Quality Content Without Links Is Not Quality Content...
There is a thread on WMW about the right price to sell an article for. The general consensus is that the author should probably wait it out until their site ranks and just keep their content.
While that is nice in theory, there is no guarantee that a site will eventually rank well just because it has decent content. Of course I am taking stuff out of context here, but you can read the thread to get the gist.
Comment:
As one site is willing to pay you, it doesn't make sense to give your articles away to the other site just to get a link.
Reply:
A friend of mine recently published an article on A List Apart. I think it would be hard to sell most any article for the value he is getting out of the authority of the link from that site, let alone the boost in credibility.
plus good primary links to your site may lead not only to direct exposure and link popularity, but also secondary exposure and more link love.
since your site is new you likely have lots of content and not so many links.
comment:
Whatever you decide, don't make the mistake of granting anyone exclusive rights to publish your work in perpetuity for peanuts.
reply:
for books I totally agree, but if you are obscure / new and / or are operating in a not so well known field and are good at writing articles sometimes giving them away is a great form of marketing.
rule #1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
comment:
Regarding your site, you will never leave the sandbox unless you keep your content 100% to yourself.
reply:
I think sitting chill with minimal link popularity is far worse than trading some of what you got a lot of for something you don't got a lot of (ie: content for links)The web has taught me alot about not considering what things could or should be worth and that unless you actively work to make them worth it then inferior products which are marketed more aggressively will often win big.
if you have around a hundred articles I don't think it hurts you to share a few of them.
Some of the links you get by giving stuff away are links you never could have bought. Those are the ones that are usually worth a bunch too.
Friends don't let friends go unlinked. ;)
Comments
Hi Aaron,
I enjoy reading your blog. In regards to your above points, I am in favor of trading my articles for exposure. But I am concerned about duplicate penalties. I also read through the WMW thread and I am not sure if I understand everything correctly. Do you believe that it is better to rewrite the same article and post the rewritten article on my site and give the original article away with my URL listed for exposure? Or should I post the original article on my site (the same as the one I am giving away with my URL) and just add more meat to it? Thank you in advance for your help!
Some people suggest writing an alternate or longer version for your own site... such that it passes the duplicate content filter sniff test and so that you can refer readers of the first part back to your site for the close on part 2.
To be honest, I am a bit lazy and just let people syndicate the whole articles off my other site because I am more interested in maximum exposure of ideas spreading than I am concerned with a few pages tripping a duplicate content filter and whatnot.
You probably do not want most of your own content to be duplicate content if you have a new unestablished site, but as you get more established you will still have many pages ranking in the search results even if you have some of your articles syndicated to a wide variety of sites. Plus if you article is really good and many people link to your original source it may be the article that still ranks and others may not rank due to the duplicate content filters.
another important issue I stress is participating in the web as a social network...new sites that are worried about keeping all their own content which do not work hard to get links from authoritative sites (by dnot oing things like submitting their articles to authority sites) end up missing the boat on learning where they can be published at, and people who may regularly link at your site may not link at all if they do not know it exists.
Getting exposure is important.
No GOOD website is an island.
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