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?
