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> If you're going to write on the web to make money, make it something worthwhile to a million people. Not three or four thousand. If you are just passionate about something feel free to spend all your time writing about it, that is its own reward and any remuneration is just bonus.

Wouldn't that just create more content that appeals to the least common denominator? Why would you want to focus the efforts of a professional writer toward creating that?

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A million people out of a population of 1.5 billion is 0.07% of the web population. In most places that is a very select group and not the common denominator. Something that is some times missed is just how big a group you can reach with the web. Finding all of them can be a challenge but such groups tend to self organize around seeds.

There is economic value in an article which acts as a seed to attract an audience. This value may not be fully reflected as a multiple of inbound page views, and may need to incorporate interactions among the self-organized audience and content that is "related" to the original article.

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