The reality TV show “American Idol” has triggered a new trend – Idol search! TV channels all over the world are searching for idols – or talents. This search is not only limited to the television screen, but it has also proliferated onto the stage in various forms. Although the primary objective of this kind of shows is to screen for talent, in reality (excuse the pun) it is nothing but an entertainment show. The excitement, the drama, and the occasional emotional outbursts, are all part of the show. Undoubtedly, such shows do bring many talented men, women and children to the limelight, but is this the right way to do explore talent? In many cases, the exploration turns to exploitation – especially for the young participants. They have to go through a grueling screening process, sustain a tremendous pressure to perform, and then handle a barrage of criticism from the celebrity judges. I know in one dance show, a young girl couldn’t take the judges criticism anymore and had a nervous breakdown resulting in a paralytic fit. In several instances the young competitors sacrifice their education to continue the show. But the tragedy is, in most cases the winner is not judged by the celebrity panel whose criticism these young participants have to encounter, but rather by the audience through cell/mobile phone text messages (SMS). And in this process, the wireless carrier mints money. I am sure the show also gets their share of this income too.
Search for Idols
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Anybody who is even the least interested in making money with their blog has done a google search this title phrase and have landed up with thousands of articles, posts, advertorials, videos and other material that provide a hash-up of few different techniques that can bring in the greens. But when you look at them with some curiosity, you’ll see that almost all off them give you a bullet list of techniques that can bring in traffic and can potentially bring in some dough. You’ll learn about SEO techniques to improve search engine rankings, you’ll know how important it is to have in-links to your site, you’ll discover what article marketing is, and how to effectively use the social networking and bookmarking sites (Facebook, Orkut, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Stumbleupon etc. etc.). You’ll know the benefits of enlisting your blog to multiple blog networks and directories, tricks to improve Alexa rankings and the secrets of setting up RSS feeds for potential subscribers. All these techniques are good and work to some degree to bring in traffic to your blog – but believe me, millions of bloggers are doing just the same. Traffic is king to any blogger, and whatever published technique exists today are being tried over and over again. The problem is that the search engines (google, yahoo etc) and traffic ranking sites (like Alexa) keep on changing their strategy frequently and hence many techniques become stale.