The Gospel According To Rhys - Colwyn Bay North Wales Web blog About Sport, Wrestling, PHP, SEO, Social Media & Networking

There’s been a lot of hoohaa recently in the blogging world about the new way to game people: RSS Feeds. A company by the name of RSSxplosion or RSSjaculation or some other mildly innuendostic name are promoting services where they will increase the amount of RSS Subscribers you have. Not readers, but just raw figures.

Anyway, unsurprisingly, bloggers are up in arms about this. Here are three posts that explain this a billion times better than I can be bothered to do.

• Cashquests: Pay To Increase Your Subscriber Count
• John Cow: This Months Stupid Cow Award
• Blogging Fingers’ Good Name Tainted by an RSS Gaming Con Man

Pretty shady service, don’t you agree? This dude hasn’t endeared himself to the blogging world, and he hasn’t endeared himself to me. So, as the Moral White Knight of the blogging world, I’m going to explain the techniques this dude does for free, so if you actually feel like you want to inflate your ego, you can.

Disclaimer: I really don’t actually reccommend you do this, as you’ll probably piss off a lot of people, and legally questionable if you sell advertising. I’m also not doing it myself, but it’s there for everybody should they want to.

1. Buy A Domain and Set Up E-Mail Forwarding

Simple one, but you do need a domain. Any domain will do. Nice, cheap and easy. Rather like a virgin hooker. Unlike a night with a hooker though, make sure the email from the domain actually goes somewhere, as you’ll need it later.

2. Subscribe To Feedburner & Set Up E-Mail Subscriptions

Most people are alreay on this, but if you’re not, you should be. It’s a great way for managing your RSS Feed, and they give you stats and other cool features. One of these is the E-Mail Setup, that allows you to Subscribe Via Email. It’s hidden in “Publicize -> E-Mail Subscription” on the Feedburner site.

3. Subscribe a@yourdomain.com, b@yourdomain.com, c@yourdomain.com via e-mail to your feed

Yes, it’s the hard work bit. By simply subscribing as many beginning strings to the the domain mentioned in 1 as you can be bothered, you can increase your subscribers by a huge amount, easily 50 or 60 people before boredom sets in.

So, that’s how you do it. Immoral, borderline illegal if you’re selling adverts (you know, false representation), and really not worth any money. So, if you are to pay for a service like this, don’t bother. It’s only a number!