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Giving Away Content

Monday, April 07, 2008 | 07:00 PM

I have been wrestling with an issue for some time now, and I am unsure of the best solution. Perhaps you fine folks can provide some insight.

About a year ago -- and, after considerable reluctance -- I allowed Seeking Alpha to reproduce my content on their site. In theory, it cost me nothing, and (in theory) would generate some traffic. Others apparently felt the same way, as SA went from aggregating a few blogs to dozens, if not 100s.

The only requirement I gave them was "no changing headlines, no deleting expletives, no pulling links, no editing at all;" It was all or nothing, fill or kill "

After that edict was violated for the 3rd time -- with an embarrassingly shitty headline of someone else's authorship -- I pulled my feed.

I am now trying to decide what to do with them going forward. Quite bluntly, I am unsure of the benefits derived. Perhaps some traffic, perhaps a link or two, but other than that . . .

The downside?

1. My friends in Marketing call the reposting a "Dilution of Brand."

2. Duplicative content weakens a site's GoogleScore (hence, there is a real cost to my magic GoogleRank when letting anyone else take content, authorized or not);

3. I do not have the time to patrol their comments for the usual trolls and asshats;

They have built up a nice business on the labor of other bloggers. According to 24/7 Wall Street, In February, Seeking Alpha had 797,000 unique visitors, and about three million total pages viewed (about double our stats).

I have a few options: I can kill the feed entirely, shift it to the Fusion IQ Blog, limit it to one post/day or X/week, or come up with some other arrangement.

But I am not sure what the ideal situation is.

~~~

What say ye?

UPDATE April 8, 2008 5:24 am

Wow, 120 responses, and nary a positive one in the lot. Pretty astonishing. Andy emails me that last month, Bill Rempel came to very similar conclusions . . .

For the sake of looking at both sides, can anyone suggest a reason(s) for staying with SA?

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Giving Away Content:

» Giving Away Content, part II from The Big Picture
On Monday evening, I asked readers about the concept of Giving Away Content. The response to the post was overwhelming. Over 150 comments, plus another 50 private emails from other bloggers. Several other sites picked up the discussion. The Deal picked... [Read More]

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» Seeking Alpha Crosses the Line from The Big Picture
Earlier this year, I looked at the issue of giving away content for free to sites such as Seeking Alpha. (Giving Away Content, Part I and Part II). The feedback from readers was invaluable. You made your ideas clear to me, and it helped me clarify my p... [Read More]

Tracked on Sep 8, 2008 7:30:51 PM