Internet publishing is a strange thing. On the one hand, you can do everything yourself.
It doesn't take two people to write a blog post.
It doesn't take a team to design an attractive website.
And it doesn't take an entire office to optimize your ad units.
But on the other hand, it does take thousands of other publishers to place links to your site on their Web pages to push you up the search rankings and give you plenty of traffic.
It's something that's very easy to forget, especially when you're sitting in your shorts in front of your computer working on some post about your personal life. If you're going to create a site that brings in plenty of ad clicks though, you will need the help of lots of publishers you'll never meet... as well as readers you'll never see.
Although I certainly recommend that you go to conferences to learn from people at the leading edge of Internet marketing, I don't expect you to meet everyone who posts a link to your site or who reads your blog. It would be nice, but not very easy.
It is important though to think about them. And to work with them.
When you plan the sort of content you want to create, it's worth giving a thought to which sites might link to it. It's worth looking at Digg.com and Technorati.com to see what people are interested in reading and linking to right now. And it's worth creating posts on a regular basis that are good linkbait.
Of course, you should be creating content that people will want to read. But you should also be creating content that publishers will want to link to and that fit neatly into your community.
So make time to read other blogs and sites related to your field. Post profiles of other experts so that they'll link back to you. And don't forget that while every site should be unique, depend only on yourself and you'll only have one reader.
What are your thoughts? Please post your comments below!
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January 7, 2009 02:22 PM
Well written article, Joel.
As usual, you make the obvious even more so- thanks!
I like to consider myself a team. As I have little technical knowledge & don't know where to turn to for help without paying a for it, I tend to teach myself. It's a good learning experience for any budding entrepreneur.
With our first, original site created by the great folks at http://www.inverseparadox.net we went all out. The site's mission (a celebration of the men & women of our Armed Forces) deserved the best. And we got it.
That said, I have nearly 1300-plus other domains that I now need to build into sites. So, I teach myself the techie stuff I need to learn to continue to press onward.
Keeping a site's content relevant to it's core mission is vital. I comment about our site on your blog because it is a marketing tool, and I believe that I can lend my experiences to your readers. In fact, I have received a few e-mail from your readers because they read my comments on your blog.
I have gotten some great responses from comments I have posted here and the web designer has gotten great praise as well.
Thanks again for allowing me to comment- you are the best!
-K
http://www.for-the-troops.com/shop/
10% of after-tax proceeds benefit military charities.