by Jason Preston on October 23, 2008
And I have to disagree completely. Blogging is far from dead—blogging is thriving. According to Paul, the reasons you should skip the blogosphere are, roughly:
- There are too many other blogs
- Writing more than 140 characters is too much work
- Media companies are now blogging
- Jason Calacanis isn’t doing it anymore
Blogging has always been a medium. It’s a tool that you can use in many ways, and what’s happened is that this tool has been adopted by a lot of people for a lot of different purposes.
Some of what Paul brings up is actually valid: gone indeed are the days when a wayward blog post about a popular subject like “Barack Obama” could rocket you to the top of Google. But a blog still beats a static web site on SEO hands-down.
And there’s also the way that a blog lets you connect with your niche. The Techmeme leaderboard does not define the blogosphere. It tracks the “broadcast blogosphere” - blogs from people and organizations big enough that they’re essentially going back to broadcast models.
Today is an excellent time to start a blog, either for yourself or for your business. You will undoubtedly find your tribe.
by Jason Preston on October 16, 2008
As many of you probably already know, our CES Blogger Party last year was an awesome success, so we’re getting right back into it this year: the It Won’t Stay in Vegas blogger party is back in force, and this time we’re doing a contest to get several gadget bloggers onto a private jet flight.
Yes, you read that right. Yesterday we announced the rules on how to get into the contest and how to increase your odds of winning (and for the record, no, this post doesn’t enter me into the contest).
If you want to come hang out with Gary Vaynerchuk and Robert Scoble at the CES Blogger Party this year, go request an invite to the party.
If you’re a gadget blogger and you want to enter the contest for the blogger jet like Jake Luddington and Beth Blecherman already have, check out the rules and drop your name in the punch bowl.
by Jason Preston on October 2, 2008
Paidcontent and ProBlogger reported this morning that the Bankaholic blog, which launched in July of 2007, was bought today by Bankrate for a cool $12.4 million, and the option to earn another $2.5 million over the next 12 months.
That’s an astounding payout for the amount of time that John Wu (who is the one person behind Bankaholic) has put into the site.
If you look at the Google trends chart, you can see a very convincing argument for building a blog to flip it:
Having been in the blog space for a long time, I sometimes forget that there is an actual market for blogs, but there definitely is.
Some people like Yaro Starek have occasionally suggested that you can make a business out of buying blogs, building them up a little bit, and then reselling them for a profit.
Blogging ain’t dead yet.
