Not long ago, I blogged about how I am building a content business. I also recently wrote about writing content to earn money on other websites. Today, I read a post over at Copy Blogger that essentially let me know with rule #1 that I am breaking the rules. Rule number one over there is that you should not build content on rented land.

I’ve already broken that rule, and I have a very good reason for doing so. When I publish content on Squidoo or HubPages, I am building on rented land. However, I also have land that I own, and I build there as well. The content that I build on rented land does serve a purpose, and in a content business, rented land should not be ignored in my opinion.

First, each time I put content on those sites, I am building my content business. If we want to talk in terms of ‘land’ and business ownership, you could think of this rented land as a franchise or additional extensions of my home offices – much like banks have a main branch, and then smaller branches scattered across town or even across the country. Those branches earn revenue in the form of advertising. It may not be much revenue, but it does add up, and as I create more content on those rented lands, I earn more money.

I am also placing content on the land that I own, while building great back links to the sites that I own from the rented land. I have no intention of changing this at this point in time, and no future plans to make changes to the way that I am building my content business in the future. For now, it works for me.

What is my point? My point is that I do agree that you should not rely solely on rented land. You do have some level of control of your content on those sites, but not complete control. Additionally, those sites could all disappear tomorrow, and take all of your content with them. For this reason, I keep copies of that content on my own system, which is regularly backed up. If those sites disappear, I can easily republish the same content on my own sites, or on other rented land as I see fit.

While using sites like Squidoo and HubPages is fine, you do also need your own domain name and webhosting account. These rented lands should be used to 1) earn money and 2) to drive traffic to the land that you own. All-in-all, submitting content to Squidoo, HubPages, and other sites like this is no different than submitting articles to article directories to build back links and drive traffic to your website. In fact, it is better because I earn additional revenue from the content…so I am a happy rule breaker!