It wasn't published too recently but I still find it completely relevant. Mentions how web pages use to be much more static; and how everything nowdays is all about constant update with Feeds (RSS) quickly becoming the preferred route for continuous information.
Take Back the Net
By Cade Metz
"Everyone was supposed to have a voice on the Internet. Thanks to tools like blogs and wikis, everyone can.
Think back to the earliest days of the World Wide Web. Before Amazon.com and E*Trade. Before CNN.COM and ABC online. Before CRM, ASPs, and B2B marketplaces. In the early nineties, when the Web first rose to prominence, few saw it as a business medium. Few saw it as a fresh outlet for major newspapers, radio stations, and television networks. The Web would be the tool of the masses, not The Man."
Go to PCMag.Com to get full article.
Take Back the Net by Cade Metz
Need Traffic? Start Social Bookmarking
The reason why most blogger don't end up making any money from their efforts is due to low traffic.
This lack of traffic can be due to a variety of things; most likely either:
A) Poor Quality Content
B) Good Content, but people cannot find the site.
What I have come to learn is the easiest, most cost-efficient way to advertise and drive traffic to your site is to use social bookmarking. There are a variety of social bookmarking sites out there, like Digg.com, Del.icio.ous, Technorati, etc.
What these sites do is after you submit your article to their database; it varies from site-to-site, but your article is ranked and index'd according to how many people from that specific site bookmarked your article. For example; with Digg.com - each digg is like a vote of confidence in the article, telling other Digg.com readers that this article has this many votes.
Exponential Growth
The thing about sites like Digg.com is once your article reaches a particular level - it tends to grow exponentially from there. I watched an article I wrote yesturday go 6 hours after published without getting much more then 1 or 2 diggs.
Then suddenly; it became popular. Pretty soon, hundreds and hundreds of people had "dugg" my article and it had gotten onto the main page. From there it only grows faster because it has even more exposure. Eventually it got onto the Top 10 in all subject areas list. It currently has more than 2,000 diggs and has attracted more then 30,000 people to my site. Incredible - especially considering that my blog averaged around 200 visitors per day.
The article I'm mentioning can be found Here.
Now their are those who believe that you should only bookmark your very good articles - I am not one of those.
I bookmark every article; because I believe it is a game of chance and the Law of Averages tells me that if I submit X number of articles then eventually I'm going to get another article that breaks loose.
*This article is from a different blog I had tried for a few days; that is why It is not dugg or bookmarked here.
If you're gonna write, Have your own site
I wrote 60 articles in one month for Associated content. I made $300 writing about whatever I wanted.
Thing is... I wasn't writing for myself.
I was writing for them; and although they do offer a profit sharing program (an extra dollar for every 1,000 page views) it dosen't come close to what can happen if one of your articles on your own blog hits it big.
HERE'S THE PROOF:
My last article was about how FreeCreditReport.com screwed me over. I thought it was a fair piece; alittle life lesson and experience that can help hopefully a few people not get jipped like I did. This article blew up; as I'm writing this, that article has more than 1,000 diggs. It was on the main page for quite a bit and is currently on the TOP 10 list.
Sure, I got ALOT of flames for being foolish enough to fall for it - but what does that matter. If we cant laugh at our own mistakes then we're screwed. You have to be able to laugh at oneself once in a while.
It suffices to say that by writing that article for myself, at my own no-name, free-hosted blog - I made more then I would have with associated content.
Bottomline:
If you want to hone your craft and start drawing an audience, perhaps pay-per-article sites like Associated Content and Helium can help you out. However, the real money is in having your own blog. I could have made so much more money if those 60 or so articles I wrote for them - were instead on my own blog. However; sometimes having a blog dosen't provide consisten income - in fact, often blogs lack consistency in their monetization. In those cases It can be beneficial to continue to sell to sites like Associated Content on non-exclusive deals so you can still publish them on your blog while drawing a growing audience from AC to your blog from links on your profile.
