Recent Blog Entries
Original content is key
Written by Tyme White on April 18, 2008
On Wednesday I wrote about the 9rules Member Agreement, which is a key basis on determining whether 9rules would be a good fit for your site. The next set of articles I will discuss some of the key features we look for in a site. Original content is single-handedly the hardest aspect of a blog to consistently deliver. Let’s talk about that a bit.
News Blogs
News sites (for clarification, a site that “reports” on a topic) has a double-edged sword. If the news site breaks the story their site will be the first to have it. Being the first to report a story is extremely hard work (to consistently deliver breaking stories) but the work pays off in being “the” source people will go to first and you’ll benefit from the links to your article. Most sites do not fall into this category.
Many reporting sites take news found elsewhere and regurgitates it. Let me give you an example. I took a random article on CNet. This is what many blog entries look like (shortened to save space):
Title: Google beats pessimistic predictions!
Google reported on Thursday their net income of 1.31 billion, a 31% increase. This was a surprising result considering their stock plunged to $525, a significant decrease from their all-time high of $724.24 in November:
Excluding $1.49 billion in partner commissions called traffic acquisition costs, Google’s revenue was $3.7 billion. That result was 46 percent greater than the year-earlier amount and about $100 million more than the $3.6 billion analysts expected.
Google increased revenues by showing less but more relevant ads and kept their operating expenses in line. The majority of their revenue comes from advertising. Despite their success they still have hurdles monetizing social media sites due to the sheer amount of inventory social networking sites create. You can read more about Google’s profits here.
We are not looking for sites that publish that type of content. We are looking for the site that will take that article and try to get an interview or will put a different spin on it. Examples: an article on mobile advertising and the challenges faced or the difficulties advertising networks have filling inventory on social media sites. Another route, if the site reports on social media news look at how other social media sites are filling their inventory and research suggestions to aid those sites. There are many ways to spin the article into original content.
**Accuracy plays an important role as well. If you write online long enough an error will happen. I look for how news sites handle corrections, meaning: does the site update their article to inform their audience they screwed up?
Commentary/Opinion sites
These sites have it the easiest so there really isn’t a reason not to have original content. In this niche the pitfall is not clearly defining the writer’s thoughts. Most people have an opinion about things and that’s great. If your blog is based on opinions, back them up with some facts or state why you have the opinions you have. I view sites daily that recap an article and their entry is basically, “that sucks!” without having any basis for the opinions. If you think net neutrality is good/bad state why. If you think Comcast sucks, back it up with some proof.
We do not have a problem with strong opinions. We realize that some niches almost automatically spark strong debate. We are looking for sites that, when they express their opinion, their is a foundation to back those opinions up.
Personal Sites
This is another easy niche that has a pitfall. A blog about you is unique because there is only one you, right? The pitfall (I know, how can there be one when the blog is about you)? You might be boring. Yes, I said it. Sharing your life is fine and we strongly advise against lying but the presentation and delivery of “your life” makes all the difference in whether the content is interesting. A blog entry about you getting up and wanting a cup of coffee isn’t interesting (unless something happened while making coffee). A picture of the cup of coffee you made with the simple description: “It tastes as good as it looks” might cause your readers to stop what they are doing and make a cup of coffee or prompt comments like, “Damn you, now I’m hungry! :)”.
Get the picture?
Hopefully this will give you some ideas on what we are looking for. Original content isn’t easy to consistently deliver but there are ways to inspire original content.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:42 am
Damn you, now I’m hungry!
;P
April 18th, 2008 at 9:59 am
LMAO
April 18th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Hey 9rules,
This is more of a question. I started a site so I could write about my favorite topic, travel! So I started blogging about four countries. Then I started receiving submissions from other writers, I made a few videos, began adding news releases directly from national tourism organizations and my little blog got bigger. It also became something else. Now I have feature stories, blogs entries, news releases and video.
I like 9rules and want to be a part of its community. My question. Should I bother applying? On one set of criteria, I am a good fit. On another, I am not what you want.
Just looking to save everyone some time, who might be somewhere in the middle.
devin
April 18th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
What if you do both? And doesn’t this give one a bit of flexibility (taken from your post re: member agreement): “What do you mean by an articles only feed? We are only interested in original content (articles, images, videos, audio, etc.). We are not looking to aggregate Delicious, Twitter, or other third party content. Ads, legal disclaimers, third party content, etc. should be removed from the feed given to 9rules.” Seems to me that by that statement, people can publish Kottke type posts (for lack of a better description), like I recently started doing, and save the good feed for 9rules, right? Or are you saying these kinds of sites don’t fit in 9rules? If that’s what your saying, then why the need for the other statement re: the article feed?
… just trying to clarify.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
@Devin - we have sites that have multiple writers. From what you describe you’re fine.
@Shawn - What do you mean do both?
About the articles feed, when I go through sites I am going to be looking at the placement of 3rd party content. When people come to 9rules they are usually looking for something specific - like design (for example). If they want to learn about CSS/HTML and are considering subscribing to a site, if the person also sees personal photos and entries that person will have a decision. Is the CSS/HTML content important enough to receive content in their feedreaders about a stranger they aren’t interested in? That’s why people are experiencing information overload - a ton of off-topic information is being hurled at them. That is 100% understandable.
We need an articles only feed because we are aggregating content. We don’t want the title “Links for 4/17/08″ from Delicious or a Twitter entry that doesn’t have a title showing up. Or worse, the legal disclaimer so that all a viewer sees on 9rules is legalese.
I always use Matt Brett as an example of someone who integrates a lot on his site very well. He talks about games and his life, has his portfolio, Twitter, Flickr, etc. on his site and (most important) the content compliments each other. When someone goes to his site his RSS feed matches his site - meaning, he draws people to his site via the articles and while on the site, readers are greeted with other content they can subscribe too.
Keep in mind (about the separate feeds) if people are clicking from 9rules to a site they expect what they are seeing here to reasonably match what is on the site.
Also, keep in mind that with sites like FriendFeed, SocialThing and apps that allow you to blend various content, the need to combine everything into the main feed is no longer necessary.
If anyone else has any questions, don’t hesitate to ask.
April 18th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
I interpreted the articles only feed mention in your other post to mean that users could dedicate a feed to the articles they want to feed to 9rules. Then I read on this post that 9rules isn’t looking for sites that publish a genre of article that doesn’t fit the definition of quality content. So, I’m left scratching my head … wondering what the point of a dedicated feed is, if a site must always publish articles that jive with the 9rules definition of quality content. Make sense?
You asked, “@Shawn - What do you mean do both?”
What do I mean by “what if I do both?” Simply this: I post what I would consider to be quality articles and I post the sort of articles you cite as misfit (short, Kottke-type, blurbs that point to another site or story). However, I neither go off topic, nor do I overwhelm my site with 3rd party stuff. Everything is on topic; in my case, the topic is faith. So, my quality articles AND my short blurbs are focused upon faith or religion. So, I do both (i.e., write quality articles and short news blurbs).
Thanks for the answer, though I’m still not really clear on what you are saying re: the need for dedicated quality article feeds AND the exclusion of sites that only post quality articles. Also, I’m not sure what the official stance is on sites that do publish a variety of genre/media BUT stay focused on one topic. If a 9rules reader, for example, clicked over from my dedicated article feed, they would have no decision to make because everything they would find is relevant to my overall niche/theme.
It seems like a clearer ethos statement is needed, IMHO.
Thanks!
April 18th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Oops … I need to make a slight correction to the above.
This:
Thanks for the answer, though I’m still not really clear on what you are saying re: the need for dedicated quality article feeds AND the exclusion of sites that only post quality articles.
Should be this:
Thanks for the answer, though I’m still not really clear on what you are saying re: the need for dedicated quality article feeds AND the exclusion of sites that post things that do not meet the 9rules criteria of quality articles (in addition to quality articles!).
LOL! Not trying to make this more difficult than it has to be, but I do think there is some gray in there …
April 18th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Hi Tyme,
Thank you for the clarification. And wish me luck, if that’s not cheating.
devin
April 18th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Let’s try this another way. Remember when you were in 9rules and there were some members, when their content was getting scrapped, put a legal disclaimer at the beginning of their articles? On our site all that displayed was the legal disclaimer. That is one reason why we want a clean feed, so we have flexibility when it comes to design.
2nd point of feed somewhat matching the site. There are people who write about (for example) soccer, design, personal, cooking and politics on one site, which is fine for a personal blog. It’s a nightmare for aggregation. Sure, we can section off soccer via a feed but if someone goes to the site looking for sports and sees cooking, politics and design articles on the front page you can expect the person would be confused. Some topics go fine together like programming and design.
With links (for aggregation), basically what you’d be asking readers to do is click to your site (because the link would be to your site) to click to another site to get the article/information. Just because the links are relevant doesn’t mean the person is going to find value in what you think is cool (links) vs. what you say. I’ve received complaints from readers thinking they are getting a site that produces articles (which our site would show) and wonder about the quality the site. There is a difference providing content to your audience (people that know you) and people who are complete strangers looking for something.
Personally (to save conflicts like this) I put all information that does not appear in my main feed on the sidebar. That’s what the extra space is for - extra stuff lol. You’d be surprised how many people mistake links mixed in with content (asides in the main area) as ads.
There isn’t a cookie cutter approach that will apply to every site. Each site is unique and I try to take it consideration while going through sites.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
@Devin - it’s not cheating…good luck and you’re welcome.
April 18th, 2008 at 6:45 pm
Much appreciated!
April 18th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Good enough, Tyme. I’m following you on the scrapping/legal disclaimers from back in the day. Understood. Thank you for the clarification(s)!
BTW: I think what ya’ll are doing is awesome … and brave. Kudos. I miss the “old” 9rules! And chawlk looks like it is going to be even better the the “new” 9rules. Hindsight is 20/20, eh? In a perfect world 9rules would have remained as it was, and chawlk would have been a separate/independent startup completely … But in a perfect world I wouldn’t have left 9rules either! So, there you go! Best wishes as you all move forward with all of this.
April 18th, 2008 at 7:12 pm
[...] Original content is key [...]
April 19th, 2008 at 10:11 pm
> I think what ya’ll are doing is awesome … and brave. Kudos. I miss the “old” 9rules!
They’re going back to the core ideals of 9rules and that is to be commended. 9rules notes is still, imho, something of a watershed moment and is, still, something the 9rules crew should be very very proud of.
It will be most interesting to see how the new world looks.