RSS: the subscribe button that doesn't need an email
An RSS feed lets readers follow your blog in their own reading app. No email list, no algorithm, no middleman. Publish something and it shows up in their feed.
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication, and it's exactly what it sounds like. It's a feed — like a social media feed, but controlled by the reader, not an algorithm. When someone subscribes to your RSS feed using a reading app, every new post you publish automatically shows up for them. No email signup forms, no spam folders, no social media gatekeeping. You publish, they see it. That's the deal.
Most distribution channels have a middleman. Email requires people to hand over their address and trust you won't spam them. Social media decides who sees your posts based on engagement metrics. RSS is direct: you publish, subscribers see it, end of story. The audience is smaller than email or social, but it's a highly engaged, technical audience — exactly the kind of readers a builder's portfolio wants to attract. It's also a signal to other builders that you take your craft seriously. People who use RSS readers are often the ones you most want reading your work.
An RSS feed is just a structured file that lists your recent posts with their titles, links, and descriptions. Most web frameworks can generate this file automatically from your existing content. Once it's set up, add a link to it somewhere on your site so readers can find it. After that, there's zero maintenance — every new post you publish automatically appears in the feed.
If you're publishing regular content — blog posts, essays, project updates — add an RSS feed. It takes about twenty minutes to set up and runs forever. Even if only a handful of people subscribe, those people are seeing every single thing you publish without you doing any extra distribution work. That's a deal worth taking.
Product leader shipping across enterprise SaaS, AI in production, and 0→1. Writing about what actually ships — not what sounds good in a deck.