Saturday, September 17, 2005

Getting Subscribers to Your Blog

I heard back from Yahoo. At first it looked like a canned letter. But, some effort might have been put into it from someone whom actually read my e-mail. I'm trying to get this blog included in Yahoo so I (and hopefully and more importantly, you) can add this feed to your My Yahoo account, if you have one.

After many attempts, even processing the feed through Feedburner, the page where you add the RSS feed at My Yahoo simply refreshes. Yes, the content and description is displayed just as if it is going to be included. But when you submit the link nothing changes on the page (it does when you add, say, CNN's feed) and the info is not added to your My Yahoo home page.

Here is their response:

RSS 'publishers' have the ability to submit their RSS feed URLs to a searchable 'RSS Database' as part of the new Yahoo! Publisher Network.

This database is the database which "Search for feeds by subject" looks at within the "Add RSS Content" section of the new My Yahoo! functionality.

Please note that this database is not the Yahoo! Directory, nor is it the Yahoo! RSS Directory.

The Yahoo! RSS Directory (also called the Browse-by-Topic directory) is managed by Surfing in much the same was as the Yahoo! Directory of web sites.

RSS Publishing and Submission Guide:
http://publisher.yahoo.com/rssguide

Submit your RSS feed to the RSS Database at
http://publisher.yahoo.com/submit.php

Submit your RSS feed to the Browse-by-Topic directory at
http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/my/cgi_rss_submission

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care.


I tried the links they suggested. The first one will is an overview of RSS. The second takes you back to the My Yahoo link. There is a link I did find interesting, and you can check your feed out here, too. It's listed on the Submit your feed to the RSS Database page above. The link is self explanatory. It is http://www.feedvalidator.org/.

Okay, so what caught my interest here is that when I inserted my URL for the Atom feed from this Blogger.com, it said there was a problem.

Warning
This feed is valid, but may cause problems for some users. We recommend fixing these problems.
line 4, column 0: This feed is an obsolete version [help]

Source: http://monetizethis.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Then, I put in my Feedburner URL and it checked out good. Well, if you're thinking you're home free - think again. I tried including the Feedburner URL again at My Yahoo and it will not "take". However, note the last link in the e-mail from Yahoo Support. It has a place where you can submit your feed to a Browse-By-Topic list. So, I entered the Feedburner version (http://feeds.feedburner.com/AdsenseAndBlogs) there.

Although I can't find my feed as of this posting in the New Additions for September 17, I did notice it was added by checking my stats at Feedburner. I forgot to mention that this morning when I looked at the blog, subscribers went from 3 to 2. Now losing a subscriber isn't bad when you have 800 or 1000. But when there are only three... hey, that's a third of my readership!

Joking aside, I think what happened is one of the My Yahoo links may have pinged. Not really sure.

The (not identified) reader is from a new program I purchased and will review for you in another post. It's called RSS Equalizer. Simply put it adds a few lines of an RSS feed and a link to a web page so you can create a aggregated search page of sorts.

I hope you are finding some of this useful. And thank you for reading.

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