Mike-O-Matic

Being relatively new to the (active) blogging world, I often visit ProBlogger.net to learn some of the newest tricks of the trade. The site is packed with information for those looking to earn a little money with their hobby. The $20 sitting in my AdSense account after 3 months tells me I may have misread some of the lessons, though.

Side note: It is uh-oh funny how Darren has become a famous professional blogger by writing about becoming a famous professional blogger. Sort of like how Paris Hilton became a vapid celebrity by being a vapid celebrity, but without the sex tape. No offense to Darren, but I’m ok with that last bit.

Earlier today the site ran an article about the insideous act of linkbaiting:

The term linkbaiting is a one that seems to have surfaced over the past 12 or so months and that is used by webmasters to describe a variety of practices - all of which seek to generate incoming links to a website or blog from other sites.

It is actually a difficult term to be definative about as it covers a lot of different practices ranging from running awards or competitions, through to writing attacking posts on high profile bloggers in the hope of them biting back and linking to you, through to providing other bloggers or site owners with tools (with embedded links back to your own site) that they can put on their blogs.

Darren stops short of passing a value judgement on the act, saying that certain things that are called linkbaiting are in fact legitimate blogging practices, while others clearly cross the line. His ambiguity is easily understood; in this traffic-obsessed world, it is enough just to keep your head above water. Splitting hairs on whether your devastating comment and blog link were motivated by genuine animosity or a mercenary need for linklove is simply too much work. He does say that the rise of SEO firms specializing in this type of “optimization” is a bad sign, however, and here I wholeheartedly agree.

There are as many reasons for blogging as there are bloggers. Some people want to not feel alone in the universe. Some are required to blog by their job. Some think they have unique insight into topics of great interest. Others, like me, just like getting emails from people I wouldn’t get to know any other way.

Sadly, there is a growing subculture that uses them for all of the wrong reasons, like diverting traffic to useless advertisements, manipulating search engines, or simply throwing a misdirected temper tantrum at anyone they can get to listen.

Not to sound like the wide-eyed idealist I never was, but I’d be really interested in finding a more cohesive blogging community on the Internet somewhere that helped filter out some of this junk. Sites maintained by individuals, producing decent content, and then submitting it to the appropriate categories. Think Digg, only without the corporate news. Reddit, with more accountability and less spam. Or Technorati, without the Cewebrity worship.

You would need to claim the blog like Technorati, and could only submit articles from your domain. If you wrote something you felt was worthy of wider readership you could submit it to an appropriate subject area and other registered bloggers would rate it. There would be a karma system and “Report as Spam” links to make sure that people didn’t get too crazy or misuse the system. It would by an environment where you could be encouraged to submit your own articles, but could be penalized (through bad digital karma and the resulting systematic penalties) for abusing the privilege.
Is there something like this out there already that I just haven’t seen yet? With the millions of workalike social bookmarking sites it could easily slip through the cracks. If anyone feels like putting it together with me, the email is on the left.

Til next time.

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