Exit the time thief

I came to the realization that I have fallen into the trap.

No, not the one where you have to chew your own arm off. I’m talking about the time thief trap.

You know them. Forums and blogs. Specifically other peoples forums and blogs.

Yes, it’s good to read around and participate. Yes, it’s good to share your experiences and help where you can. Yes it’s satisfying to get feedback that your assistance worked and that the recipient is grateful.

A big however. However, if you ain’t making any money from all this, it’s time stolen from your marketing efforts.

Ya, you could be generating goodwill and perhaps get some linklove. It’s far more likely that you are helping to generate content for someone else’s profit.

User generated content is extremely useful for some webmasters. In the case of large forums, it’s all the content there is.

Whether they intend to market their site at a later date, or to use your original content to gather more links to their site, it is still very much their site.

This is not to say that I won’t continue to read around, just that I need to fix my attention on my own interests.

Besides all that, some of the site owners don’t appreciate my sense of humor. LOL Tough shit.

Back to work.

~dink