In the past year I have become an RSS advocate. I think every site should have an RSS feed if not a few to push new content out to customers or potential customers who are interested in them.

I have come to the conclusion that RSS will eventually replace some emails and will be a great way to limit the amount of email overload we are all experiencing. This is how I see it working with a few scenario’s…

Potential Customer
I am interested in a product but wish to buy it later. I want to keep up to date on what is new and any potential deals on that product. Instead of joining their newsletter getting overloaded with deals on the products I don’t want or visit the site daily I want to subscribe to a feed for just that product. If anything changes with the product or a deal comes up I will be notified in my RSS reader.

Current Customer
I have a financial planner who talks to me once a year but I am really interested in what is new. I know that my financial planner can not post public because of legal issues and I don’t really want another email in my inbox. What I want is a customer based RSS feed that pushes out specific information that I choose.

Company Information
If you work for a large company how many times does your CEO push out emails that get skimmed and then filed. Most of the time those emails are not effective. Imagine an RSS for each division or department where the CEO can push out specific content to the appropriate places.

These are just a few examples that I can see work among many others.

What do you think? Can you think of any other scenario’s?

Without a doubt, the most effective form of advertising is word of mouth. You can invest millions of dollars are TV spots, billboards, and print ads, but none of them will attract the same kind of attention as a simple recommendation from a friend. Take a look at movies like Knocked Up. The Judd Apatow comedy received next to zero advertising dollars from the movie studio, but people who watched the film thought it was hilarious and told their friends. This is the power behind “sleeper hits” of the summer, so to speak.

The same can be said about attracting sales on the Internet. While it is perfectly reasonable to start an AdWords campaign or to purchase text link ads on a number of popular websites, it’s personal recommendations, referrals, and word of mouth that will get you the most qualified leads. But how does one go about starting something like that? Well, affiliate programs are in abundance for a reason. People will be motivated to advertise and recommend your product if there is some sort of incentive in it for them.

Take the Million Euro Wiki, for example. When it was first launched, people laughed at it because it appeared to a copycat of the Million Dollar Wiki. While MEW has achieved a certain level of popularity based on the endorsement of John Chow, growth hasn’t been where they were hoping it would be. As such, a new referral program has been launched wherein every user will be given their own coupon code.

With this coupon code, new users can get $10 off the price for a page on the Million Euro Wiki. Instead of paying $100, you only have to pay $90. With the referral program, however, every sale results in a $30 commission for the person who referred the sale. This is tracked via the custom coupon code. For example, my coupon code is MichaelKwan.

At first, I wasn’t motivated to buy a page on the Million Euro Wiki, but it was the affiliate program that made it sound “worth it” to me. After all, if I refer just three sales, I’ve already made my money back and I still get to keep my page — I bought the term Blog — for at least 20 years, including the ability to sell it at a later date.

Money is the ultimate motivator. Consider including some sort of referral or affiliate program with your business.

How many pages a day do you visit and how much time do you spend visiting sites?

I use to spend close to 6 or more hours a day going from site to site looking to see if new content was there. I would visit news sites, blogs, forums and various other sites. This consumed a lot of my time but it seemed like the only solution.

Then about a year ago I started to hear about this thing called RSS. I did some investigation and noticed that almost 75% of the sites I visited had this little RSS button on them. So I downloaded an Outlook plug-in from Newsgator and started testing what this RSS thing was.

To my surprise I received new content into my inbox from these sites I use to visit. I didn’t have to go out and find the new content the new content found me. Those hours of going from site to site to was cut down now because I didn’t have to check if new content was updated.

The one issue I had with the Outlook solution was that it bogged my system down. Based on Matt’s recommendation I started testing Google Reader. Their reader is 100% online and will definitely not bog down your system. I also found a Google Reader Notifier that lets me know when new content is available.

So what is RSS?

Wikipedia summarizes it as…
“a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts.”

Why should I use RSS?

It will free up the time you spend online seeking out new content. Instead the new content will come to you. Also unlike spam if you don’t want to get the content anymore you can unsubscribe and never get it again.

If you want to test out an RSS reader sign up at Google Reader and then add our RSS Feed.

It seems that everyone is slowly but surely making their way over to the ways of web 2.0. Not that long ago, blogs were reserved to individuals with individual thoughts and ideas. They’d talk about their personal experiences and share their ponderings with their friends. And then professional bloggers came along, as did professional blog sites that report on technology and all sorts of other things. One of the more recent phenomenons is the rising popularity in company blogs or corporate blogs, much like this BlueFur blog.

Some corporate blogs are very conservative and not personal at all. They have someone from their PR department spit out company news that doesn’t really qualify for a full-fledged press release. Other company blogs are one extended sales pitch, talking about satisfied customers and the different products that the company offers. And then there are company blogs like this one that aim to add to the user experience, above and beyond what the company actually sells.

As you may already know, a group of local bloggers paid a visit to the Union Gospel Mission on Tuesday, taking a tour of the facilities and eating the food from the soup kitchen. In going through this tour, UGM’s Kevan Gilbert told us that they plan on completely redoing their website to make it more Web 2.0 and this would include “regular blogging” from “UGM’s front-line workers, telling the daily stories of pain and redemption on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” I thought it was interesting idea, because it could remind us of the startling reality of drugs, poverty, and prostitution in that area. The new site is scheduled to launch sometime in December.

With that, I ask you: What is your take on the idea of a company blog? Should it be inherently connected to the company, pushing sales and writing in a non-personal tone? Or should it be more personal and offer information beyond the company’s primary products and services?

For young entrepreneurs, it can be very difficult to secure a business loan. This is because banks are obviously hesitant to cut a cheque to someone with virtually no work experience and no guarantee that they’d be able to pay it back. Most young people don’t have very much in terms of assets and many carry a rather hefty debt from their student loans. Of course banks don’t want to lend them any more money.

Although there are many opportunities to make money online with next to no start-up capital — yes, success can cost almost nothing — most new business owners still need some money before they can really get started, whether it be the cost of designing a website or bringing a concept product into reality. So, where can these young people turn?

Thankfully, the people at CanadaOne have compiled an extensive list of organizations that are willing to provide grants and loans to young entrepreneurs in Canada. For example, there is the Western Youth Entrepreneur Program, which provides “up to $25,000 for entrepreneurs between 18 and 25 years of age in rural areas of western Canada.” If you need even more startup capital, you can consider something like BDC’s Young Entrepreneur Financing Program, which offers “customized term financing up to $100,000 for new businesses demonstrating long-term viability.”

The full list can be found on the CanadaOne website. Similar services and opportunities surely exist in the United States and Europe as well.

Over the summer the bluefurcode.com idea grew and everything was put in place for the official launch this month. We have asked regular commentor Matt to lead the projects and keep the blog updated regularly.  

If you are interested in joining the discussion, learning or just getting involved in development you should join the group at bluefurcode.com as we need more people.