I like this portion of The New York Times’ future strategy. Recognizing the value of bloggers and their power to influence others makes sense. Paying bloggers to keep their blogs up to date as well as develop sites that attract traffic is great incentive.

This from clickz.com:

 The affiliate model is far from fully-formed, but the NYTimes.com expects it to be in place for the TimesSelect launch. Nisenholtz hopes to "incite the blogosphere to share the revenues of that idea. I don't see why this would be viewed as a negative thing if it creates revenues across the blogosphere." The idea is to sell bloggers TimesSelect and incentivize them to link to content behind the subscription wall by giving them a cut of the revenue gained via new subscribers they refer.

Niesenholtz told the audience that affiliate marketing is central to the Times' vision of online publishing's future. "This is going to be a growing part of the ecosystem of the Web. In the same way Amazon.com made tremendous headway with its affiliates in the book business, we can create a revenue stream down the tail for people who are creating blogs, etc." This information-affiliate program will likely eventually apply to other New York Times-owned properties, including Boston.com and About.com.

I see that some of our MADCasts will be featured today on KYOU radio. Hopefully, the audience will be kind.