Today's request was somewhat different in that the blogger involved raised the question of "value?" Basically, what's in it for me?
For most of us who are not A-list bloggers, the answer seems fairly obvious: aggregator sites like MarketingProfs, the Huffington Post, BusinessWeek Exchange, Social Media Today and many others allow us get our ideas before a larger audience and help us grow our personal or business brands. Most standalone blogs are lucky to get a few hundred readers a day and only a handful of people made an actual living at blogging alone.  On the other hand, a lot of people has gotten better jobs and paying consulting gigs because they were able to establish their expertise through blogging.Â
Added:  Here's an example of how aggregation can extend the reach of a blogger's work. A single post--Niall Cook's Five Steps to a Successful Twitter Presence --has been read 4357 times on our sister community The Customer Collective and 1514 times so far on SMT.  That's value.
Like the other large aggregator sites, we do not pay contributors so if "value" means money, we're certainly not Vanity Fair. On our sponsored sites (and this one, by the way, is not sponsored), we have developed blogger outreach programs where we actively engage some of our bloggers to do surveys, participate in webinars, write white papers, and create special promotions and ads. We do pay for most of those things and we want to do more of it (and involve more bloggers) as we grow.
My point is simply this: We value your work and we appreciate your willingness to share it with us and our readers. We want to succeed and we want to help you succeed. Thank you for being part of our effort.Â