What Is The Value Of A Blog Post?

What's the true value of a blog post? The difficulty in ascertaining value is that, unlike say a mobile phone, a pair of trousers or a fridge magnet, the rights of ownership are blurrier, and so are the beneficiaries.

If I sell you a mobile phone, a pair of trousers or a fridge magnet, then the value of these goods is confined to you as the owner. You can give someone else the benefit of them only by giving them up yourself.

Blogs are not like this because blogs contain information and ideas. If I share a blog post you can retain the information but share it with as many people as you like without losing the benefits you distil from it. This means that good blogs that contain lots of benefits for their readers are very likely given away below their true value. 

They are, in a sense, benevolent acts where the benevolence confers upon the author the value of interaction. This also has to be played out, though, against the numerous blogs, articles, newsfeeds, videos and memes competing for your attention and time when you're online. 

While the intrinsic value of the content of good blogs may be high, the online world means that there are many other interesting things out there vying for your attention, which means there are increased ways that other people can enrich your life, and increasing ways you have to out-enrich them to add value to your readers' lives, and increase your readership.