Rss stands for Rich Site Summary. It is a small file usually called a feed that is used by websites who deliver regularly changing web content. Blogs have become one of the most popular of websites to use this feature.

What the rss feed actually does is contain all the newest updated information of your website. This means each time you post, the rss feed is updated to contain the latest posted information.

The purpose of an rss feed is to allow frequent website readers to easily stay informed by retrieving the latest content from the sites they are interested in. They don’t have to visit a site to receive its updates.

Visitors of the site use your rss feed in whats called a feed reader to have their content delivered to any number of places, their cell phones, their desktops, or their most used websites.

Sites such as yahoo and google both offer feed reader services. You can also find a comprehensive list of desktop software based feed readers at dmoz.org .

I STRONGLY recommend you get yourself a software based desktop feed reader as it will be ESSENTIAL later in your blog marketing (make sure you pick one that allows multiple feeds) strategies.

Because so many people use feeds and don’t actually visit your blog, two problems arise. First you will not only have to track visitors coming to your blog, but also ones who read your blog from the feed.

Second, you have to learn how to market products and services inside your posts because many people won’t be visiting your site to see advertising.

However these topics are much to advanced at this point. For now, be happy you know what a feed reader is, you have some basic understanding what an rss feed is, and you have (hopefully) got yourself a feed reader.

Only one thing left to say, rss feeds have a few standard graphics like the one display in the top right of this post (or the top right of my blog if you want my rss feed). However if you can’t find the rss feed of a blog check the side menu, most sites display it there.