Actually, there has been a lot going on over at Problogging Inc. They’ve recently changed names and sold off most of their sites, the latest being The Blog Herald, BloggerJobs, and BlogNetworkWatch.com.

According to Matt Craven, Problogging Inc, is refocusing on consulting work…

Its with a whole bag of mixed feelings that I find myself writing this post. Many of you have noticed over the last few months that we’ve been working on refocusing our company. Our core business has always been the consulting work that we’ve been doing since 1994 in one form or another. We also found ourselves not enjoying the blog network business as much as we used to do.. and with a hot market right now for existing blogs – it looked like a good time to divest ourselves of some of our sites.

We wish Problogging Inc, well.

The big business side of blogging seems to be very interesting right now so we, and when I say we I really mean me, so, I guess I should say I, want to know more about how these blog networks and the companies that are being created to support them will operate. What better way to find out how a blog network runs than to join one? Maybe creating one, but, that is for another post…

I just read a press release about brand new blog network that one man, Dave Ward, with the help of a few of his friends, started on an initial investment of only $1000 dollars. BigBlog Media was officially launched on January 19th.

Dave has a simple formula for making his blog network a big hit. Traffic + Revenue = Success.

I am not saying its going to be easy but it is possible,” said the 41-year-old father of two. While the $1000 will obviously not support the business; it is, in his opinion, enough to get the business up and running. Beyond this point, he is very clear that its about bringing in sponsorship and good management.

Dave will journal the building of his $1000 blog network over on his personal blog WadBlog. This is a blog network that we will definitely have to watch.

BlogNeworkWatch.com’s parent company BlogMedia has officially announced the launch of not one, but two blog networks. First your have BlogMedia Network which currently consisists of 14 different blogs on their own domains, including BlogNeworkWatch.com.

The second network is called Erati Media and is lead by David Krug. Erati currently is a list of 7 blogs that are all subdomains of the Erati.com. The network brands itself as a Community of Creators.

BlogNetworkList is put into it’s own section called Blogmedia Services. It looks as though Blogmedia may come out with additional services but also avoids any conflicts of interest by not including there blog ranking utility in one of their blog networks. My guess is that BlogNetworkWatch.com won’t have to many posts about the BlogMedia Network passed the occasional announcement here and there to maintain impartiality there as well.

After two months of insulting every blog network owner on the Internet, twice, including the owner of Fine Fools, Jack of all Blogs has been suspended. Not to worry though. If you were a fan of David Krug, a.k.a. Cowboy’s writing style, you can find him on Where’s My Vote, a political blog where his commentary won’t be wasted on blog network management teams. Somehow I get the feeling that Cowboy’s writing style is suited just right for a political blog.

We are revisiting our blog network definition because I am beginning to wonder if is a bit too inclusive. Does a blogger that has 2 or 3 blogs that are all linked to each other constitute a blog network? Do we need to qualify by saying a collection of blogs by multiple bloggers under the same banner?

What is your definition of a blog network?

I, with my infinite blogging wisdom and 47 visitor per day average, fall somewhere in the middle, more so on the side of the b5 team. I agree that planning is key to any business and a decision to not fix a critical issue can be seen as a lack of management, however, I don’t think that anyone could have foreseen just how quickly b5media would grow and that that they would have this kind of traffic less than 2 months in. I love the fact that the b5 team didn’t rob Peter to pay Paul and that their bloggers will be paid on time. I think that they have shown that their bloggers come first and most companies that put their people first do very well.

Stay tuned… There is definately more to come.

Many blog networks, including the some of the biggest such as Weblogs Inc. and Gawker Media are collections of widely varying blogs generally unrelated to each other less the blog network itself. The goal of most blog networks is to increase viewership of each blog via affiliation with the other blogs under the umbrella of the blog network. Most blog network members have links to all the other member blogs in the network. One of the benefits here is that search engines love backlinks.

If you were to create blog network around a niche that all blog networks share, not only would each member benefit from backlinks from each of the other member blogs you would get extra Google juice for being linked to by a site with related content. Additionally, the likelihood that a blog visitor would continue on to another related blog in a network is significantly higher. You would also probably have more conversation between blogs via comments, trackbacks, and ping backs. In fact, the sense of community between network blogs on the same topic could be significantly higher than on networks with unrelated content.

My guess is that if done correctly, niche blog networks could create a sense of community that rivals message boards while maintaining their structure which is very attractive to search engines. The comments sections of these types of blogs could be some of the most lucrative real estate from an advertising standpoint that we have seen in a while.

Much of the weekend was spent learning WordPress. It’s amazing how you can use something for almost a year without having much of a clue as to how it works. I think that I have enough of the basics down as to be able to use many of WordPress’ features to make keeping up with BNW a bit easier.

I also spent a lot of time trying to find all the blog networks that a could and believe me when I tell you that there are an awful lot of them out there when we use the definition of a blog network that I like. The list of networks that I have to the right is just a small sampling of all the networks out there. I think that I should create a blog networks link page so that the Blog Network List over to your right won’t take up so much space in the side bar. I imagine that this list could become quite long. I am open to any suggestions as to how I should set up the blog network links page. Should it be just one big long list? Should we categorize the blog networks? Should we create an A, B, and C blog network list like Omar from the short lived webbymedia blog network has set up over on BlogNetworkList.com? Your comments here would be greatly appreciated.

Lastly, I have received a lot of good advice and offers from various blog network owners and admins to be profiled or interviewed on BlogNetworkWatch. Hopefully BNW will become a place where blog network admins can get the word out about their networks on a site that isn’t directly affiliated with their network. Many have sent me feeds to subscribe to that will let me know when things on their various networks are being updated . Over the next week I will attempt to reach out and contact as many blog network admins as I can just to introduce myself and let you know what BlogNetWorkWatch is all about. I know that I won’t be able to contact everyone just because there are so many blog networks out their. If you want to be listed in the blog networks list, just let me know.

Thanks… This should be fun.