When was the last time you had a total mental breakthrough?
Do you remember the last time you got information so valuable to you that it changed your life? Was it from a book? Did a mentor teach it to you? Or did it come from a blog or a newspaper?
Call me presumptuous, but I’m going to guess it wasn’t a blog.
Blogs work better with an editorial calendar– ie, you publish New Year’s posts, Valentine’s Day posts, etc., because that’s when people want to hear them… and makes a blog more widely read. Likewise newspapers– they won’t write bad stuff about real estate during a boom– it doesn’t sell papers and doesn’t help subscriptions. Because going with the flow leads to subscribers and dollars, it’s the only feasible thing for a periodical (magazine, newspaper, or blog) to do if it wants to stay competitive.
Anything that has a moneymaking/subscription agenda cannot be trusted. Because the lowest common denominator is popular and profitable, in a market with unlimited competitors, it’s a race to the bottom that will stupefy the audience in the long term.
Of course, some blogs can be trusted– but they aren’t those that will give you top 10 lists or have smashing headlines. Nor are they the ones that make Delicious Popular, so finding them is tough. I’d even argue that most people are duped into reading lots of terrible ones through the impact of things like social proof, etc., largely wasting their time, but considering them invaluable because they want to stay “up to date.”
Indispensable is a myth. You have to cull the herd.
Working against the grain is essential to breakthroughs, critical to profitability (financial or otherwise). You will not get this while reading what everyone else is. Secrets are profitable because nobody knows them, and once things are published, they’re no longer secrets and, as such, no longer valuable.
What are your favourite blogs? What can you absolutely not go without?
My list right now is very short… and secret. 😉 Is yours?
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