I've gotten much pleasure writing and meeting so many interesting people. I can't imagine myself not weblogging. It's completely in my DNA.

Back when Clay Shirky and Den Beste were talking about power laws and blogging, it was assumed that all the low hanging fruit was gone.

Then along came Wizbang, Malkin, and a guy named Markos.

Today - small communities that have nothing to do with politics (moms, travel, homes, real estate recruiting, knitting (yes, knitting), can build communities of interest that drive thousands adn tens of thousands of daily visitors). Just today, I spoke to a woman who has one year of blog experience who is now at 300,000 page views a month, a PR6, and over 6,000 daily visits.

She's on track to do over 2,000,000 uniques in 2007 - and no one in the political blogosphere has ever heard of her. Is it harder to break in? Sure - but that doesn't mean much.

Clinton was a third rate candidate until he won the primary and then the general election. Imagine a blogger covering a 1992 Clinton-like candidate and using that success to launch a site.

How is it possible? Simple. Preferential attachment, which is the theory for why the rich get richer in link count and traffic, is often confused as an absolute. Rarely is the fitness of the site taken into account, or if it is, fitness is defined in narrow enough terms that newcomers can't be predicted to join the elite.

It's a huge mistake - there are many ways to generate traffic that are not used by some old-school bloggers. While early adoption is a significant advantage, it in no way constitutes a barrier of entrenched interests.

......

Post on whatever you want to post on when you want to post on it. Either be satisfied with what you get or be willing to do what it takes to get what you'll be satisfied with. I think the former is the better path which probably shows why my numbers are about the same as they were a year ago.

1) Start in 2003 and/or have name recognition to start out with.

2) Be outrageous/throw red meat.