Dreaming of the A-List

I have four blogs and a semi-regular audience of approximately three people. In the four years I've maintained the oldest of these blogs of wonder and insight, it has received 18+ comments. The odds don't look good for me. So what's the difference between my blogs and those by the likes of Arianna Huffington? Why has she made it to the A-list when I'm still stuck out here in the blogging wasteland?

The answer is painfully simple, really: She's made her site indispensable to a significant part of the population. It updates multiple times a day (if not multiple times an hour). It has multimedia content, including lots of links to other Web sites that would appeal to Ms. Huffington's fan base. She's made herself into a household byword.

The Huffington Post touts itself as "The Internet Newspaper." And it doesn't just contain political news and it isn't just written by Arianna Huffington. Oh, no. You can also get news about business, entertainment and health and wellness written by a sizable staff.

So it's news -- big deal. There are dozens of news sites. What's so special about Huff Post? It's actually interesting, for one thing. The bloggers aren't compelled to cover their snarkicism like the regular media faces are. It's also geared to a particular audience: the folks left of center. It fills a niche in a big way. The same is true for celeb gossip blogger Perez Hilton. The world (or select portions thereof) wants to know about celebrities, and it's painfully easy to make fun of a bunch of people who take themselves too seriously. Perez blogs with a distinctive voice and has a flair for making outrageous statements.

Maybe I'm not quite cut out to be the next Arianna Huffington (certainly not the next Perez). But if I took a cue from them and started making my presence felt in the blogosphere, then maybe I could at least move up from the Z-list to the K-list or something. Next item on the agenda: Make Web-self indispensable to vast numbers of people.