Reality Me has been honored by being listed in the Life category of Alltop.com! Cathy was made it into Alltop just two days ago and I slipped in on her coattails.
… I am tickled to announce that Cathy has been recognized by Guy Kawasaki and has joined the likes of Jack Lail in Alltop! Cathy is in the Alltop Life category along with some familiar blogs such as xkcd.com, indexed and Sarcomical. Congratulations to Cathy!… [Source, Reality Me]
I offer congratulations to you both. But coming from the most over-looked and ignored blogger in the greater Knoxville area, that might not mean very much.
What are you talking about? Stacey Campfield reads you with a passion!
This is supposed to gain you…what? Exposure? Increased visits? I’m not sure I see what the aim of this is. I mean, yeah, I want more people to read my site (and it’s a vicious cycle – I don’t post much because not many people read. If more people read, I’d post more but more won’t read till I post more, etc etc etc) but is being listed on this site supposed to increase your traffic?
And the category – are you now required to post about nothing but LIFE topics? Seems like blogging all day about an old board game would get tedious…
I suspect that people will come and go from Alltop. As posting trends take you out of a category, they’ll drop it. I bet they have a click thru monitoring in place to see which blogs are being read and if you are not getting readership you’ll be dropped.
As for the need to post, I instantly noticed that some people on Alltop post rather irregularly. I won’t let something like being included in an aggregator change my subject matter (esoteric and all over the board), my style, or my frequency. If I started to get concerned that way, I might get stressed and validate the NYT’s link bait.
Alltop was inspired by the geek crack site Popurls which I read almost daily. It can suck away productivity if you are not careful. Reading Popurls takes a lot of self-discipline!
What is to be gained? Right now Guy Kawaski and his Alltop team stand to gain the most. By adding blogs to their aggregator, they are getting content. By encouraging the banners and links they are building a brand. To work like Popurls, they cannot be an endless list of blogs so, like I mentioned above, I anticipate that as they grow in popularity they will become more critical in their selection process and a blog like Reality Me may fall off the radar. Oh, and what do I gain? A little readership. A slight false sense of celebrity. But mostly that good feeling which comes with having a pat on the back and someone saying, “Good work!”
The downside of course is that if it were to produce higher traffic levels, that I could have to buy more expensive hosting. In the blogging world, obscurity is affordable and popularity, even brief, could break the bank.
I’ve never been able to understand the need to purchase hosting. I post on the free Blogger and have never once had a problem. Ever. In five years, the most they’ve been down was maybe a day when I was trying to blog something….
I purchase hosting for my consulting. I have to have a level of control that I cannot get through free hosting. Blast. This is a soapbox one for me but I’ll have to answer it later. Duties call.
Well, yeah, for your work.