Blogroll in WordPress (and general info re: RSS)

Hi, I realize this might be reaching into off-topic’dom but I’ve been completely unsuccessful in getting anyone else to help me!
A friend of mine runs a website with WordPress and is making use of the “Blogroll” feature. Discussing it with him, he told me that to get my website listed there I needed to have an RSS feed (his knowledge is shaky). So, I’ve created an RSS feed of my blog but am not quite sure how to work the rest.
This pingomatic.com site (the other thing he said I needed) seems keen on the url of my blog and not of my RSS feed. So, my question is in two parts:
1) How do I get myself to show up on a blogroll of sites running WordPress?
2) What exactly do I need RSS for if these notification sites are interested only in my blog url?
I’m keen to get involved in the RSS/blog notification scene but need a little guidance if someone can spare the time to help!
Thanks so much,
Gerb