I read something today that made me bring Blog Network Watch out of retirment. b5media has just raised $2 million in funding from Brightspark Venturs and J. L. Albright Venture Partners.
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The gang over at b5media have decided to find a new server company. They have not been able to figure out the problem with their existing providers so they are going to move on to a new company. It sounds like they are trying to find a new server solution ASAP as Jeremy Wright says the situation is “incredibly urgent” and even leaves a phone number for those with suggestions to call.
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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.
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I had a feeling that the mystery blog being auctioned off could be the Blog Herald. Jeremy gave enough hints to help narrow it down to the type of blog in the top 100 that would generate so little revenue. There were only about 10 that I came up with, the Blog Herald being one of them. Duncan and Jeremy’s affiliation with b5media made me wonder if the Blog Herald was the mystery blog.
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Jeremy Wright from b5media has announced that he is playing the middle man in what he says will likely be the largest blog ever sold. Jeremy will broker an auction starting later this week with starting bids of at least $40,000 dollars for a blog in the top 100 by every measure except Technorati,
The blog currently has a Page Rank of 7, earns about $2000 per month, and is just shy of one million page views a month. The blog also has over 150,00 pages indexed on MSN and Yahoo and over 60,000 pages indexed on Google.
I am assuming that topic of the blog may not be the easiest topic to monetize because $2000 a month just doesn’t seem like a lot for a blog with almost a million page views a month. Jeremy does state, however, that the blog could easily be pushed to the $6000 a month range with the right blog manager.
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It took some mighty powerful news for us to come out of our 3 week postless hibernation. BlogNetworkWatch.com, not us, the first one that was started, stopped, started again, stopped again, sold, started for a third time, and then taken to the next level, is now part of a blog network.
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.
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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.
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One of the first posts here on BlogNetworkWatch.net was about the definition of a blog network. It was based on a post from Martin Neumann where he asked the question “What is a blog network?” At the time I liked Paul Scrivens from 9rules answer because it was short, sweet, and pretty much all inclusive. He said that a blog network was simply a “collection of blogs under the same banner”.
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?
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The title of this post is kind surly however, this is not an attack on the folks over at b5media. In fact, I actually am quite impressed with that they have accomplished in such a short time. That being said, guys, you have to be a bit more tactful when it comes speaking out on behalf of your network. I was quite shocked when Duncan Riley called some of his own bloggers totally boring.
Dude, I am new to blogging but I have been dealing with people for a long time. Trust me, even if some of the blogs that b5 has accepted into the network are the most boring blogs on the Internet and you shutter at the thought of reading them, you cannot say that they are boring in public. As an owner of b5media, the content that you put forward via your network is your content. It doesn’t matter if you think that content is boring or not. At the very least you need to be indifferent to it or defer to someone else on your management team who loves it. Anything less makes you sound like your are in it just for the money.
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b5media has been growing so fast lately that they have been having uptime issues with their servers. What I think is a vocal minority has issues with the b5 team and places blame squarely on the shoulders of management. b5media president, Jeremy Wright, said that b5 had to make a choice between paying their bloggers on time or fixing the hardware scalability issue now. b5 went with paying the bloggers on time and will deal with server issues in about a weeks time.
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.
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