With the popularity of sites such as Squidoo, Twitter, Facebook and so forth, not to mention my own enthusiasm for article marketing, the question of how much time one should be spending on creating content for others does come to mind.

Is it a waste of my time?

So much depends on how you use it. Generating content for others can be a waste, but it can also be a great way to bring traffic to your own website. Shoemoney does well with it, for example.

We aren’t all Shoemoney or any other big name blogger, of course. Not everyone will get delightful amounts of traffic from such sources.

The key factor I consider is whether or not I can afford to be dependent on a particular source. The simple truth is that no business should be relying on a single source of traffic. If you aren’t trying to get traffic from a range of sources, what are you going to do when that one vanishes?

Of course, many people make the very good point that if you are creating content for other sites, you’re also helping them to earn money, rather than earning it for yourself.

Honestly, I don’t worry about that very much. It’s perfectly true that these other sites do need to earn money, and what I post on them helps them to do so. But so long as I also get a benefit I don’t see it as a huge problem.

Each source I use has something to offer me in terms of traffic or networking. I don’t get tons of traffic from Twitter, but I do get to meet some pretty great people, and I do get some traffic out of the deal.

Facebook I don’t use much, aside from finding old friends on. My business uses of that are minimal.

Squidoo has been something of an interesting experiment for me, but not one of my big traffic generators. Others have had different experiences. As with anything else, you in part get out of it what you put into it, and that one hasn’t drawn enough of my attention to get much out of it.

Article marketing, on the other hand, has been an interesting experience for me. While many of the links come from sites that aren’t that great, I’ve seen definite SERPs benefits that I consider to be most likely due to the links gained from article marketing. That’s not a bad deal at all.

If you look around, there are ebooks telling you how to earn money using any of these sites. There’s The Twitter Report, Squidoo Affiliate Destruction, and Facebook Fortunes, just to name a few. I haven’t read a one of them, so I can’t tell you about the quality of these particular titles, but they are out there.

The catch to using just one of these sites, of course, is that if they change the rules or vanish away, you’re out of luck. Over reliance can be a poor decision.

So why do I use any of these at all?

Just as with any other method, I know better than to rely solely on a single method, such as article marketing. You never know when the rules of the search engines will change and suddenly everything built from that method will mean less.

Fortunately, just because the rules change at one search engine doesn’t mean they will change at them all. That is one of the advantages of article marketing. If you can get your site up there in more than one search engine, you aren’t doomed by a sudden rule change.

Overall, it all comes down to being sensible about all your marketing tactics. Once you’ve mastered one, keep it up and start learning another. Just about anything you do online depends on another site to bring you traffic. Rely on that one source at your own peril.

The recent opening of Google’s Knol has a lot of people thinking about what they can put on there. The theory is that Google pages should rank well. Early tests show that to be likely, and so many people are creating Knol pages to see what they can get.

I’m always cautious about these things. Creating a Knol page is working on something that you do not have complete control over. I have no doubt that Google will delete Knols anytime they feel one is inappropriate.

It is, of course, entirely possible that people will make money from their Knol pages. There are many people already making money from sites on Blogger and pages on sites such as Squidoo or HubPages. Some even do pretty well.

It’s a cheap way of creating web pages, which appeals to many a tight-budgeted marketer. And so many pages do get some pretty good traffic that this can be appealing.

But what you give up is control.

Don’t assume that just because you have legitimate information to share that someone won’t try to get you removed from a particular service. It has happened to many on Blogger, for example, and not just to spammy pages. It is possible for legitimate content to be flagged by competitors. Creating pages on a service you aren’t paying for means that you risk the account being deleted, sometimes with poor warning.

On the plus side, creating a Knol, Squidoo Lens or what have you means that you are listed on a site that may get traffic with less of your own effort. There can be a benefit to that, especially for keywords that you are having trouble ranking for anyhow, even if the links to your own sites are No Follow.

The key to these is to add to your own image as an expert on your topic. Create a good page and be sure to have links to relevant pages of your own. Not to excess, as the page you are creating should stand mostly on its own. But as a reference for more information or details that are related to the topic at hand, the occasional link to your own site can help to drive traffic.

Do it too much and your page will look more like spam.

Overall, there’s nothing wrong with creating pages on services such as these, so long as you build a solid core business that you have more control over. It’s rather like article submission in some ways. You’re spreading content out in the hopes of bringing in more traffic and income. So long as you are not relying on any one page or group of pages for your livelihood, you’ll probably do all right.