All the responses here have been very thought provoking; it seems to me that in Darren’s case, it was probably the best idea to drop them.

For myself, however, I am only starting out in the blogging business, about 6 months in. I have about 100 subscribers to my blog, yet I feel that I could get more were my profile higher. My content is good, it is just buried by my lack of visibility.

I think that WebProNews could be a valuable resource given the right context; for newer bloggers starting out, it could still provide enough exposure to be worth it. I am definately going to give it a try, and see how it goes.

Brian

You knew that anyway right!

In the long run, being known as an interesting writer is more important than ‘problogger.net’ which in the long run may be disposable. While if a new technological trend takes over in ten years time, Darren R, the internet trends writer, can morph into talking about whatever that new thing is, taking with him all his hard-earned credibility among his readers.

In a sense “content wants to be free”, while on the other hand people want to feel that they have an affiliation (however nebulous) with real people rather than feeling that they are living in anonymous world. With enough bloggers and other web writers, all content is somewhat disposable and replaceable.

So the freeness of cultural content is mitigated by personality, the ‘human touch’, and herein lies the business opportunity. I would say let your content be syndicated by everyone, all the readers that your content picks up on the way will come home to roost eventually.

‘Groklaw’, one of favourite blogs (turned major resource) has an open approach to syndication (a Creative Commons License) yet PJ has carved out a niche as ‘the’ top writer on the legal issues around free/open source software, she is now a well known figure in the free software/ open-source world and Groklaw has a huge amount of incoming traffic. For many people (albeit geeky people) it is their first stop in the morning after Slashdot.

When SCO vs IBM has long been forgotton, PJ can turn her attention to some other techno-legal issue and morph into the expert on that.

So in conclusion, the more syndication the better. Mandatory linking to the original article is essential however and should always be an explicit requirement.

In this case, webpronews is a very ugly website (in terms of visual aesthetics), it makes me shudder. The typical reprinting of Darren’s article takes up less than one fifth of the screen real-estate.

Does this undermine my point? By no means, the problem here is too little syndication rather than too much. Webpronews can make the page look so hideous because it is in control of a scarce resource.

If there were, on average, say 1000 links to 100 copies of an article, all of which linked back to the one source article; that source article would always have higher pagerank than any of the copies. After all the 100 copies are not required to link to the source article, not to the most prominent copy.

To follow this example, at some point most of Darren’s loyal readers at webproworld (or any other copy) will follow the links back and find a nice white website with posts and comments that they have missed elsewhere. Mission accomplished.

Then there is the issue of syndication; you lose all control of your product when they syndicate it. if you pull your work from WPN, will they successfully pull it from their syndicates? Will they or the syndicates actually do it?

Pull your articles. Channel Frau Farbissina: “Pull zem ALL!”

We can’t answer this question because we don’t know where you plan to take problogger.

Clearly two important variables are affected by this decision –
1. Exposure
2. Pageviews

Potentially you might be getting less pageviews to your content because of search results pointing at the other site. Less pageviews for you means less ad revenue.

However the added exposure from other sites is fantastic for your brand, your credibility, your web celebrity – all great things – things that I think in the longer term will bring in more pageviews (and groupies).

Don’t pull the content, revel in the exposure and plan ways to leverage it. Let me tell you – it’s a lot harder to get that kind of exposure than it is to not get it.

They don’t even feature your profile on this page: http://www.webpronews.com/authors/darrenrowse.html that’s just screwed up!!

On the other hand if you feel that you are getting benefit from it then continue the way you are. I think you know that already though so I offer a bit of life advice.

If your stomach tells you that something is amiss then think about what it’s telling you and get off that plane. If, on the other hand, its due to them being talked about badly then remember that its always better to be talked about than not talked about. My blog is non-commercial though and if anyone wants to use my content I say enjoy, enjoy. I’d follow my gut instincts really. Maybe its your underlying philosophy that’s at issue so be true to your own path and not theirs.

I’d consider one of two options.

1) Continue to provide WPN with content at a less frequent basis and then give eitehr them a reprint of content that’s been out on your site for a bit or something you write solely for them.

2) Discontinue the relationship and save your best work for your own site. End the relationship gracefully and see what, if any traffic impact you have. If it your traffic slows down or slows noticibly, then you could always return to providing them with content.

#24 – very, very good point. I do that quite often, not clicking on a link yet writing it down for later use … who knows how many do that at WPN.

#28 – This hits it on the head: it’s all up to you and what your plans are with ProBlogger – if it’s purely to make money from AdSense then you probably will do better ditching WPN and gettgin as many direct links to your posts as you can … whereas, if your eventual goal is to get a book publishing deal, the more publicty the better … major publishers love a potential author who is right on their game with publicity and comes with a ready-made buying audience.

For example:

If you are thinking of flipping the business,
then plastering your brand everywhere is a good plan.

If you are writing a book that will use that brand,
then again, more publicity the better.

However,
if content is to be your sole source of revenue,
then giving it away for free might not be the best return.
You’re basically running a sampling program.
No one samples forever.
No one gives away large samples (25% of all production).
No one gives away their best product for free
and then expects the customer to hustle or “pay” for the inferior stuff.

Just some thoughts from another marketer…

And don’t believe anyone who wants to tell you that all publicity is good publicity because it isn’t. Those people are just living in la la land.

Steve (#19) – I agree with you on some levels. They say any publicity is good publicity don’t they? On the other hand – if the publicity comes from another site using your best material – the material you have the potential to earn some of you income from – you have to wonder what is benefiting most from the relationship?

Its an interesting dilemma – I can see benefits either way.

To those who have suggested I only offer them excerpts – I doubt that will work, the agreement (which I can end at any point) is for full posts in return for links in a signature file. WPN have responded to my request to a put a link back to the individual post’s comments but I doubt they’d move to an excerpt system – it wouldn’t be in their best interests to do so.

Still interested in others opinions – I’m out all day today but will attempt to make a decision on this tonight.

My take is that you may not realize just how much traffic they give you. I, for one, often will hand-type or highlight/copy/paste a link off of a site and use it later. Sometimes I will email myself the link. Or sometimes I will paste it into another tab. Now, when I do any of these things, I only copy/paste or type the domain name. That way I see the blog and not just one post on the blog. Wonder if others do that?

So, though I didn’t come there, many may have that you don’t know about. Ever thought of doing a ‘where’d you find me’ post or survey?

Its about maximising the revenues from Google Adsense, banner ads etc.

People are finding Darrens articles on WPN first as they rank better in the search engines, and clicking on WPN’s ads and making WPN money. If WPN did not have these articles Darren would expect to get most of that revenue as people would be finding Darren’s articles first.

Surely you can see that this is a cost to Darren, because people are finding Darren’s articles on WPN’s site before finding his articles on his own blogs.

In this sort of situation you have to decide whether the revenue you lose makes up for the ‘intangible’ benefits of appearing on WPN.

I don’t think it does !