This is one in a series of posts for mastery of del.icio.us and assumes you have a working knowledge of the system. For a complete listing of all you can do with del.icio.us, read through the help documentation.

5. Use it.

When I was working these, I knew I'd have to cover one of the inevitable conclusions for anything: most people stop using it. Everything in life has its ebbs and flows, and webapps are no different. This is purely speculative, but I've seen a great many blogs, and they have a grand total of one post; people start something and never continue.

It's not from lack of interest, or motivation, it's because - oh, wait, it is because of lack of interest or motivation. The reason there are few big sites is a combination of a lot of factors, including talent, audience, niche, and advertising. But to produce great content takes effort, and most people simply don't put in the effort.

When I rebuilt MacStansbury.com, and put in the With a linkness section, I had no idea anybody would ever read it. It was simply a place for me to practice my art of the link. As I started reading other websites on how to create blogs, and how to be a great writer, and how to get the mad blog hits, I stumbled upon del.icio.us, not really thinking about how it would work.

I started using del.icio.us soon after they started offering linkrolls, and so it was easy for me to create a page dedicated to the latest links. As I grew in familiarity with the system, I started posting more and more frequently. But what didn't change was how my effort on linking things was being noticed by other people.

What I found amazing is, while checking my PageRank (the way Google estimates the importance of a page), I was disappointed to learn MacStansbury.com had only a PageRank of 3. I have toolbar that lets me see, and I though nothing about it, until I hit the Linkness page...which has a PageRank of 5. Because of where people link, and how people view this site, and where the site links out, the Linkness page is the most important page on this site. That's uncommon, but I believe it, mainly since most people still go to web pages to get information, not RSS feeds, and because that page is a more concise layout of the links.

The important thing is: I'm linking stuff. I'm producing content. I'm doing the things that make people take notice. And the begging, the begging doesn't hurt.

But...that's just me. I'm merely a case study for how you can use those del.icio.us links to create content on your site, focus your talents, and increase your reach. I've also shown you the importance of networking and licensing. Plus, I hope, I'll pick up some readers for my effort. I don't do it for the money or the notoriety, I do it for the PageRank.

Read all the posts in the 5 ways to more deliciousness
1. Add a linklist to your blog!
2. Add the feed to your feedreader!
3. Add me to your network!
4. Add a license to your links!
5. Use it.

status: published
lastmod: '2006-10-01T01:20:07.000Z'
author: John Stansbury
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