Scalability and using everyone else’s content

Wouldn’t it be great if you could generate revenue without the bother of producing your own content? If there was some way of collecting information from around the internet and wrapping it in your own ads and serving it from your own space online? From solo operators building sites for pure SEO, to article aggregation and snippets of content surfaced through search, this particular business model is endemic on the web. With the publication of PR, offline media is also tainted by this practice.

‘Tainted’ maybe a little too pejorative a word. Think of it more as the practice of collating content and attempting to creating value through this process. What matters is that this method for creating content, generating traffic and creating revenue is scalable. As so much of it can be driven by software, it is the tool of choice for those without the resources to produce hundreds of pages of content a week. Once you multiple this over a few dozen domains, or in the case of some aggregators, establish a massive SEO blackhole of a site, the benefits of a process that requires minimal human oversight is obvious.

Using the content of others to generate revenue without directly compensating the content creators is not going to go away. As long as this practice helps generate traffic and create more advertising inventory, and as long as the content is there and easily copied, this is here to stay.

A rut is where you go to die

The internet is great, it makes it so easy to filter your experience, so you only ever see the things you know you already like. You choose who you interact with, and the media you consume, and all you ever have to see is what you already know you like. Every so often something different will filter in, but it won’t usually vary much from what you already see.

This can be a problem. ! find it far too easy to fall into a rut. Sometimes, all you see is the same stuff, recommended or published by the same people, and you get bored. As well as impacting on happiness, this slowly crushes creativity. Sometimes, you need to seek out something different.

Fortunatly, as well as making it easy to filter your experience, the internet also can offer a vast range of content. It is easy to find something you would never have sought out yourself.

• Content aggregators from outside of your imediate interests
• Open, general communities
• Follow related content or explore links on sites like Vimeo.com
• Do something, go somewhere or meet someone different offline.

In any job that requires the least bit of creativity, seeking out and engaging with new ideas. Even if this isn’t a concern, just for your own sanity, get out of your comfort zone.