Content is King.  We hear that phrase over and over again.  Where does your website content come from? The way I see it, there are two types of content: content you generate yourself through research, interviews, and your own time, and then there is content that is generated by the users of your website.

You may not realize this, but with most of my favorite blogs, I will spend much more time reading the comments on a particular post than I do reading the post.  Those comments are content that was generated by the users of your website.  The comments often generate comments.  This additional content gets the users involved, it generates more revenue from your website, more subscribes, etc.

Some of my favorite strategies that I see websites do to generate content are to have contests like on smashingmagazine.com where they will have a contest to generate icons, or take photographs of textures for example, and then they release all of those to the community to use for free without restrictions.  This is an amazing marketing strategy because it gets their users involved in the contest, and it gives all of them something valuable to use after the contest is over.

Some major websites only write their own content, don't allow users to comment, and don't give anything back to their users.  These sites have a thing or two to learn in my opinion, and if they don't change they could find themselves losing out.  Get your users involved, make them happy, and they will be loyal to your website, they will give you link love, and they will make you money.