Protect RSS Feed with Password

 

Blogging is a great way to share what you know with others and to earn extra income.  I am a blogger with 7 blogs, all are written on topics that I love. Since 2008 I have been dedicated to these blogs, posting regularly, sharing by networking and in general - working to make a living at blogging. 

When you publish on the Internet you always run the risk of someone stealing your content for their personal gain.  I knew this to be true and took steps to make my RSS feed with FeedBurner to be short -  as  full feed availability was asking for trouble.  Come to find out my blogs were being plagiarized by people burning their own feed and then adding my full feed to their blogs.  My copied blog would then be listed in the SEO for their website and that webmaster would gain traffic as well as earnings from their advertisers.  My content provided them with the keywords and they would get related advertiser.  Which in plain English means the pirates were earning from my blog feed.

These website pirates would steal my blog’s feed so they could earn more revenue.  A few months ago I tracked down a European webmaster who had stolen my feed for his personal gain.  I sent him an email and he replied by saying that my blog was very good and I should want to share with him.  He said I would get more views.  Problem is that he was getting the income from the Google advertisement, not me.  

Theft of my feed  caused my earnings to plummet and I was earning 0 for many months.  I was constantly reporting these pirated copies of my feed to Google and as a result my blog feed was removed from the website - after an investigation.  The problem was the damage had been done and there were numerous "pirates" that were stealing my feed and then sending me an email that said, "we added your feed to our website and now you will get more views you do not have to register or do anything to gain more views, thank you for sharing your content." 

Stop The RSS Feed Pirates

Protect your feed with a password.  A password will stop Jim Bob and Betty Lou from burning your full feed for their commercial gain.  A password on your feed is the first step to basic security.   

Go to your Google account and click FeedBurner by Google.  Look for the category Publicize your feed, click onto the category. When new window opens look  on the sidebar for publicly protect feed.  Protect your feed with a username and a password by using a HTTP authentication. What this does is stop the pirates from burning a feed. They will need a username and password to retrieve the feed information. 

This security service helps to stop blog pirates from pouching your feed however there are some negative aspects to the password protection.  Your subscription service will no longer be able to deliver email updates and your headline animator will not update when you publish a new post.  You will no longer be able to promote your blog using the site feed. 

Tips:

As soon as I added the password to my feed the blog pirates lost contact with me as they no longer received updates of my blog.  The password protector was positive for me as my earnings increased almost immediately.  I went from earning 0 to daily earnings.  

Anyone who gives their blog full feed away to webmasters in hope for more views is actually giving away their earnings too.  The only person that benefits from this transaction is the website pirate as they are earning from their AdSense that your blog keywords generate.    

Be smart and think before you give your feed away to the blog websites that have a copy of your content. "Pirates" look for easy ways to lift others' work, you don't' have to make it easy for them to steal.

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