Internet publishing is a strange thing. On the one hand, you can do everything yourself.
It doesn't take two people to write a blog post.
It doesn't take a team to design an attractive website.
And it doesn't take an entire office to optimize your ad units.
But on the other hand, it does take thousands of other publishers to place links to your site on their Web pages to push you up the search rankings and give you plenty of traffic.
It's something that's very easy to forget, especially when you're sitting in your shorts in front of your computer working on some post about your personal life. If you're going to create a site that brings in plenty of ad clicks though, you will need the help of lots of publishers you'll never meet... as well as readers you'll never see.
Although I certainly recommend that you go to conferences to learn from people at the leading edge of Internet marketing, I don't expect you to meet everyone who posts a link to your site or who reads your blog. It would be nice, but not very easy.
It is important though to think about them. And to work with them.
When you plan the sort of content you want to create, it's worth giving a thought to which sites might link to it. It's worth looking at Digg.com and Technorati.com to see what people are interested in reading and linking to right now. And it's worth creating posts on a regular basis that are good linkbait.
Of course, you should be creating content that people will want to read. But you should also be creating content that publishers will want to link to and that fit neatly into your community.
So make time to read other blogs and sites related to your field. Post profiles of other experts so that they'll link back to you. And don't forget that while every site should be unique, depend only on yourself and you'll only have one reader.
What are your thoughts? Please post your comments below!
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