I’m from Bergen, Norway, where I work as a software developer for a smallish company that does both consulting and its own projects.
Even though I’ve had an interest in startups and entrepreneurship for several years, I’m only now finally getting around to starting a “serious” side-project which I hope to make money off.
The idea is to let bloggers add a poll widget to their blog where readers can vote on what the author should write about next. If readers vote, they are asked to leave their email address so that they can be notified when the blog post they voted on is published.
The prototype got done today, so you can see it in action on my blog: http://saltvedt.net/2013/08/20/check-syntax-ansible-playbooks/
Beside the ‘obvious’ usefulness of reader engagement and getting to know what content your readers want, I hope that this will increase reader retention when blog posts receive massive attention from site like Hacker News, reddit or any other social media site. (The typical thing that happens when you get on the front page of one of these sites is that you receive a huge spike traffic of people who never return to your site again.)
My problem is that I have no idea if people will vote or not (and even less of an idea if people will subscribe). The plan right now is to get on the front page of Hacker News or one of the more popular subreddits on reddit to validate the concept. (Easier said than done…)
I’d love to hear from anybody who has a blog with actual readers (as opposed to mine, but I hope to change that); is this something you could imagine putting up on your own blog?
