I'm starting to note an interesting trend.
Okay, it's obvious that I'm a software developer and, in my opinion, a good one. I spend a great deal of time learning the details behind things and love understanding how the world works a bit under the covers. When I first went into developing software I figured that those who had made a fair amount of money on the internet were also good developers who spent their time doing very much the same thing - learning, exploring, understanding, etc. I'm actually experiencing a bit of a down-time right now as I recently recieved a nice position as a senior-level ASP.NET developer for a while with a startup company in my area (good opportunity, in my opinion); and so I'm taking some time to get more a grasp on my blog, on blog marketing, etc. Therefore, I decided I would read a few blogs, take a few notes on what I should do, and just try them out....what I found was interesting.
Probably the best site I found for advice is this one: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/01/11/how-to-market-your-blog-in-2007/. The guy was very logical and concise; and the advice he gives does make sense. One of the bits of advice he gave was to register yourself with various blog directories and social site networks (what these sites do is try to promote EVERYONEs blog by just signing up, and in the process gain traction themselves). However, a few of the sites he pointed me to were having serious problems (both in their esthetics and in their function); in fact, a few of the sites were downright crappy.
Top100bloggers.com immediately gave me this:
and blog-clicker.com threw up on me with this....
From my brief experience over at rentacoder.com I learned to pick out sites that were created by a business-weasel hiring out to some college freshman for one hundred fifty bucks. It's my guess that these sites were created in just this way. Something goes wrong with the site and the owner freaks out and tries to pull the XBOX 360 paddle out of the hands of the original programmer to fix the "issue" - and what you get is, well, what you see above.
My initial, gut-instinct here is that these sites were created in a rat-race fashion.
However, a few sites weren't bad and - in fact - were downright good. I thought BlogExplosion.com was interesting....the premise here is that you gain points by visiting other people's blogs for a period of time; apparently these points credit you for some standing in their system (I'm still new to this). Also, within a brief period of time I'm already noticing a slight number of hits coming from BlogFlux. B5Media.com looks really nice, but they appear to not be accepting new people at this moment (not sure why).
Oh well. My point behind this post is that I have to quietly chuckle to myself when a site just poops all over itself when someone is trying to join it and enhance it's community; it takes me back to a few people I use to work for/with who seemed gifted at putting themselves into the "putting out fires" department because careful, concise work seemed like a waste of time. I dunno', some of the sites might actually be good and, I'm sure, sites like MySpace.com started off similarly (in fact, when I had a MySpace.com account it seemed like the darn thing was breaking nearly every five minutes). I guess what do I know....
