I’ve had this idea for a long time about how cool it would be to open up a blog to the general public with only minimal moderation to keep out spam, but I could never put all the pieces together until the wonderful folks at WordPress created a twitter-like theme called Prologue.
It was at that point that I knew I had to move 4realz.net to a self-hosted environment so I could realize this long-held dream and open up the site to the rest of you. Well, after messing with the code for a while to get the site to operate just how I wanted, I’m ready to release what I’m calling the 4realz Hotlist.
4realz Hotlist Screenshot
So, here’s the idea… Once you register with the Hotlist you’ll be able to submit articles to be published on the site. And because I’m going to be very liberal in what I let get published on the Hotlist, it just became quite trivial to give yourself a link from the 4realz.net domain.
Here’s one way to think about the 4realz Hotlist. After you write a blog post that you know is great, think to yourself: why did I write this post? If you can sum it up in one sentence, then publish that one sentence as your 4realz mini-post along with a nice link back to your site.
With that said, don’t limit your activity to simply promoting your own stuff. You can also use the Hotlist to promote just about anything interesting you find on the web. And if you check out how I’ve been using the tool over the past few weeks, you’ll see that I’ve been embeding YouTube videos, photos, and generally linking out to anything that catches my eye.
But here’s the catch, I really want to encourage clever, interesting and/or insightful mini-posts. So to put the incentives in the right places, I’m going to publish the highlights each week here on 4realz.net (Carnival of Real Estate style) AND include the highlights in my weekly emails that go out to many of the most influential people in online real estate. This means that a clever one-liner is likely to get you some great traffic, some nice inbound links, and in front of some interesting people.
But enough about the tool… You really have to try it out to get a feel for how cool it is to publish a blog post from the homepage a blog, so get over to the Hotlist, register for an account and start posting!
I think this is awesome!!! You never cease to amaze me with your forward thinking innovations. Nice work Dustin!
interesting, but i’ll have to try it for a better understanding.
Douglas and Andrew: Please do play around with the site. It’s there to be used! 😉
looks good man. I may plug this into my feed reader and then trim down my RSS subscriptions a bit.
Hey Dustin. As we discussed the other day, this should be a great idea for you, and I hope that it is a big success! Good luck.
Great concept, yet another thing to keep up with…. argh!
Joshua Dorkin: I just submitted my first article (this one!) to your new social bookmarketing service… That was very cool and easy. Great job putting that together.
As I mentioned the other day, the fact that you’re starting with a healthy reader base and great editorial control bodes really well for your service! 🙂
I saw the submission, Dustin. Nothing like a little self-promotion to get things going, right! I’m glad you found the service to be easy to use . . . spread the word!
Joshua: Just realized I didn’t include the link to the service… For others curious what Joshua and I are talking about, check out: http://www.biggerpockets.com/links/
Thanks for the plug, Dustin! Much appreciated. Hopefully we’ll see you and the rest of the gang with some great links and posts to share.
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Hotlist is a Hit!
I posted my first post, title only, from a new blog that I launched this week and had a great response.
Blatant self-promotion can be embraced if that is what the readers expect.
Great job, I look forward to your success and I’ll do what I can to help.
Glad you like it Mark! 😉 As long as folks keep it interesting (and I’ll do my best to ensure that!), I think it will be a hit as well!
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It is quite good to see that you are really trying to provide a place to those people who want to join any blog or site to express their view but failed to get ideas published. Keep it up. All the best…