Orphan blog entry...

[locomotif]

Hello - Hope you are all well. I wanted to start this thread with the idea of an orphan blog entry. A blog entry that doesn't have a blog spot. It might be a ridiculous idea, but I found a lot of interest in it; and have been working on developing a site vixles dot com were these blog entries can reside.

When I started working on this project with my buddy, we were focusing on journalism and articles; However, during a year span the idea keeps morphing. On day, I was trying to give meaning to vixle, and thought of an orphan blog entry. This is for people who want to write a blog entry without the hassle of starting an actual blog.

I wanted to expand on this idea on this thread, and see if any of you have any suggestions, or criticisms on the site or just the concept.

Thanks for taking the time to read this thread.

[ChickenFreak]

It would be a more useful idea if blogs were harder to start, but with free sites like Blogspot, it's possible to have a blog in about five minutes plus the time that it takes to come up with a blog name that wasn't already used.

So I think that you'd need to have something else to offer. One valuable thing is an audience - if your blog had reliable, interesting content, and built up a readership over time, then it could be appealing to people who want to write just one thing, or want to guest blog to increase their exposure.

The problem is that the content would have to be really good, which would mean that you'd need to exercise some strong editorial control, which would make this a fair bit of work. Plus, you'd have a problem getting up to speed - how to get really good interesting writers to write posts for you _before_ you have that audience?

[locomotif]

Thanks for the reply. I spoke to a good friend of mine who writes for wire mag. and he brought up similar points. I agree with everything you have said, and I have encountered these points of view; but I feel that there must be another angle.

I am trying to look at it through the perspective of the tool, rather than the content. Even though, the content is the most important aspect. I agree starting a blog is pretty easy, aside from choosing a name, letting people know about it, and feeling obliged to keep up with steady entries. Although, peeps in this forum enjoy the work in keeping an active blog.

I guess I would like to address the individuals who just want to contribute, but not deal with the constant demand of having a blog. I am sure there are people out there that have interesting content for the cloud but don't want to deal with building a blog. I see why you would prefer to have less bloggers and more quality. Creating a tool, were people can just regurgitate content is not good, and unfortunately that is a byproduct of creating a free tool. There is still the possibility of finding a gem out there.

Since there will be lack of "strong editorial control ( no resources $$)," we are trying to create a hierarchy similar to a voting system (credibility points, etc...) to help persist and give presidency to good content . Another thing which I feel this tool offers is the ability to locate your blog entry on a google map. The latter is a nice perspective on how you can find blog entries.

I like the statement about "guest blog" to encourage their blogs. that is a great concept for using this tool. If you have suggestions for controls or options you think would be beneficial for a tool like this. I would really appreciate it. We want to avoid editing the content since we want users to feel free to post what they want.

I appreciate your input. Thanks!

[CalissaLeigh]

It sounds like building a website that's akin to an article bank.

How would the website make money? Similar to Ezine Articles? Google Advertisements all over the place? There are plenty of those types of websites.

So basically it's a website where people would post their content for free... just for the sake of having their content somewhere?

It's been done. Maybe you call it something different, but there's websites out there for this. It isn't a new concept, just a new name. If you want to pursue it, just build a fancy website that allows for access for one post and with your voting system if you wish. Without an editorial system, however, you will get crap content and you will get people abusing the voting system so that their content is voted higher. You must have an editorial system anyway, as people steal content and someone will have to deal with that issue when it shows up. (And giving people free access to post, you will eventually have to deal with it.)

You're not looking for a new blog concept. You'd just looking for a marketing angle. Be honest with what it sounds like it is. What's the benefit for the person writing the blog post?

[CalissaLeigh]

Wait, you'd just building a tool? After re-reading it, are you building a tool/website thing people can buy and use and put on their own website or are you just building it for your own website?

Again, people will want to know the benefit of why they should bother posting an article for free on an unknown website or blog.

[locomotif]

Hi CalissaLeigh - Well noted.. It is similar to an article bank, and possibly in the future we would consider ad revenue. You are right to my attempts to focus its purpose as a marketing angle.

Most article banks I've seen are and eye sore. I suppose we are trying to find a new way to present this information. There are no significant benefits for someone to contribute a blog entry, article, etc.., except that you can have a geolocation to your entry, and share it through a "Share this" link; giving the user certain liberty to just write an entry when they feel like it, and sharing it with their friends on FB or Tweeter or where ever. With our focus on it being local, you can see what is being written about around you, within the view of the map; which you can set to what ever view you want as your default map view.

It is an unknown website, and I do not claim it to be a blog. However, I did at one moment think of its' possible use as a place were one can enter a single blog entry, share it, and be done with it. That could be one aspect of the site.

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate the tough love.

[cathy]

Locomotif, I am unable to understand that why people should show interest to some unknown website while there are already lot of things to do.

[sleepbarn]

The idea of orphan blogging is great i would also like to start hard so i can thoroughly work my way inn in a hard way. Thanks for opening this topic i am interested on this orphan blogging.