Last fall, I bought myself a Samsung Chromebook for my birthday. Coincidentally, I also got one of the first units because I ordered it directly from Google when they initially released it and they shipped them from California so I got mine quickly. When I received it, I pulled it out and wanted to type something out on it (because I use my computers primarily for writing, that part is pretty important to me). I busted out a long review and posted it on Amazon as one of the first reviews and that was it.
Or so I thought.
The Chromebook has been one of the top selling laptops on Amazon for nearly six months (#1 as of this writing). My review has been reviewed as helpful by 4,842 of 5,048 raters (just shy of a 96%) and has been read by many more thousands of people. It has over 300 comments on it. I get web traffic and e-mails about the Chromebook several times a week.
I submit to you, quite humbly, that it is probably my most viewed writing on the web. It doesn’t exist on my site and I don’t get anything from it (other than the random visitor or e-mail).
I will tell you, I thought of writing the review here but it didn’t make sense. For one, it doesn’t really fit in with what I typically write about. So I was fine posting it to Amazon because I knew it would get read heavily by those in the midst of a buying decision. I was writing impartially, so I was trying to cover the device — warts and all — even though I was generally a fan of it from first boot.
As the comments started rolling in, I have to admit I was a bit disappointed that my own site wasn’t receiving much of any benefit. Even for those who found me, most wouldn’t be interested in being long term subscribers. The more I thought about it though, the more I was pleased. I don’t make a lot of money on this site but I really don’t believe most blogs generate significant income from advertisements (or any other creative, content-oriented approaches). Instead, I think most people who blog earn opportunities and an audience that would be tough to land otherwise. They may get an opportunity to write but more frequently, they get other opportunities to provide value.
I think if I was so focused on just building stuff on my own blog, I wouldn’t be able to do fun things like write a huge review on Amazon.com and wonder if there is anything to it. I would’ve wrote it here and it would’ve received three comments. I wouldn’t have wrote my article about purple squirrels for the Harvard Business Review blog.
With so many off blog alternatives for writing, it is easy to see why a lot of people abandon the blog concept altogether. One thing I am convinced of is that if you are serious about content creation, you need a hub. This is my hub. I may give out Twitter or LinkedIn sites on my bio as well but all roads eventually point back here. I may have spokes of content out there but if someone wants to get back to me, there is only one place that happens.
It’s not a new or unique idea but it is one that I have come to fully embrace. While I may not write as often as I’d like to here, I know I will always have something to write about and that keeping a strong hub is important. And while I’d like to see this site continue to grow, I know the bigger opportunities will come from outside of me writing a blog post here. That’s why posting externally and trying new things is still important.
Lance Haun - Writer and Consultant on Work Tech 