Of course you’ve all heard of RSS and how it is an incredible tool that you should be using both for personal and business purposes.

Simply put, RSS is great because you can get regularly updated information without having to actually visit a blog or site on a regular basis. Commission Junction, one of the largest affiliate networks, has recently (finally) implemented RSS feeds as a part of its notification system for new merchants.

When you sign into CJ, go to the home page and you’ll see a Message box in the top left with this info…

Commission Junction’s New Advertiser Notification RSS Feed is Now Live

With the launch of our New Advertiser Notification RSS feed, you can now receive direct notification when a new advertiser program is launched within the CJ Marketplace. The feed will contain the advertiser’s main category, standard commission rates and a brief program description.

Click here to subscribe to the New Advertiser Notification RSS feed and you will automatically receive an alert when new advertisers are added to the Featured Advertiser page on CJU Online. Sign up today!

Sounds great, but how do you use it?

If you go to the actual sign-up page for the service, you’ll see this page:

If you maximize that image, you’ll notice that I’ve pointed out a few things. Those are (1) get a feed reader, (2) sign up for the Publisher Promotions feed and (3) sign up for the New Advertiser feed. So, there are actually two feeds that we’ll be signing up for.

This will let you know the minute there is a new publisher promotion or new advertiser added to CJ without having to log in and manually check for yourself. Who doesn’t love that kind of automation?

So, let’s go through the steps, starting with (1), which is actually at the bottom of our image.

1. You need a feed reader. This can take many forms, but the most popular are Google Reader, Bloglines, FeedGator, NetNewsWire (for Macs only) or FeedDemon. Like with anything, you’ll have to pick one based on your own preferences and style. I like Google Reader because of keyboard shortcuts, and it’s “river of news” display (but that’s for another post).

You can also use services such as RMail or FeedBlitz to receive feeds in your email. An example of how we use that is here. Then there’s InClue which delivers feeds into your Outlook program if you’re an Outlook user. Play around with a few and pick one that you like based on functionality and your own preferences.

2. After you’ve found a feed reader you like, now you can add CJ’s feeds. There are a couple of different ways to add feeds including copying the link associated with those orange RSS rectangles. However, most modern browsers (Firefox 2.0, IE7, Opera9) allow you to just click the squares and pick which reader you are using. They will add offer to add the feeds to your feed reader.

The first CJ feed we want (Publisher Promotions) has the following address:

http://cju.cj.com/rss/publisher_promotions.rss

3. Same as the #2, but this time we’re adding the New Advertiser Notifications for Publisher feeds. The feed has this address:

http://cju.cj.com/rss/new_advertiser_notification.rss

Add that to your feed reader, and you’re all set.

Now, as you browse around various blogs and sites, you’ll see the orange button like the one in the top right corner of this blog. It looks like this:

If you’re on a blog with a symbol like that, it means you can click to add that feed to your feed reader. Pretty simple! That’s why RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.”

We’ll be looking at other affiliate and CPA networks who have feeds available. If you’ve got any questions or tips to share, feel free to include them in the comments here.

Good luck feed reading!