THE PRICE OF GREATNESS IS RESPONSIBILITY

Nearly a year ago, the first posting on my blog was publish. It was about professor dr. Cyril Zebot's heroic life. In Slovenia, the country where I was born, professors dr. Cyril Zebot, dr. Ljubo Sirc and dr. Alexander Bilimovich had left a tremendous legacy of academic and professional economics that had been ripped off and banished when the WW2 and the arise of communism devastated Slovenia's economic potential. Professor Zebot had a vision according to which Slovenia would immediately become an independent, democratic and a sovereign country after the WW2. Historical circumstances had turned differently. Socialism's mismanagement left behind uncompetitive and strongly state-controlled enterpreneurial sector in which joint-ventures, risk-taking and productive behavior had no common place. The economic development under socialism devastated the potentials of Slovenian economy to become one of those small loudly roaring tigers that have had created an economic miracle. In the late 80s, hyperinflation leaded to a negative interest rate through which extensive borrowing and loaning had been made possible while the public debt has been growing largely. One fifth of the Slovenian public debt has been inherited from the tragic legacy of communist Yugoslavia. Professor dr. Ljubo Sirc has emphasized, for example, that in 1939, income per capita level in Slovenia, amounted up to 80 percent of the Austrian income per capita. Today, the average income per capita level is improving comparably, while according to basic dynamic calculations and estimates, Slovenian economy will need more than 30 years to catch the Austrian level of income per capita. Dr. Alexander Bilimovich emigrated to Ljubljana when the communist revolution seized power. At that time, professor Bilimovich was placed among top economic scientists in the world. Professor Sirc has emphasized that professor Bilimovich had been, as an Austrian economist, telling that the theory of value cannot be objective but only subjective on a permanent basis. His book "Introduction to Economics" is an excellent masterpiece and preserved legacy that truly deserves to be examined further.

What does this has to do with my blog? Referring to the content, February 2006, was the beginning of my blogging venture. The amount of ideas connected with free market economics, macroeconomic policy, microeconomic spots, tax reforms, management and business, globalization, free trade, international economy, monetary trends and libertarian challenge, simply needed a place where all those freshly breathing ideas would be posted, written and well seen. When I opened my blog I could not imagine that one year after the opening, the blog would have so many visitors on a daily, weekly and as well as monthly basis. 459 000 visitors since February 2006 is a success I haven't dared to think about actually. January Rankings of the Honor View showed that Capitalism & Freedom had been the second most oftenly rated progressive blog in Europe. In February, the blog has been ranked 5th. There are significant names on the ranking such as Mises Institute and Stefan Karlsson. In the field of free-market economics, Capitalism & Freedom is ranked 14th among top 100 blogs in this industry. The blog suddenly shifted up to 10th place on the rank of top blog sites. I couldn't believe this is real in less than one year.

Success demands challenge and challenge demands productive behavior. This is tightly gripped to developing blog marketing strategies through which high rates of visiting are exercised. In essence, the question wheather blog establishment works or fails can be compared to the question that is usually common among marketers and strategic managers. Marketers ask wheather how product development strategy will reach target customers while strategic managers ask wheather strategic capital business models will suit the long-term sustainability of the firm in an ever-changing business environment while bloggers ask what kind of particular strategy shall be used in order to meet success and hot-shooted inflow of frequent and incoming blog visitors. A good blog neccesarily includes the value of quality which is only one tool of an efficient mapping strategy. The value of quality is basically referring to the content of the blog while design and graphical sophistication play a crucial role as well. The analytical effects can be seen through instrumentalism especially in the field of free-market economics blogs. Strategic approach to suffcient writing is no longer applied to the demand for extensive writing. It is applied to excellence, elegance and innovation respectively. In the field of doing blogging in free-market economics, direct mailing of the posts is no longer efficient as well. Target marketing demands spontaneous fractions of the content to develop. Direct mailing is inefficent in its intention because it is, by empirical notice, a typical signal of massive advertisement. Instead, innovating blogging could be reached through interactive content upon which each blogs gets a profiled value. Think about hotmail's success. There were no heavy and massive advertisement on the internet and TV about hotmail. Its success is largely a part of the new approach to consumer behavior of the 21st centuty. Hotmail has been a triumph of innovation. It satisfied the need of web visitors for having a free email account. No propaganda was used, because Hotmail's venture grew significantly as it emerged innovatively. The same applies to blogging. Basic blogging when extensive writings are posted will hardly find its grail of growth in the future. Actuality is the first pillar of the blogging venture success. Marketing strategy is of a vital importance in this particular case because it largely determines the outlay of the blog and the frequency of visiting as well. Actual headings are factually the fundamental basis to which blog popularity is attached. Excellence is the second pillar of the blogging venture success. Of course, the basic question is how the excellence can be achieved. A reasonble length of posts and clear post messaging are perhaps the most needed requirements. Productive writing is the third pillar of blogging venture success. It simply means that content should be made attractive, courious, interesting and research based. For example, when you post how the strategy of the Celtic Tiger galvanized Irish economic transformation, you cannot expect the post to become popular if there're no additional sources referring to the title of the posts. By them, I mean mostly movies, newspaper articles, citations and every-day life events. It's different when you post something a little bit more research supported and scientific while it is harshly illusionairy to expect visitors' boom and blog popularity when research supported writing and popular methods are blended. Both can create a value of quality when in a separate order. I learned that very much during the first period of blogging. The fourth pillar of successful blogging venture is innovation measured through blog market awareness about the product - about your blog. In a global economy, Zipf's law (the winner takes it all) has become a part of our rational expectations through which we adjust our decisions to external shocks. Thus, innovation-based blogging is most likely to become the future of successful blog. Innovation usually waves chain reactions where the followers are running for the idea of its founder. That's a simple case study of Zipf's law. Innovation is based on ideas while ideas spread around like viruses. Ideas are the key to unleashing the epidemics of the innovation. Being innovative and putting innovation into blogging comes out as an output of successfully established blogging venture. Blogging creates power as trading with ideas yields high marginal returns and powerful revenues that reflect a successful blogging venture case.

Winston Churchill once said:
"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

Pursuing greatness always demands responsibility on the first place. Without free market, it could hardly be possible for blogging to reach such a tremendous success. An important contribution to my personal inspiration (writings, articles...) for blogging present professors Milton Friedman, Gary S. Becker, Robert J. Barro, Greg Mankiw, Friedrich August von Hayek, Gordon Tullock, James Buchanan and Mart Laar, Daniel J. Mitchell, Johnny Munkhammar, Seth Godin, Joe Girard, Malcolm Gladwell, Donald Trump, Michael Sexton and others who gave me a very much needed boost to start posting my ideas, views and observations on the blog. I hope that in the future, you, the visitors from all around the globe will feel comfortable on my blog as you're the one who rate the quality of the venture in which I enjoy very much.

Thank you.

Rok SPRUK, Capitalism & Freedom