I adopted the name Ripples for this weblog because thoughts spread through the internet like…ripples, and I wanted to share my thoughts with as many people as would find them helpful. <\/p>\n
Unlike email, which is often enforced communication, I had hoped this site would be a useful resource for those visitors who found their way here. That seems to be happening.<\/p>\n
I am finding that my ideas are finding a wider audience than I ever anticipated, and it is a sobering experience. In my first year of blogging, I have had about 40,000 visitors, most of them via search engines. <\/p>\n
Because of the way that Google works, I find that the most casual utterances by a blogger can be given equal weight against the carefully crafted efforts of vast commercial sites. <\/p>\n
For example, I saw that I was getting a lot of hits from Google recently and followed one back to see what it was all about. <\/p>\n
People entering “anniversary present” in Google found this blog listed in the number one position on the first page. It was result #1 of about 3,530,000 for “anniversary present”. (0.35 seconds)<\/p>\n
Ripples: Anniversary present<\/a>
\n… Sep 18, 2004. Anniversary present. … Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Anniversary present: Comments. Congratulations and happy anniversary! …
\nripples.typepad.com\/ripples\/ 2004\/09\/anniversary_pre.html – 30k – Cached – Similar pages<\/p><\/blockquote>\nMy post was an expression of my thanks for having finally achieved a lasting and happy relationship and it ranks with commercial messages affecting thousands of businesses. I’m glad that I didn’t write something frivolous. Google had my post listed first among the millions of web pages discussing or selling anniversary presents. <\/p>\n
My concept of this weblog as a source point of useful ideas and opinions seems to have been unduly conservative. I am beginning to see that it as a growing responsibility, not as a private discussion between close friends. In any event, it brought home to me that there is an audience for what I am writing and that I can expand these essays to address topics which are most useful to readers. <\/p>\n
It opens the door to a wealth of interesting essay topics and reinforces the potential value of writing books that are a compilation of the advice found to be most interesting to readers.<\/p>\n
I first got the idea of a weblog as the ultimate power tool<\/a>, when I saw the names of blogs and bloggers coming up at the top of Google search results<\/a>. <\/p>\n
That was almost a year ago when blogs were still operating below the radar and were rarely mentioned by major media outlets. Blog advertising was still a remote and unlikely possibility for all but Instapundit<\/a>. <\/p>\n
Since then, more of my blogging friends are melding blogging with business. With the visibility that search engines give blogs, it may work out that more of us will find a means of supporting ourselves from our writing and research efforts.<\/p>\n
What a cheerful thought!<\/p>\n
Update: Wayne Hurlbert, at Blog Business World<\/a> writes: check out this comprehensive and growing list of ways to create revenue streams from your blog<\/a>. The revenue ideas were formulated from this Spring’s BloggerCon<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I adopted the name Ripples for this weblog because thoughts spread through the internet like…ripples, and I wanted to share my thoughts with as many people as would find them helpful. <\/p>\n
Unlike email, which is often enforced communication, I had hoped this site would be a useful resource for those visitors who found their way here. That seems to be happening.<\/p>\n
I am finding that my ideas are finding a wider audience than I ever anticipated, and it is a sobering experience. In my first year of blogging, I have had about 40,000 visitors, most of them via search engines. <\/p>\n
Because of the way that Google works, I find that the most casual utterances by a blogger can be given equal weight against the carefully crafted efforts of vast commercial sites. <\/p>\n