In this post I want to take you inside a secret blogging alliance. A small group of bloggers who’ve committed to work together in secret for the mutual benefit of all members of the alliance.
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Last week I was talking with a successful blogger about factors that had helped us improve our blogs the most and in a comment that I think he regretted making shortly after he mentioned that he was in a ‘blogging alliance’ with a group of other bloggers.
I immediately honed in on the term blogging alliance and began to push him a little on it. What was it? What did it do? What impact did it have?
At first he was hesitant to share but once I promised not to reveal who he was or indicate what niche he was blogging in he began to loosen up and shared some details on the understanding that I’d be writing it up as a post here on ProBlogger (he actually checked with other members of the alliance before he told me any details). Here’s what I learned:
What is the Blogging Alliance?
From what I can piece together the alliance started, as many good ideas do, over a beer between two bloggers. They had both been building their blogs for a couple of years in the same niche and had been meeting up occasionally to share stories and swap ideas on how each other could improve their blogs.
The meetings had been informal, irregular and usually disintegrated into more of a social catchup than much else – but they were reflecting on this one occasion that despite this they’d both really benefited from the relationship. As they drank their draughts they began to wonder out loud what more they could do together to benefit them both.
They tossed around a number of ideas including a formal partnership (a blog network of sorts) but shied away from that as they began to realize the legal ramifications of starting a partnership and company together. Instead they began to wonder what would happen if they pulled together a small group of bloggers on related topics to work together rather than competing with one another.
One of them suggested that they form an ‘alliance’ – the idea caught on.
Each of the bloggers sounded out 3 other bloggers to see if they were interested. 5 of those that they sounded out responded positively – the 6th didn’t (and interestingly is the only one of the original group not blogging today).
The 7 bloggers who founded the alliance all came from the same niche. The niche was a very wide one though and each had different approaches, skills, strengths and focuses. None really were competing with each other directly but all were on related topics.
They decided to ‘meet’ at the same time each week on a conference call (they were scattered geographically so a face to face meeting wasn’t possible). On their first meeting they didn’t really know what they were going to DO together but they committed to keep meeting, keep sharing what they were doing, keep talking about their niche and keep looking for opportunities to help each other.
They committed to keep the group secret and to keep all activities of the group to be for the mutual benefit of one another.
This all took place two years ago.
Since that time each of the 7 bloggers have seen drastic improvements in their blogs. None are what one might consider to be ‘A-lister’ blogs but of the initial group 5 are now full time bloggers and the other 2 could be if they wished to be but have decided to keep working other jobs.
They have talked about inviting other bloggers into the alliance numerous times but have decided to keep things small.
What Does the Blogging Alliance DO?
OK – so at this point I was intrigued by the idea of a blogging alliance. I didn’t know who was involved (and still don’t) but I did know the blogger telling me the story and he’s a credible guy with a great blog who makes a good living from his blog.
So my next question was to ask what the blogging alliance actually looked like? What did they do? How had it worked?
We talked for a good 45 minutes about this but here’s a summary of the notes I took (with a few of my own thoughts) on the different activities that they engaged in to help one another grow their blogs:
1. Commenting on each others blogs
I’ll admit, when he shared this one first I was a little disappointed. I was envisaging a secret group gathering in robes practicing dynamic new tactics to grow one another’s blogs…. and he tells me that they comment on each others blogs!
However this was where they started and he tells me that it actually had a big impact. They decided as a group that rather than starting with anything too big that they’d simple each subscribe and read one another’s blogs and leave at least one comment on each others blogs once every weekday.
The idea came out of the fact that each reported on their first meeting that one of their biggest frustrations was that while they spent hours each week writing their blogs that they always struggled to get comments – it was depressing. So they started commenting on each other’s posts.
So instead of each post they wrote getting 0 comments – they each started getting 7. The impact was interesting because not only did the comments stimulate great conversations between them – but they started to notice others leaving comments too. The idea of ‘social proof’ came into effect – people coming to a blog with comments are just more likely to leave comments.
Interestingly the blogger I spoke with told me of another impact on his own blogging – he started writing better posts. He reflected to me that knowing that these other 7 bloggers from his niche were going to be reading his posts spurred him on to write better and better articles. Not only that – the comments being left were not just ‘great post’ comments but each had committed to adding useful comments – so quite often he got great ideas for new posts as well – his blog improved almost overnight simply by having other bloggers leave comments on his blog.
2. Linking to One Another
The next thing they did was again simple but effective (in fact everything they did was simple) – they began to link to one another. Actually this didn’t really start as a formal strategy as such – they did it naturally as a result of each subscribing to one another because they began to see posts on one another’s blogs that related to their audience.
However they did end up getting a little more formal with it and devised a bit of a system (they ended up using Basecamp to keep track of a lot of this type of thing) where they could each suggest a single post that they’d written each week that they’d like one another to consider linking to.
They decided not to force one another to link in this way because they wanted posts to be relevant to the blog linking to them but over time what started happening was that each of the blogs in the alliance started getting linked to by at least 2-3 of the other blogs each week.
They also committed to add blogrolls to their sidebars which linked to one another (as well as a few other blogs in their niche).
The result of this simple strategy over time was that they started sharing readers with one another and that their search engine rankings started to grow.
3. Social Bookmarking and Tweeting
An extension of the linking to one another’s posts was that the bloggers also started to help one another out in social media by promoting each others links on Twitter as well as bookmarking each other’s posts on sites like Digg, Delicious and StumbleUpon.
While this didn’t have a massive impact as they were such a small group of bloggers it did drive some traffic (it drove more over time as each of their social media presences grew) and also generated links for posts.
They didn’t do this for every post each of them wrote – but again were selective and did it with a single post a week each (I think this grew to a minimum of 2-3 posts a week later on).
Some of the bloggers now not only automatically tweet when they post a new post on their own blog but have got things set up to automatically tweet when other blogs in the alliance tweet.
4. Guest Posts
Another thing that they regularly do is write for one another.
This started out simply as a way to help each other out when one of them was going on vacation (the other bloggers would fill in) but they found that it ended up benefiting everyone because it helped each of them to grow their profile with each other’s readers.
Now they each commit to write at least one guest post per month on at least one of the other blogs in the alliance. In reality most of them do guest posts as much as once a week. They mix it up so everyone gets and writes guest posts and so that the one person isn’t doing the guest posts on just one blog.
5. Joint Promotions/Competitions
A couple of times now they’ve run promotions together. I won’t go into too much detail of what they did for fear of revealing who they are but they have centered around competitions with bigger prizes open to readers from each of their blogs. The results were great as they were able to attract sponsors to donate great prizes with the guarantee that the sponsor wouldn’t just get exposure on a single blog but 7.
6. Monetization Leads
This is a more recent development but has had some real success. They realized after a while that each of them were spending time each month trying to find advertisers as well as testing affiliate programs on their blogs. They were duplicating a lot of their efforts and actually competing with one another on occasions to sign up advertisers.
They talked about pooling their efforts completely and setting up an ad network to run across all 7 blogs but pulled away from that idea for the time being as it was a little complicated and they didn’t want to formalize partnerships or have to write up contracts.
Instead what they’ve done is commit to share with one another when they sign up new advertisers, to share how much they’re getting, to introduce one another to advertisers etc. The result has been great so far – a number of the advertisers have signed up for multiple blogs where they’d previously have signed up for just one.
They each still handle their negotiations with advertisers but the introductions alone have helped all improve their revenue.
They also share information with each other on what affiliate programs are working for them and what techniques they’re using to increase sales.
7. Spot Promotions
Another technique that they’ve used a few times is to run what they call ‘spot promotions’ of each others blogs. I’m not sure how they came up with that name for what they do but in effect it involves them doing a promotion for another blog in the alliance by giving a strong call to action to readers of one blog to become subscribers to the newsletter list or RSS feed of another.
This is usually done in a blog post (ie Blog A writes a post talking about how much they love Blog B and highlighting it’s newsletter and/or feed).
The results of these promotions have apparently been fantastic.
8. Thank You Page Promotions
Another similar thing that they’ve recently been trying is to add promotions to each others newsletters and feeds to the thank you pages of their own newsletter signups (ie when you sign up for the newsletter for Blog A you’re taken to a thank you page that suggests 6 other blogs that you should subscribe to with links to each of their newsletters/feeds).
This is a technique that many internet marketers use to ‘up sell’ people to products – but this group have committed to ‘up sell’ each other’s lists on their thank you pages (a great idea).
9. Remnant Ad Promotions
Another technique that they’ve done a little with is to serve ads for each other’s blogs when they have spare ad spots on their blogs. So if Blog A has a spare 125 x 125 ad slot on their blog they rotate buttons for each of the other blogs in that position – driving traffic from one blog to another.
10. Product Promotion
More recently a couple of the bloggers in the alliance have released products (ebooks/membership sites). The group have committed to promote one another’s products heavily.
They have also committed to give each other ‘super-affiliate’ status of each other’s products where the affiliate commissions that they pay to affiliates are significantly higher on each other’s products (so it’s not just those who release products who benefit more from the alliance but those promoting them).
11. Joint Products
They’ve also recently just started about talking about joint collaborations on products. The ‘alliance’ itself will release a product next year which they’ll all contribute content to as well as receive a share of the profits from.
12. Networking
Another thing that this group of bloggers has done really well is to help one another to expand and deepen one another’s networks. Of course a great deal of networking has gone on amongst the bloggers themselves but there have been many occasions where bloggers have made introductions for one another to other bloggers, journalists, developers, designers etc etc etc.
Collectively these 7 bloggers know a lot of people and they’re more than willing to help one another expand their networks.
13. In Person Meet Up
In the last few months the group met up for the first time in person. They all booked rooms in the one hotel and got themselves a meeting room and spent a weekend together.
The weekend involved a lot of socializing but also some intentional times together where they did
- some training (each had to present for 30 minutes on something that they’d learned and had success with)
- brainstorming (they spent time brainstorming what they could do together – this is where the idea for a joint product came from)
- blog reviews (they spent an hour workshopping each of the 7 blogs – each blogger came away with a long list of things that they could do to improve their blogs, topics that they could write on, ideas on how to better monetize etc)
A few Concluding Insights on Blog Alliances
I found this conversation to be a fascinating one. Much of what this blogger told me is similar to things I’ve been suggesting bloggers do together for years in posts that I’ve written about finding ‘blogging buddies’ (in fact this group took on some of the ideas in my posts and implemented them in their alliance) however this group has taken things to a whole new level and formalized many of them (in an informal way as there’s no contracts or legal agreements).
In chatting to the blogger I got the sense that the group has worked well because each of the bloggers had (and still have) similar sized blogs, that each of the bloggers has an attitude of being humble and committed to the idea of mutual benefit and because they have never forced anyone to promote anything that they didn’t feel was a natural or organic fit with their blog.
There have been times where a blogger (or more than one) have opted out of things that others were doing because of their own commitments or because it didn’t ‘fit’ with their blogs – but each of the bloggers has invested time and energy into the greater good of the alliance.
The Results
Lastly by all reports this alliance has helped a great deal. As I mentioned above – 5 of the 7 bloggers are now full time bloggers and the other 2 are doing pretty well with blogging as their 2nd job.
One of the side benefits that the blogger I talked with talked about was that the he didn’t think that he’d still be blogging if it wasn’t for the alliance. He’d been through a couple of times in the last two years where he’d wanted to give up blogging – but the alliance pulled him through. Other bloggers covered for him through tough circumstances and on other occasions other bloggers gave him a kick up the pants and told him to get his act together when he was slacking off. The combination of accountability and encouragement really helped him a lot.
Thanks to this alliance for allowing us to see some of what they’ve done – I’m fascinated by this glimpse into this alliance – I think it could (and should) spark ideas for other bloggers who I think could benefit a lot from similar approaches.
This one remind me the story of strength of one single stick and strength of bunch of stick.
Nice to see that this one always work … you just need faith.
Darren
Thanks thats quite and interesting story. It is really facisnating to hear that a group of bloggers are working together to benefit one another.
It is also good the see that people can work together as a team and benefit. I have read a few thing but I haven’t heard much about others doing the thingsthese bloggers are doing.
I’m sure that this will spark a lot of interest for bloggers to reach out and help one snother in small groups.
This is an intriguind idea. I think that the hardest thing to do would be just getting it started and trying to figure out which bloggers to include and how to go about getting it all together. This definitely gave me food for thought.
This sort of reminds me of Mastermind concept in “Think and Grow Rich”…the blogging edition.
-Arif
Definite food for thought. One strength + sharing = far greater ability for success. Thank you for sharing this and so many other fantastic motivators.
Thanks for the advice. What is the best way of approaching a new blog with the hopes of getting them to link to your site?
This really goes to show you how powerful the strength in numbers concept really is. Groups of people supporting each other can lead to success for everybody.
I’ve always felt that if I support others in blogging then I would be benefited in some way in return. It doesn’t always happen but helping smoeone out never hurts you or your cause. Only good things can come of it.
Because of my reaching out to others I feel as if I am developing a support system. Though it is not as formal as this alliance concept, some of the same benefits do apply.
Thanks for sharing Darren!
Just to add to this, say if the same member is part of seven different secret blogging alliance, each of which had seven members in return then you have 7 * 7 = 49 in your alliance in one go. Its a numbers game after all.
Same blogger can be part of different alliances without overlapping, this way you have more alliances and strength.
Interesting idea. I don’t have a formal “secret alliance”, but I do make an effort to comment on the posts of a few friends of mine (most of whom I met through blogging). I’m also a bit more likely to link to one of their articles than I would be to someone else’s. I get links and tweets in return. Nobody has ever sat down and said “hey, we should do this”, though.
CommentLuv can also be a great way to drive traffic to your commenters’ blogs – including those of your “partners”. I’ve stumbled across a lot of cool blogs by clicking the CommentLuv links on my own blog.
@ John – I’d suggest following the new blogger’s blog for a while, making insightful comments. Then, when you approach them, you won’t be a random blogger – you’ll be their friend John who has been supportive of them since day 1. I think I’m going to add you to my blog roll – I just took a quick glance at your site and like what I see. I’ll take a closer look later.
I’ve seen some bloggers commenting on each other, but I don’t know if that’s planned. I guess it’s all comes down to be less shy, talk to others in the niche and find a plan that suits everyone involved, like an extension of the blogging buddy!
Darren,
What an incredible post! thank you VERY much for taking the time and giving the oeffort to tell us about something so powerful. I normally don’t comment my appreciation, but this more than warrants a THANK YOU!
It is a GREAT inspiration as I work diligently to launch my own blogs.
This must happen far more than we realize. I can think of several alliances that I see in the blogs that I visit. Epecially with some groups of prominent writer-artist-designer women bloggers. And it works! They are doing amazing things!
Wow. What a fantastic idea! I just love the idea of people working together instead of competing for a greater benefit all around. I read lots of other blogs (of course!) and you know this has me thinking about how we could work together! This posts outlines so many different ways bloggers can help one another out – thanks!
Fascinating is probably the best word to describe this (as you and Bruno both emphasized), and it’s certainly something I plan to get rolling here in little ol’ Sioux Falls, South Dakota (which, I can assure you, isn’t actually that “little.”) It’ll be interesting because a lot of our online and social media-driven community is skewed to a younger demographic as far as the “professionals” would be considered, so something like a blogging alliance now could become a very long-lasting institution in this region. If, of course, we’re able to stick with it and build a solid foundation early on.
Looking forward to pursuing this and I appreciate you sharing the contents (and adding your ever-wise analysis to the concept as well).
I think networking or partnering in this way is perhaps one of the greatest ways to grow your blogs influence. Me and a few bloggers started working together about one year ago and have seen some great improvements.
But as things change and time is tight, it’s difficult to continue spending time working together when you don’t have time to keep up your own blog.
Another thing that is difficult is that as you work together you discover different political and financial views that are perhaps fundamental to your understanding and teaching. Therefore making it difficult to put aside what you believe would be the best information for your readers, by recommending another blogger with a different oppinion.
This is very true. I’ve experienced this on a smaller scale myself but one observation I would make about alliances is that they can get pretty boring for the readers. What I mean is, you can go from blog to blog to blog and all of the people in that little clique are writing about the exact same thing. If they do this frequently it gets tedious. Just sayin’. :-)
BRILLIANT & AMAZING .. nothing else to say !!
Great idea! I’m going to start implementing this =)
Hey ,
Those who are reading this .. any one actually intrested in do thing the same way .. I write in the field of Medicine and alternate health , lifestyle and yoga .Please email me to start such alliance with each other .What do you say ?
Thanks Darren with such neat post …
Regards
Sudeep
So much fantastic material here. I’ll be thinking hard about this in the next few days.
I’m wondering, though, about the informal nature of this blogging alliance. Is that an asset or a problem? Would it be better to formalize an agreement between blogging allies? Would that prevent conflicts – or spark them?
Any thoughts?
This is awesome and inspiring! Shows that a clinched fist is much more powerful than five fingers. I would love to do something like this.
This is a very interesting read. However i believe it will be hard to pull off by bloggers who just started out new as he wouldn’t know who to look for in forming this alliance. Nevertheless, if he’s lucky enough to find a couple, this will work extremely well. No doubt about it.
Here is another great example of the primary credo of any kind of direct marketing or network marketing campaign – IT’s ALL ABOUT BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS!
I think it is really a great idea, thanks for giving such a detailed and clear overview on how that works.
Last year on the Gaia community (with many discussion forums and every member has a blog) they had what they called a symposium. It was a subject where several people had been discussing about and they decided to write a blogpost on the subject in the course of one week.
So every day one person blogged about his view on the subject and the others where meant to comment on each blog.
This became a very exciting and energetic experience, althoug the subject was rather difficult (something like ‘enativism, integral theory and spirituality in the 21st century’).
But it was amazing to watch and even participate in and I could hardly wait to read each post and especially the comments that were made each time. And although they often did not agree (which made it the most interesting actually) there was much respect for each other.
Just like between the members of this Blogging Alliance as it seems. Seems like blogging of the future to me!
Brilliant article. Lots to think over. Thanks for sharing.
Outstanding insight. I am very interested in doing this myself. I think you have to have some pretty good relationships with other bloggers in order for it to work out the way it is intended.
This is a great idea. It just goes to show that in most things, “Together we stand, divided we (may) fall.” It’s also good that they decided to keep it small. Or at least they should be very picky (if any) in adding new members. In any large community, it is hard to keep everyone happy and everyone contributing.
This is one virtual utopia you could achieve in the net.
What an interesting idea! It sounds like a load of fun on top of being mutually beneficial (especially the weekend meet-up)! I bet there are other secret blogging alliances out there!
Some real food for thought, Darren.
This sort of thing should be really obvious, and yet, here I am not doing any of it. And I could be. I mean, I have the connections, and we do try to do this sort of stuff, but we don’t.
I think it’s time I had good long look at my approach to this whole blogging thing. You’ve really got to commit to it and put in all sorts of work if you want to make it a success, haven’t you.
Thanks again Darren.
Keep it up.
This sounds fantastic. I’m going to look into creating a version of my own. Thanks for sharing.
This is very informative and interesting. The interesting part is that Mom/Women Bloggers have been doing all of these things for years, just because it comes naturally to us. It is such a “male” thing to process through it before implementing, and formalize it, and it’s kind of cute.
I wouldn’t have even thought to write it down as a “guide,” because it has been so organic in our world. But you put it together very nicely, and I remember you pointing some of these things out through the years.
Maybe the larger blogging world in general can learn some things from Mom Bloggers, after al! ;)
What an interesting idea! I’m so glad you wrote about this conversation you had. It goes to show how much can be accomplished by working together.
I’ve done this with other webmasters and it is true, those that share in this way and just by ‘being in the next virtual office cubicle’ helps. Venting tends to help and that overwhelming feeling of being in this ‘all alone’ is gone when you network in this way. (_)? anyone want a beer…
*running out to buy a set of secret robes*
I really love this idea! Thanks for sharing!
Is there anyone here that would like form an alliance with me? I blog about empowering & inspiring entrepreneurs in the plus-size industry.
If so, don’t be shy. Connect with me via twitter @Kimmoy or on my site (click my name)
This is a great idea and it works wonders. It does take work though not only to support each other but to find people that are willing to put as much into the group as you are.
Sarah – Here, here! :-) I recently introduced a male friend to the world of web writing and he came to me all excited two weeks later, “Did you know you can comment on other people’s blogs and they will come to yours and comment too?” hehehehehe
Yes dear, it’s called “conversation”. Lol!
Still, I think the idea of having a slightly more formal arrangement if only for the accountability factor. If I KNOW someone will be commenting on a couple posts that week, then I better have a couple posts that week!
Angela <
Pretty sure I know who these guys are. I KNEW something was going on!
Excellent piece. I have often thought of doing something similar with my site. Glad to see there are like minded people out there.
The interestign follow up would be on how to develop one of these alliances. I firmly believe this idea would work.
I think many “new” blogs rise up together, because they are the ones commenting and linking to other blogs, while established blogs don’t need to.
Somehtign I’m interested in, but need to decide how to go about it.
I love this idea! I have a collaborative nature, so I love the idea of coming up with some “coworkers” and helping each other out, especially so you don’t feel alone and competitive within the niche.
I also love how you mention in the article that they’re not A-list bloggers but make enough to make it their job – gives me hope!!
I’ve seen this happen before…in fact I’m part of a not-at-all-secret alliance of bloggers.
In my particular niche (cocktails and spirits), a large group of bloggers met at Tales of the Cocktail last year and then kept in touch via email/IM/phone/blogs afterward. Eventually we started asking each other for contacts, story ideas, to share cocktail recipes and tasting notes on spirits and we realized that our value to both the reader and to the brands that were trying to connect with the readers was stronger when we worked together than apart.
So we formed an actual corporation (non-profit) to help foster better access to information and product for the bloggers, which meant that our readers all got more information that was better than what we got before. We even held our first conference less than a year after forming the Cocktails and Spirits Online Writers Group, along with our group blog and chat room at the Mixoloseum.com.
While none of us are living off of our blogs (I think we’re all still loss-leaders), our readership numbers are pretty much universally up, both brands and the public are paying more attention to us both individually and collectively, and we’re engaging the community in ways none of us would have been able to do on our own.
As a member of the group’s Board of Directors, I now spend my time almost evenly split between promoting my own blog and the CSOWG as a whole, and I have to say that it’s worth every bit of effort.
Given that 5 of them have turned blogging into a fulltime career, surely it has worked. Would love to explore such a collaboration, pity my niche is not popular with bloggers here in South Africa.
Some great ideas! And so obvious too if you think about it.
As for the informal nature of this blogging alliance, personally that is a strength for me. Rather than getting bogged down with formal agreements the team can just get on with the creative and collaborating bits.
I suspect that the real trick here is to identify like-minded, highly motivated bloggers who will be up for sticking ot the alliance for the long haul:-)
I love the pic of the lego men.
Its very late in Poland now, so I will read the rest in the morning since I haven’t got enough time to finish reading it now, but I enjoyed the little I read so far. Goodnight Daren.
this was fascinating and reinforced that a lot of what I’ve done within the knit-blogging community has paid off for me – and for those I’m connected with – we’ve supported each other, joined into activities together and generally helped build each other’s communities and blogging strengths. Also, we often admit to writing for each other. We have broader audiences but in our minds, posts are written for the specific audience of our closest friends – this is not meant to be exclusive – it actually helps build better blogs I think.
Yeah, commenting on each other’s blogs. That’s a biggie. Unfortunately, this doesn’t always work.Out of the hundreds of blogs I visit and comment on only a handful ever make any comments on my own blog. As they said, “…that one of their biggest frustrations was that while they spent hours each week writing their blogs that they always struggled to get comments – it was depressing. So they started commenting on each other’s posts.”
This does indeed stimulate other visitors to leave their own comments once they see other people doing likewise. Of course, I still comment on the other blogs from time to time. One never knows when they may wake up and do likewise.
Thanks for writing about this alliance it’s such a great idea to stay motivated and to keep working toward improvement. Often times it’s easier to work in a team atmosphere verse going it alone. Others naturally have strengths where you have weakness and I believe that life is a huge lesson to be learned from others. I’d be intrigued to read the blogs with in this alliance too bad you can’t reveal the sources.
I would love to find an alliance like that to bounce ideas off, to give and get feedback etc. I, like the alliance, find that it would be great to have more comments to find out what people are really thinking about my blog to be able to tweak and improve it. But as others have pointed out it would be a definite test to find the right bloggers to align with.
Thank you so much for finding and writing about this alliance. Though simple idea, it’s powerful when implemented as a whole by a group.
Kudos to the alliance for working together to create something great.
As someone just starting up a blog this is very intriguing and also inspiring. But like so many have said it’s all about relationships and conversing, but these people are taking it to another strategic level, and I can’t say anything bad about that. Good for them and for everyone else who makes a shift from ‘competing against’ to ‘working with’. Industry competition can easily be strategic alliances/partners. If not formally through legal partnerships & legal agreements then through informal alliances like this. Love, love, love it all.