The power of RSS and uses for
selling auction items!
by William Whitehead - Copyright © 2006 Addabid.com
So, you don't use RSS or even understand it. But you should! A few
very simple steps can help sell your items!
Many internet users use RSS, and many more users will be coming with
the next release of Windows. Hundreds of thousands of sites already
use RSS for content......content written by someone else.
RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. News sites are using
it, police organizations are using it. Blog sites are using it. Look
at all the news stories on Yahoo. Did Yahoo write those? No! They
are displayed on Yahoo via RSS or a variation of RSS. Yahoo borrows
this content to provide users with articles to read, and a reason
to use their site.
Ebay was late implementing RSS into the game. Better late than never
I guess. Ebay realized the power of using RSS (although only available
for Stores at this point). Ebay realized that RSS is easily shareable,
and sometimes sharing doesn't require anything on the owner's part.
As a auction seller, you don't have to read RSS or make it a part
of your everyday life. But you should make use of it's power. It
doesn't take much work.....just a copy/paste of the URL to your feed,
and a few submissions to RSS submission sites, much like a webmaster
would submit his/her new site to a few search engines. Neither RSS
or website be found very quickly if the owner of the RSS/website
won't submit it.
So what does this do for you?
If you have a RSS feed of your items for sale on an auction site,
other sites will display it for you. Freely! But, you have to submit
the feed to a few RSS submission sites to get started.
I have a list of RSS submission sites here.
You can even get free software to help submit your feed. Allscoop
RSS Submit.
Let's say the auction site I sell on provides a RSS feed for all
of the items I sell. I can submit the URL of that feed to a few RSS
submission sites,then my work with RSS is done. The auction site
creates the feed for me, all I have to do from this point on is list
items on the auction site like I normally would.
What happens next is the special part.
Sites looking for content to display on their website will "borrow" my
feed from the sites I submitted my RSS feed to. My items for sale
are now being displayed on tons of sites that I didn't have to submit
my items to. The sites displaying my items may display the whole
RSS feed or only certain items based on keywords or topics.
Suppose "webmaster-x" has a website dedicated to frogs. Webmaster-x
could grab a few hundred RSS feeds from the internet and filter the
contents of the feed to only display RSS content based on the keywords "frog", "tadpoles" or
any keyword relating to the keywords filtered by webmaster-x. That
would provide webmaster-x's visitors with pages filled with content
about frogs.
Another website displaying items using the keyword "princess" may
also display the same item the frog was in because my item description
might contain the keyword "princess". Assuming my item title and
description contain maybe one-hundred words, that's a potential of
100 keywords to be chosen by any of the webmaster-a-thru-z sites
on the internet!
Okay, back to how RSS can help.
Pretend I sell frog-related items and have submitted my
RSS feed to some RSS submission sites. Other sites have borrowed
my feed to provide content to their site. Now, instead of my items
only being visible on the site I sell on, my items can now be found
on a variety of sites, and all I had to do was submit one little
URL to a few RSS submission sites. From that point on, webmaster-x
and all the other sites are doing me a favor by borrowing items from
my feed. Anyone searching Google, Yahoo, MSN, or any other search
engine may be searching for frogs. With my frog-related RSS feed
being displayed on so many sites now, the more chances I have of
someone entering a site with my Frog items on it. They click the
link to my item found on webmaster-x's website and arrive at my item
listed at the auction site. They may want to buy it, they may not,
but I have provided myself and the potential buyer with that chance
I never had before. The only work I did was list items like I normally
do, and submit one URL to a few sites. The auction site and webmaster-x
did the rest of the work!
From that point on, webmaster-x's website will keep coming back and
grabbing my feed and updating the info on his/her site. All I have
to do is keep listing my great deals on the auction site.
Today, a friend asked me if I had advertising space on my site that
she could purchase. She said she realized in this business "You have
to advertise". My reply was: "If you can use RSS, RSS will do the
advertising for you! for FREE!!
If your auction site uses RSS feeds, make the most of it. You'll
be glad you did!
The auction site I list on has RSS feeds, but why isn't
the auction site submitting my feed for me?
Many sellers believe it is the responsibility of the auction
site to submit the sellers individual RSS feed. Why? It's your
individual feed and your items for sale. It would be a very hard task
for any auction site to submit RSS feeds for every individual seller.
Imagine the hours it would take to submit 2000 (more or less) seller
feeds to 20 submission site! If the auction site has RSS feeds for
the All Auctions, Featured Items, But It Now Items, etc., then chances
are the owner has submitted those feeds and your items are in there.
Please follow-up by submitting your feed and double the exposure of
your items. You've spent hours and hours (maybe days) taking/editing
pictures, writing up descriptions and entering them into your favorite
auction site. Why not spend a possible 20 minutes to copy/paste your
RSS URL to 20 submission sites?
Sellers should not feel like it is the responsibility of the auction
site to spread a sellers RSS feed for them. Sellers should also not
feel like they are doing advertisement for the auction site if they
submit their individual seller RSS feed. You are advertising your
items while spreading exposure to the auction site. Don't you want
your auction site of choice to bring buyers? It's to sell your items.
Help the auction site by helping yourself!
Look at the TV commercials for some products. After advertising the
product they wish to sell, at the end of the commercial, it may say "available
at (insert store(s) here). You as a seller should do the same. The
auction site is providing you a place to sell, help buyers find your
items at that auction site.
How can buyers use RSS?
Buyers searching the internet using a search engine may come across
an auction item on webmaster-x's site (see webmaster-x from Part
I). The buyer didn't use RSS, the webmaster-x's site provided it
for the buyer. Still, RSS was used in the process.
As a buyer, I can always know when my favorite seller has
new auction items for sale!
Let's say I have a favorite seller on an auction site(s). Using
RSS and a RSS reader ( I use the free RSSReader from http://www.rssreader.com/),
I don't even have to visit the auction site to see if they have new
items for sell. I can connect to the internet, my RSSReader will
check that sellers RSS feed automatically and alert me of any new
items. I can browse the item from my RSS reader and not even have
to visit the auction site. The RSS reader will also alert me if there
were changes to an item I am interested in or I have bid on (description
change, bids by others, etc). Meanwhile, I was surfing the net somewhere
else with my browser and the RSS and RSSReader did the work for me.
What if the site has other types of RSS feeds? How can I
use them?
Depending on the type of feeds available depend on the advantages.
RSS feeds by Category can alert you when new items have been listed
in that category. RSS feeds for Items Ending Soon can alert of the
items ending soon. Other feeds such as Featured, Buy It Now, Hot,
Newly Listed etc. items have their uses as well. It's all up to your
preference how you choose to use these feeds to your advantage.
What else can it do?
You can even add RSS feeds to sites like My Yahoo and MY MSN and
be greeted by new items by your favorite seller. Right next to your
morning News! Using Firefox or later versions of Netscape (8.x or
above), you can bookmark feeds with your browser!
There are many great uses for RSS, all you have to do is use them!
I hope this article has helped!
