In 1999, the three editors of The Blogbook all worked at iSyndicate, an Internet content syndication company. One of iSyndicate's more forward-thinking programs was "self-syndication," which allowed freelance writers to create their own licensable columns.

These columns were offered in iSyndicate's content catalog alongside other mainstream media content providers, such as Reuters and AP. Anyone with an opinion and access to the Internet could become a consulted source of information.

In many respects, iSyn's self-syndication was a harbinger of blogs.

Although self syndication was based on progressive and egalitarian principles, very few self-syndicator columns were actually licensed to third party websites, due to a variety of factors. The three biggest things that discouraged third party websites from licensing self syndicators were the following: branding issues, content quality, and reliability.

In contrast, the handful of self syndicators who were sold on a regular basis all adequately addressed these factors. In terms of branding, each writer had a neatly defined package for sale, such as entertainment reviews or technology articles (Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox). The quality of the content met certain consumer standards; that is, a third party site would not be embarrassed to post the content. Finally, each author consistently submitted their content in a timely manner.

Just as with blogs, there were hundreds of unique, offbeat perspectives offered in the Content Marketplace. Many of these people realized their work would never sell, and thus did not define success as selling their writing to others - just making it available for others was enough. This really set the stage for blogs to take off.

I bring all this up because it seems that iSyndicate's discarded experiment has grown into a beanstalk that's ready to reach into the promised land of royalties. But, the spoils will likely go to those legal bloggers who can learn from the past.