While checking my Google Alerts for RSS- and web feed-related article, I came across one of Rok's summaries at Lockergnome (which in turn points back to RSS Diary). Rok wrote an article called What Kind of Content Can You Publish via RSS? In the article, Rok mentioned FindSavings.com, who deliver coupons.

If your site offers a lot of different products and services, you might consider inserting time-limited coupons into your web feed. Promote different products or services each day. Since studies have shown that web feed ads have a greater CTR (Click-Through Rate) when they are their own item, your coupons should be inserted between other items.

If you have a blog instead of a website, you will want to either edit the default web feed, or replace it with a custom feed that has these coupons inserted. The point is to reward site visitors who subscribe to your web feed. So these coupons should not be visible from the site proper. Obviously, the coupon graphics files will reside somewhere on your site, but people who don't subscribe to the feed will only know about them if someone tells them.

It's possible that search engines will index the coupon graphics file, if they index your web feed. So you could have your webmaster implement a check. If the referer page to a coupon file is from anything other than your web feed's XML file (be it .xml, .rss, .rdf, or even if it's generated from a .php, .cgi, .asp, etc., script), then the image would be blocked.

The actual inclusion of the coupon graphics files is relatively simple, and really no different than the method of photocasting in RSS 2.0 that I discussed previously. The only main difference is that in photocasting, every item probably contains a photo. With the coupon feed, a coupon graphics file is contained in its own feed item, and is interspersed amongst regular text items.

If your business requirements demand it, you could implement some sort of registration process, via a hyperlink within the coupon feed item, to validate each coupon. This would ensure that coupons are only used by feed subscribers, but could be viewed by other site visitors.

One problem to avoid, from the point of view of subscribers, is that they shouldn't have to fully register each and every coupon to redeem more than one. A single full registration for each subscriber should be stored in a database. Then, every time they find a coupon they'd possibly like to redeem later, they should simply click a check box visible with every coupon - in the web feed - then click the "redeem" button. The redemption information will then be stored for this subscriber. (I'm leaving the hardcore details of such implementations for later e-reports we'll be offering.)

(c) Copyright: 2006-present, Raj Kumar Dash, http://www.chameleonintegration.com/

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