here, by "title", I mean the Title tag of the page, i.e. the Title that is displayed at the top of the browser window when the page is opened) to the Title that you want the page to be listed under in the Open Directory. This improves the chance that the Open Directory editor will accept the title that you had submitted.

However, don't go overboard with submitting internal pages - you can be penalized for spamming. Don't start submitting any doorway pages that you have created - they will be rejected. Any internal page that you submit must provide some unique content and must be relevant to the category to which you want to submit the page.

How To Make Money Online

How To Make Money Online

Innovative Uses of RSS

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a new way to broadcast corporate news and structured information. RSS offers a quick, easy corporate communication channel. The RSS contents are published as a feed and the feed's content keep customers, partners and journalists abreast of corporate news and information. The RSS feeds are read using a tool referred to as a news aggregator, or an RSS reader. The aggregator periodically checks to see if the RSS feed has been updated. As the feed is updated, new information will automatically appear in the RSS reader.

While RSS was at one point only considered to be a means to deliver news headlines, RSS has quickly become a powerful medium to disseminate all kinds of information. As traditional marketers are attempting to rein in content delivery, measuring e-mail open rates, click-throughs and conversions, Internet users are fighting to gain control over the content they receive. Savvy marketers and business owners are using RSS as a way to improve corporate communication and increase their external exposure and brand appeal.

What is the enclosure tag?
RSS 2.0 is quickly becoming the definitive RSS standard, all because of its support for the enclosure tag. The enclosure tag is an optional field in the RSS 2.0 specification that allows the feed publisher to include a link to a file. The file can be just about anything. Businesses have seized the opportunity, including tutorials, streaming audio lectures, PDF proposals, Power Pointâ„¢ presentations, podcasts of sales meetings, and advertising portfolios among other traditional uses for RSS.

Many businesses have yet to realize the potential hidden in the enclosure field. The implications and power of how RSS can be used is really awe-inspiring. Consider the following business uses for RSS:

1. PDF Documents - Consider broadcasting meeting agenda notes or documentation as a PDF included with a feed, allowing interested individuals to access information without having to deal with cumbersome e-mail attachments.

2. PPT Presentations - Presentations can easily be distributed in a feed enclosure. The added benefit is that presenters using Power Pointâ„¢ will not have to lug their notebook to a meeting to present - they can manage the presentation from an iPod or similar handheld that reads RSS feeds.

3. Video - Video or streaming video are both possible via the enclosure field. Have lectures or even political debates come to life with the added video component.

4. Audio - Audio content does not mean that feeds are limited to your favorite songs. Podcasting is the coined term for audio content contained in a feed and can include language instruction, talk shows or editorials.

5. Images - Imagine realtors using the enclosure field to display photos of homes to interested buyers. Now they can carry a light-weight catalog with them to show potential buyers at a moment's notice.

6. Downloads - Consider an information technology department in a large corporation conducting proprietary software updates, including executables or zip files in the enclosure field which allow users to update the software at a convenient time.

Feedreaders are playing catch- up
RSS news aggregators were initially designed to receive text-based content. As users find outside-the-box uses for RSS, developers of RSS readers are struggling to release new versions that support the enclosures businesses are eager to use.

FeedDemon, a popular RSS reader, has recently added support for every type of enclosure in their latest release. They have created a safe list that can be customized to include specific types of file types like PDFs. This will automate downloads of files that are deemed "safe". This was clearly designed with security in mind, to prevent automatic downloading of executables.

Businesses are revolutionizing RSS as a communication medium. While some traditional businesses are struggling to include monthly newsletter summaries in an RSS feed and reap the benefits of RSS, other innovative businesses are adopting incredibly creative uses for both internal and external corporate communications.