What Am I Getting Out Of This, And Is It Enough?

Barry Ritholz of The Big Picture, arguably one of the preeminent finance bloggers is doing a little soul searching on the issues that go along with sharing blog content.

The Big Picture: Giving Away Content

About a year ago -- and, after considerable reluctance -- I allowed Seeking Alpha to reproduce my content on their site. In theory, it cost me nothing, and (in theory) would generate some traffic. Others apparently felt the same way, as SA went from aggregating a few blogs to dozens, if not 100s.
The only requirement I gave them was "no changing headlines, no deleting expletives, no pulling links, no editing at all;" It was all or nothing, fill or kill "
After that edict was violated for the 3rd time -- with an embarrassingly shitty headline of someone else's authorship -- I pulled my feed.

It strikes me as bizarre how the "blogosphere" is at once held up as a bold new world, yet from a business perspective is often treated like kid stuff. It's as if the people trying to make a buck off of it want to have it both ways.

To my mind, being "paid" in site traffic is no big deal. Not only that, acting as if traffic is a cash-comparable-analogue seems so 1999. The fact is, your content will deliver the traffic on it's own, if it's good enough. If someone wants to use your content on their website, they ought to pay.

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