This series of posts on Cash Quests count down the top 5 essential sites that new bloggers should visit in order to maximize their chances for making money online. Each site in the top 5 provides valuable lessons and techniques that need to be studied and considered in-depth in order to increase your earning potential.

#1 The Best Page in the Universe

Content is Queen.The Best Page in the Universe is run by Maddox and was started in 1997, long before popular blogging entered the internet. It was originally started as a text document listing 50 things that annoyed him which was circulated through usenet and eventually posted as the first entry on the site. The site receives over 2 million visits per month and the author has recently released a book that is loosely based on the site. Maddox does not promote the site himself and all the site’s traffic and popularity has been achieved through word of mouth.

Why new bloggers should visit The Best Page in the Universe:

Despite it’s controversial content, The Best Page in the Universe is an essential site for new bloggers as it demonstrates exactly how important content is to making a successful site. The site doesn’t have a fancy Wordpress theme and doesn’t have any shaded web 2.0 graphics - it’s just plain, good content.From the site:
“I’m keeping my web site shitty as a protest against all the slick-looking, contentless web sites out there. Nobody cares about your stupid rotating icons and fading links. Mine isn’t the only site on the internet that uses a simple layout, perhaps you’ve heard of this one?.Some webmasters have spent years tweaking their layout and designing their site, and very few get any traffic. This site, as shitty as it looks, gets over 1 million visits per month. I use large fonts also as a protest against all the stylish garbage you see out there. When I go to a web site, I WANT TO READ THE CONTENT”

For a new blogger, this is a key lesson to learn. I have often been asked by new bloggers for some advice on how their site looks. Usually, these people are interested in changing their template, designing a fancy banner or adding new widgets. Yet, lots of these new sites are severely lacking in content. My advice to them is quite simple - forget about how your site looks and start concentrating on what is written on your site! It doesn’t matter how beautiful your site is, if the content is rubbish, nobody is going to read it!

A new blogger should not be concerned about whether they should increase their sidebar by 10px or whether a three-column template is better than a two-column template. A new blogger should only be concerned with writing quality content. A desire to write is what should inspire the blogger to start the site, not the desire to make a nice looking site. Seth Godin’s popular blog is another example of quality content being prioritized over design.

A site’s design is not irrelevant - design can be an important factor to a site’s success. However, concentrating on design issues is a task best suited until after the blog is established.

What makes The Best Page in the Universe’s content so special? To begin with, it’s completely original. There are no RSS feeds, free articles or bits copied from other sites. On top of that, a personal opinion is presented (which is what blogging is all about) and that opinion is original and different to the majority of opinions found on the internet.

Ultimately, what makes the content so special is how often the site is updated. There have been four posts in the past year!! Some bloggers write four posts in a day, but Maddox only updates the site if he feels he needs to and has something to write about. To illustrate, the Wordpress timestamp facility allows bloggers to write posts in advance and have them automatically published at a set time in the future. Many bloggers use this to have three or four posts ready to go in case they suddenly can’t think of anything to blog about. The lesson from Maddox is - if you can’t think of anything to write about, don’t write!! A sense of obligation to ‘update’ or ‘write something’ is a large contributing factor to why there is so much rubbish in the blogosphere today.

Focusing primarily on a site’s content will automatically make it better than 90% of the blog’s on the internet. Your site doesn’t have to look plain and simple to succeed, but it can look plain and simple to succeed.

Why The Best Page in the Universe is number 1:

Recently, I’ve found myself skipping over a lot of the posts on A-list blogs as the posts contain information that I’ve already read elsewhere. It seems that most bloggers these days just blog about what someone else has blogged the day before. If Problogger does a post about the new Alexa t-shirts, I can name numerous blogs that will write about the Alexa t-shirts the next day. Unique content and original content are entirely different. The Best Page in the Universe gets the number one spot for doing what nobody else is doing, being the first to do it and not caring if anybody likes it or not - changing your blog to suit what your readers want is the first step to mediocrity.

Lessons to learn from The Best Page in the Universe:

• It’s all about the content. Forget about trying to move your sidebar 20px to the right. Spend the time writing something interesting and your blog will thank you for it.

• Update when you have something to write. There’s no obligation to post - nobody will come knocking on your door if you don’t update everyday.

• Be orginal. Just because something brings another blogger success doesn’t mean you should to it. Successful blogs are often successful because they were simply the first to do it. If you’re always copying others, you’ll never be an originator.

In conclusion:

Content is the lifeblood of a blog. There are other important issues that contribute to a site’s success, but these should never be prioritized above content.Many bloggers believe that quality, unique content is simply writing about a topic but doing so in their own words. That’s reporting. Blogging should bring your own opinion and thoughts to the topic.

And if you can do it with a little originality - you’ll create your own niche in the blogosphere!

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