Traffic Meta

I often puzzle about why I do this. It’s pretty time consuming, even with only my meager output to show for it.

Mostly it’s to practice writing, but I’ve found that the bits of attention I’ve gotten from the posts has been exhilarating. So if that’s the measure of success, then maybe I should think about first, whether I care to define ‘success’ in such a manner and, second, whether I care to be successful.

Let’s say I do and I do. Felix pointed me to a piece that ‘blew up’ in the blogosphere:

David’s story was perfectly pitched as a topic for discussion on such shows: well written, controversial, and timely. And it seems that millions of Americans, all thinking about taxes and listening to radio hosts talk about the article, were sufficient to crash the Willamette Week’s website.

This reminds me of something that Tim Ferriss wrote about how to become relevant:

The chicken-or-the-egg problem was simple: big TV doesn’t want you on until you’ve proven yourself on big TV. What to do? My answer was: look for a local affiliate of big networks like ABC, CBS, or NBC, and find something controversial and timely to discuss.

The mainstream media is still the path to real success online and they want to be your friend, if you can supply them what they want.

Hm