The blogosphere mafia

In the beginning, we thought the blogosphere was a democratic place. It was easy: you could start a blog for free, and ideally, if you had something worthwhile to say, you could compete with the best.

There are no machine gun-men in blogland, there are no rules. Anyone can have a blog. Heck, I can't even hook up a VCR and I wrote a blog about my dog (although I don't think many people read it).

Part of the blogosphere mafia: lolcats, Perez Hilton and Peter Rojas.
image altered by Rachel Bock

To make a living out of blogging is easier said than done, however. The rule of the haves and have-nots seems to have prevailed once more, and a select few blogs keep floating to the top.

How do they do it? What distinguishes the Engadget millionaires and the Perez Hiltons from the millions of other random bloggers out there?

Well, if the blogosphere were a meritocracy, then the blogs that have something original to say (whether it be well-researched, insightful, "snarky" or entertaining) would ideally have the most potential to succeed.

But unfortunately, the blogosphere has become a lot like a high school. If you're in with the "in" crowd, you have much more potential to become popular. It seems to be an industry of you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours: if you support other blogs, then you can eventually expect the same in return.

DoshDosh, a popular internet marketing blog, recommends to "influence the influencers", which means, in addition to submitting your site to StumbleUpon and Reddit, you should email other big bloggers and establish "friendships" in order to win their respect and support. It's kind of like an aspiring baker who might make a visit to the Godfather to get a good loan.

Maybe all this back scratching seems a bit artificial, but it makes perfect sense. How could any one person possibly have time to wade through millions of blogs each day and chose a favorite? It's much easier to rely on what's popular already, and what's popular isn't always bad. Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post and Boing Boing, for example, are among the most popular blogs out there, and each of them has dynamic content that many people find useful every day.

So, how can we get on the A list? Maybe we need to start with the fundamentals: having something worthwhile to say and an audience willing to listen. We should do what any aspiring high-school freshman would do to get popularity. And in the blogosphere, that means putting yourself out there, posting often, commenting on other blogs, creating dialogs, encouraging group discussions and linking to other blogs.

It all seems a little mafia-esque. But hey, humans are social creatures, so why should blogging be any different?