The RSS Factor

 

In “RSS Basics For Newbies – Part 1” we looked how and why to explore creating a hand coded feed solution for your site or blog. In this article let’s consider a simple way you may monetize each feed result or just certain results within the feed.

In the last lesson, we looked at basic code for a generic feed item:

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    <item>

      <title>Item Title</title>

      <description>Item Description

                  </description>

      <link>http://www.yoursite.com/url-path/to-article-or-page/</link>

      <pubDate>Sat, 10 May 2008 03:15:00 -0500</pubDate>

    <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.yoursite.com/url-path/to-article-or-page/</guid></item>

 

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A simple way to monetize a feed item is by injection of the CDATA element in the code. The CDATA element is like any other piece of code: it must be placed correctly in the precise area of the code. The empty CDATA element is written like so:

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                                                   <![CDATA[

          ]]>

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It consists of an opening tag:   <![CDATA[          and a closing tag:     ]]>

 

The location of the CDATA elements within the chosen feed item will be placed in the code AFTER the item description but BEFORE the closing description element tag ( </description> ).  Here is an example:

 

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    <item>

      <title>Item 2 Title</title>

      <description>Item 2 Description

                                   <![CDATA[

          ]]>

                  </description>

      <link>http://www.yoursite.com/url-path/to-article-or-page/</link>

      <pubDate>Sat, 10 May 2008 03:15:00 -0500</pubDate>

    <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.yoursite.com/url-path/to-article-or-page/</guid></item>

 

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When using the CDATA element is you can inject HTML code into the feed item result and the code will be parsed in the RSS feed just like on a standard web page. This allows the feed to deliver anything that HTML will offer… photos, banners, and… affiliate advertising. The HTML is simply placed between the opening and closing CDATA tags.

 

The following code example will show a feed item that injects HTML which will deliver a table with 3 rows containing an image in the top row, and an example affiliate ad link in the third row. The format of the HTML will push the table down a bit with two <br /> tags preceding the table code in order to create a nice appearance within the result.

 

 

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    <item>

      <title>Item 2 Title</title>

      <description>This is the description of the feed item. The text description for this specific feed item goes here.

                                   <![CDATA[

    <br /><br /><table width="400" border="0" cellpadding="3">

      <tr>

    <td><img src="http://www.your-site.com/images/banner.gif" width="400" height="75"></td>

     </tr>

      <tr>

        <td>&nbsp;</td>

      </tr>

        <tr>

         <td><a href="http://www.lroqoxl.com/q3122iqzwqyDGNMGKH34ft678GG" target="_blank">Buy This Widget Online</a>

         <img src="http://www.tbg56.com/b766tkodf45ght798650344" width="1" height="1" border="0"/></td>

         </tr>

        </table>

          ]]>

                  </description>

      <link>http://www.yoursite.com/url-path/to-article-or-page/</link>

      <pubDate>Sat, 10 May 2008 03:15:00 -0500</pubDate>

    <guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.yoursite.com/url-path/to-article-or-page/</guid></item>

 

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REMEMBER: The location of the CDATA elements within the chosen feed item will be placed in the code AFTER the item description but BEFORE the closing description element tag ( </description> ).

As a result of the structure above, the code that is injected into the feed item between the CDATA tags will deliver a table below the description of the feed item which contains the two elements: an image, and a link (Buy This Widget Online).

 

It’s as simple as that. This is a very easy way to monetize your feeds. Important note: javascript code cannot be injected into a feed in this manner.

 

I hope this has been helpful. Go forth and monetize your