Top RSS Directories

It is a page on the site and you will also find a link to it in the navigation bar at the top of every web page.

As of this moment, all links and directories are live and working. Please let me know if you experience any issues.

I will be following up in the next day or so with a downloadable document you can print and use as a checklist when submitting your sites.

I separated the RSS directories out by type of submission. This way, you will know what information you need before you ever click on the site.

If you know of any other RSS directories that are not on the list and would like to see them added here, please let me know in the comments or via the contact form.

I hope this gives you an easier way to submit your RSS feeds and will help speed up the process of gaining exposure and visibility for your blog. Have fun!

Great Niche Templates - Free Templates For You Niche Site

In my opinion, one of the hardest things to get ready for your niche sites are the templates for them. If this poses a problem for you as well, then head on over to Ben Johnson's new site - GreatNicheTemplates.com

You will find a nice selection of templates to use for WordPress, PhpBay, PhpBay - eCommerce, and WordPress BANS integration available for FREE download. There may be a paid template or two, but the majority are free and readily available for you to use. Be sure to check back often as more templates are coming.

Likewise, if you are a designer and would like to see your templates available on his site, just send a request through the contact form.

This is a great addition to the niche website building community and I would like to thank Ben for making it available. Head on over and see if there is one that is perfect for your next site.

I have still not done any promotion at all for this site. I have kept the promise that you will be able to follow along with me as I begin promoting. You will see exactly what I do, as I do it, and I will report the results on a weekly basis.

One of the very first things I always do with a new blog is submit the feed to RSS directories. This is also called RSS Search Engine Marketing or RSSEM for short. These are not the same type of directories where you submit a regular site, such as a BANS site. RSS directories will be publishing your website information, your RSS feed and sometimes a snapshot of your home page.

I am going to explain why this method of promotion can and will be very powerful for you, but first I want to explain why submitting to RSS directories can fall into a somewhat gray area for some people. The reason is that there are people who scrape RSS feeds and post them to their own sites. Some people do not like this idea at all, but when looking at the bigger picture, do not let the people who might scrape your content bother you.

It is labeled content theft when someone does this and does not post a link back to your site. However, when they do leave a link to you, here is what you have to remember, you have placed your content into an RSS feed and in doing so, made it available for syndication. Almost the same as if you were submitting an article to article directories like EzineArticles or GoArticles, etc. You don't have to like it, but that's the way it is.

That being said, let me show you how submitting your RSS feed to RSS directories can be very powerful for your website.

First of all, when you submit and are accepted into a directory (some are instant), this is an automatic link back to your site and is the first step in your link building campaign. The bulk of these directories are constantly crawled by the search engines and the bots will be all over your site in a matter of hours, sometimes even minutes, and begin indexing your site.

Likewise, due to the age of some of the directories, many times your site will show up as a link in the directory for different keywords (from your feed) on the first page of Google results. What this means is that even if the site itself does not rank on the first page, it is possible your feed in one of the directories will. Visitors will click on the search engine result, be taken to the directory, which gives them the link to your site. You will be surprised how many visitors will arrive on your site from this alone. I will give you an example toward the end.

Believe it or not, many of the RSS directories are frequently visited by humans. If your content is interesting enough, you can get a lot of visitors to your site just by being listed in the proper category.

The last benefit to your site is the RSS content scrapers. I'm probably going to catch some heat for saying that, but it's true. The majority of these people will leave the link back to your site intact which gives you a backlink that you did not have to ask for or even work for. Yes, most will be lower quality, but if there are enough people linking to you this way, it will work in your favor in Google's eyes.

Think of it as I said above, it is like you have submitted an article to a directory and these people chose to reprint it on their site. Another thing to remember, Google will know that the content appeared on your site first. Don't ask me how they know, but they do. And if you are worried about a duplicate content penalty, don't. If anyone is going to be penalized for duplicate content with them, it will be the scraper sites.

Something else to note is that most scraper sites do not rank very well in the search engines and even if they do, it is usually only momentary. Most scraper sites are built for the short-term and when their rankings begin to fall, your site will still prevail. It will also be stronger and rank better than these sites due to the backlinks.

I will admit, there will still be those who will re-publish your content and not provide a link back. This is theft, but there is a way you can combat it. Try to see if you can link to any other post on your site in most of your posts. These people may remove the main link to your site, but in most cases will not take the time to remove the link in your content. Take advantage of this for deep links within your site.

Another way is to combat it is to use a plugin that puts a copyright notice in your feed. When most content scrapers see this, they will remove your feed.

My advice is to not worry so much about those who strip out your link. No, it's not fair and yes, you're going to be mad about it. However, the number of people who leave the link will outnumber these people and this is what makes it worth it.

The last thing to remember is that Google will not penalize you for the sites linking to you. Google realizes this is something you basically have no control over. In my opinion, when all is said and done, the benefits outweigh the negatives.

Case in point, here is the example I was referring to above. I have a ticket site that is geared toward one specific city. I have it listed in close to all of the main RSS directories.

Last year, Garth Brooks came out of retirement for a few weeks and went on a mini-tour in the midwest. I made a post about it on the blog and added tickets for the concert in the post using phpBay. Due to the RSS feed being listed in those directories and other links back to my site, within 24 hours, my site was listed in the #1 position on Google for "Garth Brooks (insert city) tickets". The rest of the first page was all my feed in directories. In other words, I OWNED the first page of Google results for that ticket search.

My site came up in the #1 position for several other keyphrases regarding that concert and those tickets as well. My feed in the directories appeared on the page for those keyphrases as well. I was beating out sites like Ticketmaster, StubHub, OpenSeats, and several other major ticket sites.

I made a little over $4000 from that site alone in 3 weeks.

One more thing to mention. The only promotion I have ever done for that site is submit the feed to RSS directories. That's it.

I apologize for the long post, but I wanted to try and help you understand the power behind this method of promotion. I will begin submitting GorgeousForLess to RSS directories tomorrow and I will keep you updated on the progress.

**Update 11/18/08**
I have went through all directories and submission sites I could find and compiled a list of 102 Best RSS Directories to submit your RSS feeds. You will find the link at the top of this page.

Here are a few places I used as a reference for compiling the RSS directories list. They are listed below:

1. The first is Robin Good's RSSTop55 Best Blog Directory and RSS Submission Sites - There are many more than 55 on there, but spend some time submitting to all that you can. Start on the last page and work your way back to the main.
2. List of Best RSS directories - This site lists some of the best RSS submission sites. There are a few on there which are not on Robin's site above. If the first site overwhelms you, start with this one.
3. Brian's Free Web Promotion Free RSS Directories - Another very good list of RSS directories well worth submitting to.

If there is enough interest, I may spend some time making this easier and create a list page here on the site (no broken links or vanished sites) as well as a PDF checklist you can print out to keep track of what sites you have submitted to. Just let me know in the comments.

I will be posting more website promotion tips in the next few days, so stay tuned. As always, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

The question was "How can you possibly monetize a site with some of these topics?"

Let me assure you, every one of these topics can be monetized or I would not have offered them to you. Sure, a few may require you to think outside the box a little, but that is kind of my specialty. Let me give you examples of the more difficult ones below by topic.

Birth Control - There are books, videos and even contraceptive products on Amazon. Ebay offers contraceptive products, decorative cases for birth control pills, books, T-shirts, videos and more. To expand this further, some who are interested in birth control are also interested in fertility and infertility. Which there are products for those topics on both eBay and Amazon. As well, people interested in birth control may also be interested in relationships and dating. This topic is covered well on Clickbank. These are just a few of the many examples I can think of.

Speech Therapy - There are many medical and even mental conditions that can require speech therapy products. If you do a search, there are a lot of products on eBay as well as Amazon and Clickbank that fulfill this need. As well, this topic can be expanded into other areas. This is actually an easier niche to monetize, but I had many questions on how to go about it.

After School Activities - Again, there are products on eBay and Amazon specifically for after school ideas. This topic could be geared toward a stay at home parent or you could even target daycare providers which would open up a whole new niche.

Car Rentals - If you are a member of different affiliate networks, there are many car rental programs available to you if you look. As well, there are coupons and vouchers on eBay that bring a decent price. This can be a stand alone site or you can incorporate it into a travel site that again, opens up a whole new niche.

Depression - There are thousands of books on the subject on eBay and Amazon. As well, there are health and homeopathic remedies for depression on both sites. Clickbank has many products to choose from on the topic of depression.

These are just a few simple ways you can monetize a few of the more difficult niches. You can also add Adsense or any other contextual network as well as any other affiliate programs available for the niches. The possibilities are endless.

I may be making a bold claim here, but I have yet to find a niche that I couldn't monetize with something from eBay, Amazon, Clickbank or any of the affiliate networks. If you have a niche you would like to get into or expand, but are stuck with a way to monetize it, drop me a line or two in the contact form and I will send you some recommendations.

I hope that gives you a few ideas and if you want more, leave a comment or contact me and let me know.

I have also been testing a couple of fairly new money making theories and will be posting more about those as soon as I have more results. I think you all are going to like it.

However, to try and make up for my absence, I wanted to give you all something for being patient. Hopefully you will have a use for them on some of your sites.

What I have for you are 2 separate downloads of free niche articles. You are free to use them in any way on your sites. Rewrite them and submit to article directories, use them for blog posts, use them in an autoresponder series, compile an e-book. Basically whatever you want. They are yours to do with as you wish.

The following is what is included:

Niche Article Pack #1 Contains

• 25 Baby Monitor Articles
• 25 Birth Control Articles
• 25 Ferret Articles
• 25 Kart Racing Articles
• 25 Learning To Play Guitar Articles
• 25 Speech Therapy Articles

Niche Article Pack #2 Contains

• 26 After School Activities Articles
• 10 Car Rental Articles
• 10 Car Stereo Articles
• 10 Articles about Depression
• 25 Home Schooling Articles
• 25 Articles about Ski Vacations

That's a total of 256 free articles you are free to use. Thanks for bearing with me and I hope you are able to use them. Follow the links below to download.

Click Here to Download Niche Article Pack #1

Click Here to Download Niche Article Pack #2

Please let me know if you experience any trouble downloading or opening the articles. I hope you had a safe and happy Halloween and that you enjoyed the weekend.

When complete, PhpZon will have many of the rich features you have already found in phpBay. Items like the paging option, SEO Urls, etc. The good news is that you can run both plugins on the same blog as well as in the same post. Trust me, if you like PhpBay, you are going to love PhpZon.

This is an awesome solution for everyone who is looking to diversify their income stream on their sites. For just about every type of item you can find on eBay, there is sure to be something useful you can find to compliment it on Amazon.

This is also a great solution to building niche sites for anyone who has been terminated from the eBay affiliate program.

If you already own PhpBay, you can buy and download a copy of the beta version of PhpZon in the member store for $3o. If you get it now, you lock in this price forever and this is all you will ever pay. Once it comes to full release, the price will be $49.

The catch is, you must already own PhpBay to get the pre-release $3o price. The full release is coming sometime within the next few weeks.

I know some of you are already using it on your sites. What are your thoughts about PhpZon?

Below you can see an example of how it currently looks. I couldn't think of anything right off for a product to compliment this site so I chose a line of books from one of my favorite authors, James Patterson. The man definitely has a talent for spinning great stories.

Cross Country [UNABRIDGED] Used From: $59.99 Average Rating:

The 6th Target List Price: $27.99 Sale Price: $5.79 Used From: $3.93 Average Rating:

Violets Are Blue (Alex Cross) List Price: $7.99 Sale Price: $3.71 Used From: $0.01 Average Rating:

Roses Are Red (Alex Cross) List Price: $7.99 Sale Price: $2.77 Used From: $0.01 Average Rating:

Double Cross (Alex Cross) List Price: $27.99 Sale Price: $2.94 Used From: $0.23 Average Rating:

7th Heaven (The Women's Murder Club) List Price: $27.99 Sale Price: $7.98 Used From: $5.14 Average Rating:

7th Heaven List Price: $14.98 Sale Price: $10.19 Average Rating:

Against Medical Advice: One Family's Struggle with an Agonizing Medical Mystery List Price: $26.99 Sale Price: $11.98 Used From: $11.50 Average Rating:

Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett) List Price: $27.99 Sale Price: $18.47

Jack & Jill Sale Price: $130.00 Used From: $10.05 Average Rating:

The hack changed the homepage and my login info. Upon first examining the files, I could not find the corrupt index.php file so submitted a ticket to my host. They were kind enough to remove the offending index.php file and I was able to get to my database and change the username and password.

Luckily, not much damage was done. However, I just wanted to let everyone who had visited know what happened.

The good news is that this can easily be accomplished. There are a few options you can choose to make phpBay fit in with your site. You can change the background color to any solid color of your choice or you can change both the background color as well as the hover color to make the auctions blend well with your template. I am writing this for those of you who are using the column results as this is the most popular option. Here is how to do it.

Login to your cPanel account and navigate to your plugins folder. Click to open phpBay. This will bring up a list of the files for the plugin. Next, click on the templates folder. You will now see a list of files. Open the template.column.results.html file for editing.

You will see the following code:

<td width="300" align="center" style="word-wrap: break-word;border: 1px solid #eeeeee;font-size:12px;" bgcolor="#ffffff" onmouseover="style.backgroundColor='%%hover%%';" onmouseout="style.backgroundColor='#ffffff'">
<img src="%%image%%" alt="%%alt_title%%" border="0" /><br />
<a href="%%link_url%%" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><strong>%%title%%</strong></a><br />
%%paypal%%&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;%%currency%%%%price_or_bin%%
</td>

If you want to change the background color to a solid color, then replace both #ffffff that you see in the code above with the color of your choice.

If you want to change the hover color, you can play with how you would like it to look by placing the colors of your choice where the #ffffff appears in both places above. You may want the background itself darker and the hover color lighter or vice versa.

I have already covered changing the background color of the paging area and my hope is that between the two, you can easily make the auctions blend in with your site.

My good friend, Ben Johnson, has just made those of you who build your sites this way much easier. He has released a 6 pack of templates with the uneccessary code already stripped out and ready for you to use. You can get them from his site at the link below:

http://www.bwjohnson.co.uk/free-ecommerce-style-phpbay-pack-6-colors

Below is a screenshot of the templates. If you can use these and appreciate the time and effort he has put into doing this for the phpBay community, you might consider buying him a beer while you are there.

Screenshot of the phpBay ECommerce Templates

While there are many places you can browse to look for new niches, our friendly neighborhood plugin creator, Alan Lewis, has made looking for new ideas in one place much easier. He had created a new WordPress plugin called Froogle-izer which mines keyword data from Froogle.

Alan has released this plugin free to the community. The plugin installs just as any other plugin and once you click activate, you will see a Froogle-izer link on your dashboard. When you click it, it will return 125 of the latest searches done on Froogle.

I've already played around with it a few times and have come up with several new ideas I would not have thought of otherwise. I just need to complete the research to see if they are worth pursuing.

No matter how you normally search for new niches, I would definitely recommend adding this to your arsenal. Get the Froogle-izer plugin from Alan here.