Today in the Six Figure Blogging call we talked a little about Blog Networks and took a look over a number of the bigger and emerging blog networks that are opening up around the wider blogging community and it was interesting to see not only the variety of blogs within networks – but also the variety of flavors of networks themselves.
On one hand you’ve got Gawker – a network of blogs that shamelessly goes after the young male audience who have disappeared from in front of television screens in recent years. On the opposite end of the spectrum you have Shiny Media who in some of their blogs are targeting young women.
Then we have the massive Weblogs Inc who has more of a shotgun approach – 75+ blogs (It’s probably more these days but I find it hard to count beyond fingers and toes) on a wide variety of topics with an even wider array of authors (although their writers profiles don’t seem to be that high I’ve been noticing recently – or is that just me?).
Flip across to the 9rules network (please remember that they are anti capital letters when you link to them – or the wrath of Scrivs might come down upon you) and you find a very different beast again. A growing collection of blogs who band together in a very loving, relational, non controlling collective type network. There is talk of making money – but it seems to be more of a club atmosphere so far in its early stages.
Then there is weblog empire (launched in the wake of the impressive Blog Herald), blog logic (which has a diverse group of blogs including one on dry walling!), creative weblogging (have a wide array of topics and have dropped their YPN and Adsense ads on the same page in the last few days) and the new Bloggy Network (looking to add not only blogs but blog tools) to mention just a few of the other blog networks that are around – each with their own spin.
Of course there are many other blog networks out there – I seem to discover at least one per week these days – but the question is…
Is there room for one more?
The next week or two will see that question answered (just between you and me)…
But in the mean time I thought it might be fun to have some discussion about blog networks and where people see the gaps in the market as being? What do you notice about existing blog networks? What is missing? What is being overdone? How would you go about starting a network?
thats it from me forever GOOGLEBYE
oh me again I might add that is alright to write about something you found at someone site as long as you write in you own words, it maybe be similiar but as long you can get the satisfaction on knowing that you wrote the article yourself and that you provide a link to the site you found it at just like weblog.com and gawker do. GOod bye for ever.
cya Dean. Have a nice life.
I’ve actively started avoiding sites that are part of networks now, and try to avoid linking to them where possible.
I currently run 8 sites, some popular, some still in the early stages – they are all ‘unofficially’ part of my own network. I have network homepage, but it’s not linked to anywhere and I’ve never mentioned it (I aborted the plan).
What I have noticed is that blogs lose their value when they become part of a network – the switch from passion to wealth becomes quite apparent. In the eyes of the viewer, blogs within a network don’t hold as much trust as independent sites.
I’ve also found that networks are less likely to credit a competitor, but will quite happily reuse your content. I’ve seen this happen multiple times recently, and sadly one of the members of this new network is guilty of it. I have no problem with healthy competition – I think it benefits everyone in the long run, but the ground has to be fair and a set of unwritten rules abided by.
I personally enjoy reading this site Darren, so I hope you’ll keep this outside of the network :)
Hey Mouse,
9rules has none of the qualities that you just described. We are only independent sites. So maybe your definition of blog network needs to broaden a bit before you classify all networks under one umbrella.
[…] Anyway .. I read many RSS feeds and one of my favorite is Darren Rowse at Problogger.net. There was this post about blog networks and that really got me thinking. The post is here entitled https://problogger.com/archives/2005/09/15/is-there-room-for-another-blog-network/ , if you are interested. It got a little creepy at the end, but after my post #19, I started looking at all of these blog networks that are out there. Now, I have no interntion of starting a blog network, although I do have a bunch of blogs happening! One thing that I would have to do, if I were to have any success in my blogging and being able to add blogging to one of my consulting skills, is to get better focused. […]
Scrivs,
To be honest, I don’t really think of 9rules as a blog network anymore anyway – perhaps in the early days, but not anymore. I consider 9rules more of a content directory or something like that (I mean this in a positive way).
The more established networks – WIN, Gawker etc I don’t generally have a problem with, they do generally credit original authors. I still don’t like the cross-promotion aspect though. If I’m reading engadget for example, does that mean I’m a target for a post about cancer? To me, it’s exploiting the popularity of one site to raise another. No problem with linking to other sites, but something like Darren does would be more suitable.
I do have a problem with some of the newer ‘networks’ – those that think they are bigger than anyone else, yet are clearly only in it for the money and/or status.
Of course there’s room for more!
I know it may be hard for the “big name” bloggers to grok this, but most people on the internet have never heard of you or of these blog networks.
People will stumble upon blogs as a result of following links or entering terms in search engines. When that happens, it doesn’t matter if you are one of the big 3 or the top 10 or the Fortune 500 of bloggers. All that matters is whether you have something interesting or useful for them.
Is there room?! Dang that makes me laugh!
[…] HART-Empire.com was inspired from a post and comments found HERE at Darren Rowse ProBlogger.net site .. where I mentioned in comment #19 … Well, I have a business blog, personal blog, pet related blog, gift blog, picks blog, weight loss blog, and a few other crappy blog experiments that didn’t work. Naturally I try to put links to my other sites on each one to let people know about them.. am I a network? Maybe I should just create my own network name and brand it! […]
there’s a new blog network now…
http://aboutweblogs.com/
[…] The prolific Darren Rose posed an interesting question earlier today, Is there Room for Another Blog Network? Why yes Darren, I’d say (or rather write) that there is. There are a couple of different approaches when it comes to blog networks, each of which caters to different audiences. […]
[…] The prolific Darren Rose posed an interesting question earlier today, Is there Room for Another Blog Network? Why yes Darren, I’d say (or rather write) that there is. There are a couple of different approaches when it comes to blog networks, each of which caters to different audiences. […]