Making ripples on the Internet - write with care...

I adopted the name Ripples for this weblog because thoughts spread through the internet like...ripples, and I wanted to share my thoughts with as many people as would find them helpful.

Unlike email, which is often enforced communication, I had hoped this site would be a useful resource for those visitors who found their way here. That seems to be happening.

I am finding that my ideas are finding a wider audience than I ever anticipated, and it is a sobering experience. In my first year of blogging, I have had about 40,000 visitors, most of them via search engines.

Because of the way that Google works, I find that the most casual utterances by a blogger can be given equal weight against the carefully crafted efforts of vast commercial sites.

For example, I saw that I was getting a lot of hits from Google recently and followed one back to see what it was all about.

People entering "anniversary present" in Google found this blog listed in the number one position on the first page. It was result #1 of about 3,530,000 for "anniversary present". (0.35 seconds)

Ripples: Anniversary present
... Sep 18, 2004. Anniversary present. ... Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Anniversary present: Comments. Congratulations and happy anniversary! ...
ripples.typepad.com/ripples/ 2004/09/anniversary_pre.html - 30k - Cached - Similar pages

My post was an expression of my thanks for having finally achieved a lasting and happy relationship and it ranks with commercial messages affecting thousands of businesses. I'm glad that I didn't write something frivolous. Google had my post listed first among the millions of web pages discussing or selling anniversary presents.

My concept of this weblog as a source point of useful ideas and opinions seems to have been unduly conservative. I am beginning to see that it as a growing responsibility, not as a private discussion between close friends. In any event, it brought home to me that there is an audience for what I am writing and that I can expand these essays to address topics which are most useful to readers.

It opens the door to a wealth of interesting essay topics and reinforces the potential value of writing books that are a compilation of the advice found to be most interesting to readers.

I first got the idea of a weblog as the ultimate power tool, when I saw the names of blogs and bloggers coming up at the top of Google search results.

That was almost a year ago when blogs were still operating below the radar and were rarely mentioned by major media outlets. Blog advertising was still a remote and unlikely possibility for all but Instapundit.

Since then, more of my blogging friends are melding blogging with business. With the visibility that search engines give blogs, it may work out that more of us will find a means of supporting ourselves from our writing and research efforts.

What a cheerful thought!

Update: Wayne Hurlbert, at Blog Business World writes: check out this comprehensive and growing list of ways to create revenue streams from your blog. The revenue ideas were formulated from this Spring's BloggerCon.

Comments

[Sallie]

You are a great resource. I suck up everything you write and have learned a great deal. I am glad I found you, as others are. Great work! Keep it up. {I know how hard it is to do.} Thank-you.

[Wayne Hurlbert]

Diavid St. Lawrence of Ripples is doing a wonderful job of providing interesting and informative content to its regular readership. The secret of David's blog's success is the blending of the personal with the profound. Of course, with David, they are most often one and the same thing.

I always tell my readers that Ripples is one of the "must read" blogs in the blogosphere. Each day, David keeps proving me to be correct in that assessment.

[David Robarts]

I think that one who is seaching for "Anniversary Present" needs to see an original, thoughtful tribute rather than a list of commercial gifts that require no though. It's not like Google was ranking you #1 for a specific item you purchased for your wife.

[phaTTboi]

Google loves blogs, as they are often "link forests" which PageRank interprets, often whimsically, as "relevance." Most blog software also posts article titles as hyperlinks on a sidebar, making for more Googlelove. And finally, PageRank loves frequent updates, which is another characteristic of most blogs. But the Googlelove works two ways, as a friend of mine discovered in July, when his visitor stats showed Google's bot was visiting 1700+ times in the month, apparently fascinated with a photo rotation element he has in his main page banner. That's not bad, if you are ponying up for the bandwidth, and looking to build traffic, but add that to a random Googlespike of interest in an injudiciously chosen post title, and the parsimonious blogger can get unexpected bandwidth bills from Google referred surfers.

So, craft those article titles with care, David, and recognize that 15 minutes of fame in the blogosphere can run into $$$ ! But do keep up the work here. You are a favorite frequent read of mine, and even when we disagree, your civility and respect for the views of others is cause enough to think carefully about what you have to say.

[Carrie]

A blogger I read has mentioned something called Blog Explosion. I looked at it and it seems to me it's like MLM for blogs. Network marketing on the internet. What next!

I ditto Wayne's comment 100%