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Table of Contents for this issue.....

1.    Author’s Comments

2.    eBay Store and About Me page

3.    Real Simple Syndication - RSS

4.    Site Build It

Author's Comments  

Wow! Where did the week go?  The July 4^th holiday scrambled my week.  I hope that you had a great holiday.  We have so much for which to be thankful in our great country and yet, so many people “bad mouth” it.  Last Saturday, Linda and I were listening to “Prairie Home Companion” which is a radio show on PBS.  (We are long time fans of Garrison Keillor and the PHC).  Garrison talked about how great the USA was and how so many citizens do not appreciate how good we have it.  His convincing statement on the subject was that if the USA is not a great place, why were so many illegal immigrants trying so desperately to get in?  I could not think of a more convincing argument.  God Bless the USA !  

eBay About Me Page  

My friend and mentor, Jim Cockrum, developed the concept of using eBay for more than an auction site.  He uses eBay to generate traffic to his auctions and then directs the traffic to his ‘About Me” page where he signs them up for his “Creative eBay Selling Newsletter”.  His auction is really “bait” for his back end selling.  

We all know that attracting traffic is the largest challenge of doing business on the Net.  Very simple --- no traffic, no shoppers, no revenue, frustration and failure.  

I have been working on setting up an eBay store and an “About Me” page.  The store frame work is set up, but I have not posted any items for sale yet so the “shelves” are empty.  Go take a look for yourself at http://stores.ebay.com/BOOMER-RETIREMENT-STORE.  The main focus of this store will be to attract shoppers to our “About Me” page.  The initial items that will be on the shelves will be books that appeal to the Boomer Generation.  

You can view our “About Me” page at http://members.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewUserPage&userid=e--boomer.  It has audio so turn on your speakers (or turn them off as wish J).  Its main purpose is to entice the reader to subscribe to this newsletter.  

As a quick FYI on eBay, when you are looking at an auction page or eBay store, look next to the seller’s name for a red and blue “ME”.  Click it and you will see the seller’s “About Me” page.  Also, look for an icon that looks like a doorway.  That indicates that the seller maintains an eBay store.  Click it and you will be taken to the store.  

For more details on how to fully utilize eBay, I recommend that you go to Jim Cockrum’s site on ClickBank and sign up for his free “Creative eBay Selling Newsletter”.  Follow this link to get there http://jvwh1.silentsale.hop.clickbank.net.  His weekly newsletter has a reader list over 100,000 and is considered among the most successful newsletters on the Net.  

Really Simple Syndication - RSS

This is the newest, hottest technology on the Net.  Whoa!  Did I detect that you pulled back from just hearing the word technology?  Don’t be concerned about the “how does it work”, but let’s concentrate on what it can do for you.  

Let’s discuss Really Simple Syndication.  What is syndication?  In the off line world, I always thought of the comic strips or a particular feature writer in the newspaper such as Ann Landers.  The comic or article was developed and for a fee was syndicated to any newspaper that wanted to carry it.  It would appear simultaneously in many newspapers across the country.  

On the Net, most of the syndication that I know of does not cost anything.  Most sites or companies that supply “feed” for syndication do so for free because they are looking for the exposure from the information and advertising that is carried in the feed.  

When you go to the home page on Yahoo, Google, or MSN, you will see news, weather, sports, etc. displayed on the page.  This information is coming from a feed from another websites and will automatically update on the home page without the owner of that page having to do anything.  

What do you need to read RSS?  Simple answer …… You need an RSS reader.  The easiest way to get one is to subscribe to “My Yahoo”.  Sign in on your “My Yahoo” page and it contains an RSS reader for you to use.  Go to www.yahoo.com and click on the “My Yahoo” icon to sign on or to register.  

When get you’re “My Yahoo” account set up and log in under your user name, look in the top left of the window and click “Add Content”.  You will be presented a form to fill in for feeds by subject.  Don’t bother with this search box.  To the right of the search box in small letters is “Add RSS by URL”.  Click that link and you will be presented another search page where you can set up the feed from a particular website.  I have set up an RSS feed from Retirement Jobs Online.com for you to use.  

DO NOT CLICK THE FOLLOWING URL.  Highlight it and right click on it.  Select copy and then paste it into the search box on Yahoo.  Then click the “Add” box to the right of the search box.  You now have added an RSS feed to your “My Yahoo” page.  

http://www.retirement-jobs-online.com/retirement-jobs-online.xml  

OK you say.  What is all the big fuss about RSS?  Just stop and think about what this can do for you as a surfer on the Net.  If you have particular sites that you check regularly for information, you have to spend time looking through the sites to see if new info has been posted.  

If you set up an RSS feed from that site to your “My Yahoo” or any other RSS reader that you choose (and there are hundreds of them) you do not waste time having to look for changes, you are notified when a change takes place by the RSS feed and you can click right to it.  As we say in Texas , “That is slicker than cow slobber”. I challenge you to find anything that is slicker than the slobber of a cow.  

RSS is used extensively by bloggers to monitor blogs for new posts.  

Now, on the flip side, if you have a website or a blog and you publish information like Linda and I do in this newsletter, establishing a RSS feed will put your publication on the feeds on the Net so it can be picked up by additional people and these contacts will possibly become subscribers.  This is a way to build additional traffic and it is free.  Anyone who has a website or a blog or publishes a newsletter should establish an RSS feed.  

I will talk about how to establish a feed using Site Build it in the next article.  Building a feed outside of Site Build It will have to be for another issue.  

Site Build It #6  

I have stated several times in previous articles that I continued to be amazed with Site Build It (“SBI”).  Well, this last week clinched it.  

While I was researching the installation of an RSS feed on the Retirement Jobs Online.com website, I found that all I had to do was to click an option button and select a few options and SBI would take care of all of it for me.  That is just too easy.  

By setting up the RSS feed, SBI will automatically publish an item to the feed every time I add a new page to the site.  Also, if I modify a page, there is a check box that I can check if I want the changed page put in the feed.  If I am just correcting some spelling or making a minor change, I would not bother the RSS world with that change.  

There are options in the set up page to specify if you want buttons on your site that your reader can click to set up your feed on their Yahoo, Google, or MSN home pages.  I elected to put those on the Retirement Jobs Online pages.  Also, there is an orange colored button that says XML RSS on it.  This indicates that this site has an RSS feed that you can tap into.  You do not click this button, but if you right click it and select “Copy shortcut”, this will put the URL for the location of the feed on Retirement Jobs Online.com on your clipboard.  You can then easily paste it into any reader to set up the link to the feed.  This appears to be a common practice in many sites since I see that orange icon appearing all over the Net.  

Another feature of this RSS option on SBI is that by one simple click, you can set up a site blog.  I did this and lo and behold, an instant blog was created with items for the pages that were added or updated recently.  I added an entry to this blog on July 7 when I launched it.  Go to the home page of www.retirement-jobs-online.com  (RJO) and look on the left top of the window.  You will see the buttons that I have described for Yahoo, Google, and MSN with the XML RSS button is at the top.  

Click on the navigation bar entry “Site Blog – RJO.com” and go to the blog page.  What you see on this page is what is shown to the RSS world.  SBI automatically puts entries on this page for the activity that goes on in the RJO site.  I can add a personal blog entry when I feel that it is warranted.  

In fact, I am going to make an entry when I publish this issue of Boomer eZine (If I can ever get it finished.  I have so much to say about SBI that I could go on much too long).  

Let’s wrap this up.  To fully utilize the RSS feeds to Yahoo, Google, and MSN (the major search engines) you set up accounts on all of them and then set up feeds from the site to your home pages on each site.  This causes the search engines to index your feed and they will send a robot or spider to analyze your site.  This will help raise your ranking with the search engines.  

The more feeds to your site that are requested on Yahoo, Google, or MSN, the more interest the search engines pay to your site.  I request that you, my readers, set up retirement-jobs-online.com on your RSS feeds in all of your home pages with the three majors.  This will automatically notify you of changes to the site which helps you, and it will help promote the RJO site.  Thanks in advance for your help.  

Conclusion  

I strongly recommend that you read about RSS and follow the instructions in this newsletter to set it up on your home pages with Yahoo, Google, and MSN.  This is the direction in which the Internet is going and you can easily be an early adapter.  It will make your life much easier in staying informed on what is new content on the Net.  

That wraps it up.  I could go on about the RSS business, but I need to leave some material for another issue.  

Till next time, Stay tuned (to RSS that is).

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