Martyn Walker

If your website gets 100,000 unique visitors each day then someone somewhere will pay you something worthwhile for exposure to your community. So given that a secret to an online income is owning a community then how do you build one from scratch?

Is it Blogging?

It’s no secret that bloggers attract huge communities of readers. Is your writing compelling enough to be one of them? is a question only you and time can tell. If a 13 year old child and a blind artist can then you probably can too.

If Shakespeare was alive today it’s unlikely he would attract the kind of numbers boingboing gets, but his community would have clearly defined interests, and it’s those specific interests that advertisers can use. In Shakey’s case Amazon would find a ready made market for dull poetry (I can here my English Literature testing a few expletives on me right now).

You have to be specific to be terrific

And that is the secret to building an online community, want to know why? Because time waits for no man. If you have been lucky enough to reach your goal or achieve your dream this will be easier to understand. Once you have what you have yearned for you want more, that’s why accessory companies do so well, and why cars come with different models.

Let’s take cars, are you really so practical that you are happy with the base model? Most people buying base models are either emotionally detached from the purchase (such as a fleet buyer) or just can’t afford to get the deluxe model (which actually means they didn’t meet with a real salesman because if they did he’d of shown them how they could afford it!).

But how do I find out what I want? With research, by watching TV, reading magazines and going online to visit those sites that cover subjects that I like.

There maybe a site that covers everything I want but how do I know they are the best? By visiting others that specifically deal with the subject of interest.

Does that mean I need SEO & $1,000’s on promotion?

Heck no! Google offers this advice which is useful if you want to get started on your own. However if your site has a community of regular visitors Google will find you without SEO anyway. I bet you’re thinking “how can I expect to build a busy community of regular visitors without being in Google first?”

Commenting

Another secret might be the answer to that but in truth your product should be good enough to be found on it’s own. Let’s take a gardening blog, chances are you read other blogs and sometimes think about commenting on articles you read. Now is the time to start doing that but adding your link in the web address field. That’s what it’s there for! This isn’t dark-side promotion, this is exactly what the author of the blog wants, he wants you to let him know how well he’s doing and he wants to see what kind of people are reading his blog. Placing your link against your comment helps him find out.

Seek out the Permalink

Keep an eye out for permalinks and use them when you can. A good demonstration of this is commenting on the Official Google Blog using their Permalinks. For example here is a post made boxing day of some great political gotcha’s. If the information is relavent to your post use the permalink. That way visitors to Google can see you commenting on their work and pay your site a visit to check you out.

Don’t worry about nofollow

If you’ve been reading blogs for a while you will know there is something called “nofollow”. This is a feature introduced by Google to reduce link spam across blogs and most blog software makers add it as an option. It has had little effect in reducing link spam and there are plenty of other better measures in place anyway. In fact the only real benefit has been to search engines and server hosts which no longer have to spend cpu time on collecting and visiting links with this attribute.

However it matters not to you. Placing your link on a popular blog as part of a legitimate and relevant comment will attract like minded visitors to your site and it’s that process that will create exposure and in time your community.

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Community, Google, Permalinks

As a software developer and owner of IPR you might think I would not be happy if my code and ideas were stolen and used for profit. You’d be right.

But what if someone writes their own code that improves my original idea? Why should I have any claim over that?

Progress depends on people taking what has gone before and improve it. Any subject you care to think of is merely an improvement on a previous idea, if it wasn’t we would still be living in caves and eating berries.

If you stop people from copying ideas then you will eliminate creativity and innovation entirely. Technology will freeze and nothing new will be created.

I agree there has to be protection but it’s a two way street. There are organisations that exist only to protect patents and their only goal is to sue once they recognise a potential for profit. If they succeed then progress is temporarily halted.

I tend to be apolitical about software, operating systems and hardware. Whatever’s best for the job. But I have never been a fan of Apple, I find them annoying, they appear to swap style for functionality and I know I will get lambasted for that remark. But I do admire the company, they have achieved so much against so many odds. They have a committed user base that expands with each gadget they release.

And each time they release something new a queue forms outside their lawyers doors full of those gold hunters looking for their slice of the Apple pie. This one is going just a bit too far don’t you think?

It’s ridiculous that someone can patent code that has been in use in O/S ever since the gui was invented. Ironically the very code they claim to own could not possibly have existed without Apple creating the gui in the first place! I hope these idiots are firmly rebuked by the court (if it ever get’s there).

But therein lies the rub. The facts are of little relevance. The mood of the judge and whose story he prefers at the time will prevail. His decision may go against Apple, not because Klausner Technologies has a case but because of some legal technicality.

Klausner are professional thieves IMHO prepared to feed off other peoples work, like digital slave owners they wait for someone who is naive enough and poor enough to be beaten into submission with the might of their dollar.

Let’s hope they don’t succeed against Apple for it would be a blow to the heart of creativity and innovation. The idea that you can patent an idea rather than a design is just plain crazy.

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Apple, Law Suit, Patent, Sue

How did I find myself in this mess? My blog was only two weeks old and I could no longer post to it, not through lack of trying but dreaded MySQL and File Permission errors.

And I own the hosting company that hosts it!

Just like a customer I got in contact with support and had them try figure it out. For once I was tasting my own medicine and I don’t mind admitting I didn’t like it.

The problem would be declared solved only to find a few hours later it was back. Can Linux really lose control of file permissions so easy?

The site had been installed on one of our older machines ready for decommissioning, so rather than kick a fuss we decided to move it to one of the new machines. But that just led to exactly the same problems. By this time I was getting just a little snaky.

Eventually the decision was to move the site to yet another machine and yet again the same errors. The final solution was to delete everything, start with a fresh installation, copy over the old database, upload the theme and plugins again (not forgetting the uploads directory) and here we are.

Two weeks later, a lousy excuse for not posting, and a lot of the original enthusiasm lost in the drains of the cybersewer.

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Blogging, Hosting

I thought Ublog was a late comer to blogging only “making it” because of it’s French origins which meant slower adoption of new ideas from the English speaking world. Well, A country that insists on calling a computer an “ordinateur” to emphasise Frenchness is bound to get stereotyped.

“So even though he’s French, his advice, when given, is worth listening to “

In Michael Arringtons article Loic Le Meur’s Ten Rules For Startup Success he says “So even though he’s French, his advice, when given, is worth listening to ” reveals a strange attitude towards the French.

I don’t know that Mr Loic Le Meur’s Rules are worth listening too. They are clear and informative but some commentators left “Well, Duh!” kind of remarks. He may as well have prepared Ten Rules For Breathing Success.

His first point is a contradiction like trying to paint a house white with black paint and his seventh will leave market researchers with tears in their eyes, tears of laughter rather than dismay.

I decided to investigate the empty space he claims to have filled (I assumed he did use his own rules) and I can see little evidence that he was first at anything. In fact I would love to find any article (English or French) that could explain what it is he has done and how it followed his rules.

I found claims he was not involved in the ublog startup at all! He purchased it rather late in blogging history around 2004. Although Wiki dates blogging back to 1983 a more realistic start date is 1994, a full ten years before he bought his way on to the scene. So what experience is he drawing on to make these rules?

Michael Arringtons anti French comments are just blognoise disguised to fool us into thinking he does not really admire the man and thus convince us his best mate Mr Loic Le Meur really is worth listening too.

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Blog, Bloggers, Blognoise, Community, Social Phenomenon