In Defense of a Different Approach to Blogging

There’s been some buzz in prominent places this week about a different use for blogs I’ve been touting called the 10-30 Method.  Most of the time it is beginners who are confused about what blogging is or isn’t.  But sometimes it is the blogging community itself that gets confused.

The first thing to note about blog software is that it is a content management system.  “Blogging,” then, can mean several things.  Being a blogger can mean different things as well.

Pure Bloggers

A “pure blogger” is someone who usually has one blog that they dedicate all their time and effort to.  This person can sometimes have a couple of blogs, but usually they maintain focus on just one domain.

The majority, if not all, of their content is original and written with a great deal of thought and research.

When I got into pure blogging with this blog, I was an outsider.  A marketer.  In some circles I was seen as less-than-worthy of being called a real blogger because I monetized my blog and clearly set it up to make money with it.  We’ve come a long way since those days, but no so far that the pure blogging community doesn’t still have a sort of snooty attitude toward people who use blogs in different ways than pure bloggers do.

When I started blogging, the pride that other bloggers had in their inability or unwillingness to make money at what they were doing was palpable.  It was a badge of honor.  “I do this for fun, man.”

Then some bloggers started teaching what they were doing to make money with their blogs, and did so very well.  They were still accepted by the pure blogging community.  They were not frowned upon too much by the purists who thought blogging should never be cheapened by ads or used to push a blogger’s new product or service.

Pure bloggers who are successful with their blogs (have great traffic and make money) are a tiny minority of a larger group of people who have blogs they wish were getting traffic and making money.  Pure bloggers are proud of the hard work they put into their sites, as am I, but they can sometimes get protective of the very definition of what blogging is and how blogs should be used.

Information Curation Bloggers

Curating information with a blog is the process of gathering story headlines and snippets or audio and video from around the web to create mashups of content edited together by a person using blog software.  The good ones add their own content to the mix to create something unique out of syndicated and original content.  This type of blogger does not steal content.  He or she only uses content that is expressly permitted for syndication and publishing on other web sites.

The pure blogging community hates “mashup” blogs for many reasons:

• I appears to be less work and therefore cannot be as valuable to visitors as a “real blog” with 100% original content.
• It uses content from around the web and therefore won’t get into the search engines because it is “duplicate content.”
• It is lazy.  Pure bloggers work hard.  Curators are assumed not to work as hard.  Therefore what they do must be bad for that reason alone.
• No added value to the web.  The detractors believe that, just because something is published somewhere on the web, everyone has seen it and therefore there’s no need to re-publish any content on the web.

There are myriad other reasons pure bloggers dislike people who mashup and filter content from around the web.  But the fact is, there is value to the market provided by such blogs if the curator is good at what they do.

People don’t have all the time that pure bloggers do to sit on the web and search for stuff.  Web surfers use all kinds of websites to take the burden of finding good content off their shoulders.  Google doesn’t have a lick of its own content and no one complains about their information curation method.

A good curation blog will save its visitors time and show them things they’ve never seen or heard before.  It will develop a following, not based necessarily on the originality of the content, but the skill of the blogger to put together posts on a topic out of a plethora of junk and noise.

Examples of information curation blogs and aggregation sites are all over the web.  Some are called blogs simply because they are on blog software.  If the definition of blogging is the problem here, then let’s all call it something else.  But lets not de-legitimize different approaches to blogging just because they don’t fit the common definition of blogging.

Let’s Get Real

I have curation blogs and I have this blog.  I live in both worlds.  And I am a realist.  Not everyone can do pure, original content blogs.  There are far more people who still want to blog and make money on the web.

To know how they can successfully blog by doing mashup posts and not teach them is to ignore a very large part of the market.  It also seems the pure blogging community still has a ways to go before they lose their “snooty” attitude toward different things people choose to do with blogging software to make money on the web.

It is unrealistic to think that a huge number of people will ever be able to write a pure blog of original content and succeed.  It is hard work and it takes a certain amount of time, education, desire and/or intellect to pull it off.  The standard reply to this is usually “Too bad.”

Do we snub them and deny them any information about other ways of blogging just because we have lofty ideals of what “real” blogging is?  I’ve decided not to.

10-30 Blogging Is Not Spam, Not Splogging!

I have been training people pure blogging at BlogSuccess.com for years now.  I know enough about blogging and driving traffic with content to know that there are different ways to gain attention and monetize that attention with blogs.

The 10-30 Method is clearly not about “fast bucks” and overnight riches through stealing content or any other shameful, useless method of spamming the web.

I have defended pure blogging to my marketing associates as something to be respected.  I chide marketers who use blogging software to trick Google and spam the web with useless junk.

In fact, I have been the most outspoken person in the marketing community for upholding quality and value over get-rich-quick schemes.  But I also know that opportunities exist for people who don’t have the skill or the time to do blogging the “ivory tower” way.  And I know that there are legitimate, profitable ways to use blogs that do not require superb writing skills or vast amounts of time.  I know this, because I do both and make money doing both.  And my standards for quality aren’t compromised in either approach.

Its Wrong To Assume Surfers Know About Something Because It Is Published (Somewhere Else) On The Web

One of the things that really gets my goat is when I witness people making assumptions about what “the average surfer” has read, heard, or viewed.  Just because it is on YouTube doesn’t mean a significant number of people have seen it.  Certainly not all the people who would enjoy it if they knew it was there.

I’ve taken content from massive sites and shown it to people who follow my “mashup” blogs and been rewarded for it.  People say its the first time they’ve ever seen it.  Thanks for sharing this.  You rock.

Assuming that there is no legitimate reason for publishing links to content found elsewhere on the web by some people is ignoring the fact that most of any target audience for most content is completely unaware of that content until someone points it out to them on another blog.

Bloggers, all bloggers, make their living partially or wholly from showing their visitors stuff from other sites that their visitors have neither the time or ability to find themselves.

Saving People Time Is Valuable

Everyone in the blogging business knows the value that a good editor can bring to curating good content for people who rely on a good filter for their news, education, or entertainment.  Many successful bloggers on the web today are wholly or partially curators of other peoples’ content.  They merely add opinion and thoughts to that content at the same time they include them in their posts.

All bloggers mashup content from other sources at one time or another.  The fact that they throw in some original content from time to time doesn’t mean they aren’t using other peoples’ content to a great extent in their overall product.  Using more syndicated content to fill a blog than original content is what the 10-30 Method is all about.

It helps people do something of value on the web that can generate income without having to be slaves to a pure original blog which demands heavy writing and time.

Originality in properly executed 10-30 blogs comes from what is picked to blog about each day, the sources, and how well the blogger sorts through the noise to pick the good stuff to post about.

This kind of content does rank in the engines and it is respected and followed by people who appreciate not having to seek it out themselves.  If there is real value in the content delivered to a market who appreciates it, there’s value in this kind of blogging.

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To learn more about becoming a professional blogger using either or both methods, check out Blog Success today.