Sponsors: why don't you make your RSS in valid format?
 

There are many ppl. here who looking for good RSS feeds. And many sponsors provide them, but... only few ones are really usable. For example, some feeds have juts a 2-3 words of descriptions and even have no pictures... Other ones (like those provided by topbucks.com) are pretty nice but they don't have so necessary tag as <pubDate> and that's impossible to correctly import them to the blogs. Is that really hard to follow the existing standards?

You'd be amazed at how many sponsor's feeds aren't even valid RSS. It's frustrating to no end.

Because if you have any sort of RSS feed you can mention that in your promotion and thus get more affiliates. However most sponsors seem to be complete morons as they don't realize that crappy RSS feeds are useless. Seeing as they already spent so much time and effort making the RSS feed the incremental work of actually making them good would be quite small compared to the incremental traffic they would get if their feeds weren't complete shit.

Actually I won't, that's why I've asked this question :) I mentioned only topbucks.com just because they have really nice feeds I'd be happy to use (hosted pics. and quality descriptions), but the only thing that don't allow me to use them is lack of <pubDate> tag, and I believe they could easily fix that. However there is a shitload other sponsors (sometimes very big and famous) that have absolutely useless and even invalid RSS. That's a real problem for all those blog owners who would like to promote them.

TopBucks has changed their feeds dramatically based on feedback from us and from our users. I'm sure they'd be happy to accomodate any changes you need.

I sent them an email today morning. Hope it will go to the proper hands.

If not, try Trixxxia.

Is it a person who works for topbucks? Have her ICQ by any chance?

Yes. She's also an Autoblogger customer (as is TopBucks), so they understand the importance of feeds for sure.

She's in this thread, talking about feeds:

fucking-around-and-business-discussion/693937-topbucks.html

Her ICQ is in her sig.

guess I better signup for topbucks. i been going through sponsors all day looking for feeds worth the darn.

Thanks .

Jace had a great thread, where he examined sponsors one-by-one, and critiqued them.

Yep, topbucks rox and their feeds are pretty good. I just have to wait till they add <pubDate> tag there. I think it won't be an offtopic I also suggest you to check real-bucks which is in my signature - their RSS feeds are 100% compatible with wordpress.

Well in our case we were given a crappy rss feed by a CMS upgrade to our cash program and haven't found a programer that will fix up our rss feeds.

We would love to offer the best feeds posible so if you know of any programers that can intergrade or a stand alone rss then by all means hit us up or send them to LatinTeenCash.com


I'll keep a eye on this thread in hopes that someone can help us out

Drop me an email to admin at fhgstore.com and I'll take a look into your prob. - perhaps it will be easy to fix. BTW, why don't you just use wordpress to generate the RSS feeds for your affiliates?

Happy to help. Maybe this can mend some bridges we've burned in the past.

Ok sent you a email.. Thanks :thumbsup

I did a survey last September - http://carpejugular.com/rss-feeds/ - and from around 40 sponsors, only 8 provided feeds which validate fully: and that is before you even get into the question of which you might actually want to use.

Quite a few will display without breaking your pages even though they do not validate, but if you are producing feeds, why take the chance for the sake of saving a few minutes work and getting the codes right?

Commonly too feeds are structured in a way which makes it difficult, even impossible for sites displaying them to format them to fit their designs. Some impose their own formatting onto host sites.

Between the poor code, dismal - in most cases - text and often third-rate content, RSS is something very few sponsors seem to take seriously. That's short-sighted if you consider how long it took adult to catch onto blogging and how successful it has proven in mainstream.

Yes, maybe. You may disagree but I never was the initiator of that. I'd say: never wittingly.

Our RSS have been said to be one of the best out there check out www.satancash.com and www.mobbucks.com for examples we have a pic, 2-3 sentences and a few other tricks coming out soon

The worst are feeds that have no dates on their items. Those are only useful with specially written programs to convert them to pages.

Feeds with super small images (one feed I use actually has a 40x40 thumb... big fucking woopie, I can't even tell what is in the image).

Another good one is feeds that don't validate because the link codes contain invalid characters or coding. Programs would be doing themselves a huge favor if they simplified their link codes!

Topbucks feeds are much better than they were, but if you take the raw feed, you cannot select any image except the default smaller image. I would use the larger images if they were available.

I am still setting up ABP and let me tell you, there are some super junk feeds out there.

Received and answered :)

That's what I'm talking about in my first post here :) It's not a problem if you're parsing such feeds with your own script (just like I'm doing for xbiz news at fhgstore.com), but this becomes a real problem if one is trying to import them into the blogs by means of some automatic tool like feedwordpress. However this problem can be easily fixed by adding a special <pubDate> tag.

tell me about it. I'm looking for ass/anal niche rss feeds from sponsors and have only found a few that are decent.

It wouldn't be that hard to create the feeds in the correct format if they have gone to the trouble of making one.

I have to modify my parser program to accomodate each of the affiliate program's idiosyncrisies.

*grin*

Have you noticed that your copy of ABP, if it doesn't find a date, slaps the date it pulled it on the feed? This is significant because .. if you cron ABP, and it builds a large database of these feeds (even if you aren't posting them OUT), when you DO post them, the site you post them to will get the dates ABP assigned at the time of the pull. i.e., it will LOOK like a dated feed. When ABP posts, it tells WordPress the date it has in its database, so all of the posts don't look like they were posted all at once. I can make sites, for example, in about 10 minutes that have 3,000 posts -- and if I use the Markov engine, it shuffles the text around nicely, too. ICQ me if you want to learn how to maximize what you're doing with ABP .. there are quite a few tricks.

We've been kicking around the idea of an ABP Power Pack (some utilities to go along with ABP for very advanced users), which would probably include a "date shuffler" for your post database.

Would like to know about them too. Also I'd wasn't able to find at least one sponsor with pantyhose/stocking rss feeds.

A small comment: "that" = "bridges burning".

We should trade some links with my new solo girl site:

http://blog.emilyashford.com

Definitely, but first of all I have to find some good rss providers for it. I have not enough time to add new posts there manually everyday, so a good external feed source is very essential for me.

There aren't a ton in that niche. I may end up "making" some feeds from sponsor pictures (we have a tool that is in beta right now that does that .. adds text, morphs the text to make it unique for each pull of the feed, etc).

Emily's being shot locally here, so she'll produce content day and night if needed.

Hey THANK YOU! LatinTeenCash will be posting about it's great new RSS feeds thanks to the help of Cyberxx! :thumbsup

I just wanna play around with it a bit and get our feed loaded with promo first

The reason we don't have RSS feeds yet is that I can't find any RSS experts to swing in and get us up and running. Many have claimed they could do it...nobody's come through. I've said this in thread after thread and even started threads looking...yet, nobody.

IF YOU CAN DO RSS FEEDS FOR PROGRAMS, I NEED A CUSTOM FEED THAT USES OUR SEARCH TOOL TO PULL FROM A MYSQL DATABASE AND EXPORT QUALITY BLOG POSTS WITH AN APPENDED AFFILIATE CODE.

Right now our blog affiliates are happily compiling manual posts and they're working beautifully. But doing it RSS is where we want to be, there just seems to be a shortage of people with RSS tool skills and experience. I've asked edgeprod over and over, but he's too busy lounging by the fire. ;-)

Hit me up :thumbsup

I don't really understand your "specs" above, however you may drop me a message to admin at fhgstore.com which a clear specs, and I'll try to help you with that.

If you've got the skills, I've got the details. :)

Email sent...

I hope our feed doesn't provide any problems for you. We try to put respectable size images and a good amount of text. (i.e., No creepy/criptic 1 'sentence' jibberish with a 120x120 image.)

I've looked at several Rss feeds from different sites and I just don't get what they are trying to do. :(

If you have any comments, just let me know. We see the UpperClassVideo blog a tool that we want affliates to use. It's for you to make sales, or modify the Rss feed to fit within your blog.

Again, let me know if you have any comments, or suggestions.

http://blog.upperclassvideo.com/?feed=rss2

-karl.

dude no shit there are only a select few that are actually usable.

Yep it doesn't. You are using WordPress as an RSS source, so your feeds are pretty valid and I'm already using them :)

Cool :)

Smilies all the way around :)

i've seen topbucks rss feeds but im quite confused on how to use it for my aggregator :(

i don't think most sponsors have any real clue about what a RSS feed is and how it works...:(

Just wait till them add "<pubDate>" and their feeds will be completely useful then. They told me they got my email about this issue and it was redirected to their programming dept. So we just have to wait a bit. :)

i tried the real bucks feeds last night. they rock. i will leave them up for a bit and see what happens.:thumbsup

You won't be disappointed for sure :thumbsup

A few of us understand it well, the major problem i see is that the afflaites dont understand it properly, or they use a feed from a specific niche for a unrealted niche. We were actually discusing this a few days ago, RSS is incredibly powerful if used and coded right.

RSS is not ment to be setup and forgot, nor is it supposed to be the only thing on your blog. I think we need to start writing some tutorials and running some classes for our afflaites to understand how powerful properly coded RSS feeds are and how they can make you money and lots of it. Our RSS feeds were built by Bloggers for Bloggers with tons of hand cropped Pictures and PROFESSIONALLY WRITTEN TEXT, not just a sentence. Plus we have a fulltime writter on staff that just does updates for our blogs, galleries, and tours.

Thant being said if you guys want to see some of the best RSS feeds from a sponsor look no further. We coded a full RSS system the way RSS should be done, and we have gotten alot of kudos for them. We also will code custom feeds for any afflaite that has the traffic and needs something out of the ordinary.

RSS is the future for alot of online media, and Loot Daddy is working on some new and interesting RSS tools to make our afflaites lives easier.

If you need custom feeds, have questions or comments, or just have a question hit myself or jacked up we will try to answer it the best i can.

Jacked - icq: 303-419-172 Affiliate Manager
Cousin Vinnie - icq 3583065

i had no time to read the whole thread, but here is one very useful tool:

http://validator.w3.org/feed/

and what's the catch about the feeds with no pictures at all?!

Good. Just checked one feed with it: http://validator.w3.org/feed/check.c...g.com%2Ffe ed - Congratulations! This is a valid RSS feed. (only one small "inaccuracy" noticed :))

Attn: affiliate program owners: if you need a valid feed source which could be easily imported in famous WordPress blogs and others, and is able to properly work with affiliate ref. codes - drop an email to admin at fhgstore.com or hit on ICQ: 166-924-423.

dito some rss feeds are so bad

bump for good rss feeds