Blogging and the Wisdom of Crowds

[ponygirl]

I haven't been here much the last couple of days so I just read all of the replies here, and I just have to say THANK YOU for the multi quote function!

Originally Posted by walrus

So, I guess what I am suggesting is that we, those who are participating in this thread, form a community and spend a little time each day checking out eachothers blogs....and leaving comments or doing trackbacks to them, or some combination of both. In other words , we generate conversations with each other.

I have lots of opinions and always have lots to say, but usually I just sit back and listen. I'll be honest, when I thought of blogging, it was a pretty one sided idea. I have a hard time being part of a community (that antisocial tendency ya know ) Being at GG&J has helped me with that but I still have to push myself to communicate with others, online and off. It's hard to even post that LOL but just so you know where I'm coming from. Having said that, I want to make changes to my routine to do this, because I really do love blogging and like the idea of a 'blogging community' with the people here.

Originally Posted by GrosCochon

They essentialy suggests to mass produce low quality blogs and update them automatically with plugins. The posts in those blogs will generally be 1 line of text, with one thumbnail going to a gallery.

see, to me that's not really a blog. I'll venture a thought that this is just a fad, a new way to deliver an old product. I also think that it will die out once people realize that it's easier to do a tgp than keep a blog updated, even with sponsors offering blog tools. (that's just my opinion though, I may be wrong)

Originally Posted by GrosCochon

So my newbie question/rambling to you pros is, do you think it is possible to only have one (or a few) quality blog as a main source of income? Or do you absolutely need other types of sites(like how ponygirl has that liquisexx site) in order to make any money?

make money?? LOL Seriously, I think in this biz you need to have a really diverse network to make any money at all. Link list, tgp, hubs, freesites/galleries, other types of pages...find out what you like to do and do lots of them. You need to build up lots traffic and then figure out what to do with that traffic. Money takes a long time and lots of experimenting, the biggest thing you need is time. Measured in years

Originally Posted by Simon

One thing that will help is to review the comments waiting for approval. It's hard to start a dialogue unless the comments appear after they're posted.

see above personal admission, Simon Truthfully, I'm not used to getting real comments, I'll have to actually start looking more often.

consider me professionally reproached hehe

Originally Posted by jayeff

Porn however, for the majority is primarily visual, so while it is good to add text for the benefit of the search engines, you would need a very individual "take" on the topic or style, for too much text not to get in the way. Fetish and swinger sites can be exceptions. Solo sites or photographer's sites too. But I don't think the majority of porn blog webmasters would be best served by going too far in that direction.

I think what people have to realize is that a blog is very different from other, more traditional porn sites. A blog with just a pic and a couple lines of text to me is not a true blog anyway. Your traffic is going to be very different than say a TGP or LL - the traffic I want can actually read (just kidding, but you know what I mean ).

Now just going off the top of my head here but to give you an idea of how I think to make money from a blog:
Reader doesn't surf porn because they've had a bad experience/don't know how to/think it's beneath them/are embarrassed to/whatever. They like to read, though, and find some interesting blogs that are titillating/erotic/interesting/dirty...They keep coming back to the blog because they like it. One particular post talks about something they find exciting, and it's got a link to a gallery of pics or something (I usually link to galleries instead of posting pics right on my blog). Now, they like this person's blog, they've been coming back a while, hmmm...maybe they will try some of this porn stuff. They'll check out my other sites and see what's there or maybe buy a membership from a site I've promoted to see what it's all about.

There's my sale. Now that's pretty simplistic, but that's what I'm thinking of when I look at the long term of blogs like mine. I really don't expect sales directly from the blog, I hope to get some new surfers coming to my other sites from a more non traditional traffic source.

anyway, that's a pretty big post I need a cup of tea so I'll stop there and let someone else say something