Teamwork

I just spoke with 3 popular bloggers who have told me some exciting news about themselves. While each one is popular and successful in their own right, they’ve all seen a slow-down in advertising revenues recently on their individual blogs.

So, in the near future these 3 guys will be consolidating their separate industry related blogs into one joint-venture project. Their hope is that through consolidation and partnership they’ll be able to provide a much better overall product for all of their readers, and that this will translate into increased overall readership levels, and then higher advertising dollars.

I told them I wanted to post about this and they’ve asked me not to disclose their blogs/names since they’re still working out the final details for their project and haven’t made an official notice to their own readers yet, so I will respect their wishes on that as it’s the general idea of bloggers partnering which interests me more anyway.

This makes a lot of sense to me. I think I offer some good information for folks who are just starting out with their first online projects, but I’m not capable of covering everything that would interest my readers all by myself, and I can only offer my own perspective on the themes I do cover. If there were a few more people with experience contributing with me on the blog, wouldn’t that give readers more information and ideas to work with? Absolutely.

Now, I don’t rely on this blog for any income, but if I did then I would probably be considering the idea of partnering with additional bloggers to build it into a bigger and better product.

Global Partnerships

It got me to wondering if more bloggers were considering similar partnerships, especially since the online economy is losing ground just like the real world economy recently? I don’t mean joining some blog network where you basically become a paid (often underpaid) blogger, but rather joining with other bloggers who cover the same general themes and rolling 2 or 3 or more individual blogs into one.

My first concern with considering a move would be how the finances are divided. I asked my 3 blogger friends how they’re planing to address this and thankfully they were kind enough to elaborate for me.

Basically, they’re planning to use the OpenX adserving platform to equally distribute advertising on the new blog. Each of the 3 bloggers will have their own advertiser’s account in the OpenX software, plus there will be a 4th “Default” advertiser running limited AdSense ads from which the earnings will be used to cover the site expenses like hosting.

This way, each blogger can have an even share of the advertising displays across the site, and use them to display whatever type of advertising they want. From AdSense to direct paid ads from individuals or companies, each blogger will fill their advertising display spots on their own. That means blogger #1 can sell advertising opportunities on the site to whomever he wishes, and blogger #2 can sell them to whoever he wants… or they can each just display ads from their own accounts with networks such as Google or Commission Junction.

To be honest I’d worry about placing AdSense in an OpenX display because there doesn’t seem to be a clear answer on if it violates the AdSense TOS or not, though I know lots of folks are doing so and haven’t heard of anyone losing their AdSense account because of it. But still, if you rely heavily on AdSense for your income then doing anything that might be ‘close to the edge’ with your AdSense code is risky.

I do like the idea of using a software like OpenX and giving each contributing blogger an equal share of ad impressions. It keeps the revenue divided to avoid any dangers of 1 person becoming greedy, however the flip side is if the partners don’t view each other as equals it could lead to resentments like “Hey, my posts attract more readers than yours, so I should get a larger percentage of advertising impressions to sell”. That’s the thing about partnerships, they can be advantageous but they aren’t always easy to maintain harmony through.

Another concern for me might be that with a partnership you give up some level of control over the final product. As a very simple example, you couldn’t just go and change the blog theme on a whim like you might with your own blog on a partnership site. The same would apply to installing plugins or other tweaking that might affect the whole blog and visitors.

Again, this is really something that boils down to the partners being able to work in harmony. If everyone gets along super well, or if you can establish a democratic process for decision making that everyone agrees to, then you may be able to avoid major frictions and focus on building a great site and following.

Every situation would be unique, but personally I really like the idea of multi-contributor blogs. Some of my current favorite blogs already have multiple authors, and some began as multi author projects.

And at a time when it could be financially beneficial for more individual bloggers to come together on projects I see a lot of opportunity here for a blogger who is having trouble growing their current blog, or even retaining readership and revenue levels in the current markets.

With more people turning to the web for ways to supplement their income, or replace their lost paychecks after corporate cutbacks, collaborative blogging is an avenue that I think is worth considering. It doesn’t require partners who are already established with their own blogs, a few people who are blogging for the first time could find an easier path to entry and a faster growth of readership and revenues by partnering in some manner.

What do you think about it?

Image Credits “Teamwork” by Playingwithbrushes and “Global Partnerships” by Pablo H of Flickr - licensed under the CC

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Technorati Tags: Blogging, partnership, teamwork

At the request of a friend I met today with a small group of young, aspiring webpreneurs. These are exactly the kind of people I hope to be connecting with here on the Leap blog, so I was excited about getting a more personal interaction and some instant feedback.

The meeting was very productive, the people were great and I learned a little about how the things I was talking about (the same things I write about here) were being received. Not all of it as I expected or intended, so that will help me do better here going forward.

Here are 2 things I took from it that I wanted to share right away here.

Where’s The Beef?

The big question all of them had for me was did I think now was a bad time to start a web business of any kind?

That’s a fair question and I had anticipated it might come up. Attempting a very poor Senator Ted Stevens impression, I coldly yelled “NO!” to the room. They laughed, but I’m not sure they really knew why.

Here is my reasoning as I explained it to them. Right now lots of small operations are going down. Heck, lots of big companies are dropping to. It’s a terrible time to be an established business with operational costs that were budgeted long before this current down turn hit.

It’s a fact of business that the bigger and more established you become, the more intricate and detailed everything gets, the more you have to operate on a projected budget and the harder it becomes to react to real time conditions.

So when things get tight they have to trim costs in areas other than where they really want to. So people lose jobs, service and support levels decrease, the company image takes hits… it just snowballs. And ultimately, some go completely under.

And while all of that is sad, remember that we’re talking about real people losing their jobs, but the flip side to that is these companies which go under leave a void in their marketplaces, and for the nimble startup who isn’t working on projections from numbers of last year yet that’s an opportunity to launch from.

This applies to companies and startups of all sizes, even the lone-ranger home based startup.

Right now, I assure you, there are a lot of people who have been struggling to make a go at Internet Marketing–maybe you’re one of them–and they are debating with themselves over giving up or plowing forward.

Some will quit. It’s sad to see someone give up their dreams but completely understandable. There are bills to pay, hungry mouths to feed. A steady paycheck from anywhere becomes very attractive when everything seems to be going against you.

But some will stay with it. Those who do will find new elbow room in their niches as others leave. Suddenly they go from being Guppies to Sharks in the same tank.

My point is that if you can afford to do it, then I believe this is a opportunistic time to start up.

It isn’t an easy time. Just because someone else left a void in the marketplace doesn’t mean customers who weren’t spending money with them will buy your products, they may still not spend money for a while and you’ll have to be ready for that.

But, with less crowded waters it is an opportunity for the noobie to really learn how to swim them. To become intimate with your market and get to know your customer’s needs and expectations, so you’ll be fully prepared for the inevitable economic upswing when it comes and they start spending again.

AdSense is great for site publishers! Except for most of the time when it’s the wrong choice…

I talked with the group today a little bit about adsense. And after a few minutes I realized that I was giving them the wrong impression (in my opinion) that adsense is always a reliable and safe revenue stream.

In-fact, I think it is when used on the right kind of web site. But I also think it’s a waste and counter-productive for a majority of web sites.

Here’s what I really think about it in-case I’ve given the wrong impression here on the blog in the past.

If you run a web site where visitors might be looking for a service oriented solution to some problem, then adsense is a fantastic way to monetize your pages.

Put yourself into the mind of the common visitor to your site. What problems are they going to be facing and seeking solutions for? Are the solutions to those problems typically process or product based?

If the answer is process based then you have a good site for running adsense on. Especially if the process is usually performed by some type of professional.

However, if the solution is typically product based, meaning any sort of tool or even a learning aid that would help your visitor eventually perform the process for themselves with no professional help required, then you would be foolish to put adsense on your pages and earn pennies for clicks where you could have earned dollars by putting an affiliate ad for the product in that same place.

I know adsense is easy to setup and start seeing fast money with, but it’s small potatoes compared to what you could earn with the same page real estate through an affiliate product.

So, when appropriate I love adsense, but most of the time I just don’t think it’s appropriate.

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Technorati Tags: AdSense, internet marketing

In yesterday’s post, What to Blog About?, and in the later comments I used an example of content researching for someone starting a blog about acne just to illustrate that even topics which you might not normally think would have a lot of online active communities likely do if you just search for them.

My intention was not to say anyone should go and use the personal sufferings of people afflicted with any medical condition to simply build profitable niche sites about. One reader’s email contact questioned me on this, so I wanted to be sure I was clear on that.

Honestly, my posting yesterday had nothing to do with “what to build sites about” for anybody, it was just a sharing of existing resources for anyone who might be starting a site on any topic at all.

It doesn’t matter if your site is about remote control toys or breast cancer, that just wasn’t the question I was addressing. The point was to show that whatever you may be starting a site (or blog) about, you can find good communities online already where the existing conversations can help to spark content ideas for you.

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Technorati Tags: Blogging, internet marketing

I don’t think it matters if you want to start a blog for personal reasons or as a possible online money making venture, if you want to gain a decent sized and loyal readership following you’ve got to focus in on a specific topic.

The problem is when you start looking at topics (or niches) to start a blog about it can seem like there’s already too much competition out there for you to compete with.

Personally, I view blogs a little differently from normal niche marketing web sites, so I don’t see other blogs as competition but rather proof (if they’re popular) that the topic is an interesting one to discuss–and a new blog will just be an addition to the discussions.

Still, I understand the hesitation or intimidations of trying to step in where one or more A-lister blogs may already exist.

So, what’s a guy (or gal) to do?

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Technorati Tags: blog writing, idea research

I usually try to not work/blog on Sundays, it’s my family time; but after hearing of Gawker Media’s latest pay scale reductions I thought this was an interesting discussion to have. Especially considering my involvement with Content Caboodle, where article writers are paid on a pageview basis for their articles; as well as owning several blogs myself where I also pay bloggers for their participation and efforts based on pageviews.

I have always favored the pay for pageviews model over straight purchased content from writers, mainly because I think it’s better for the writer.

I know that many are upset with the reductions in pay scales across several blog/web media companies recently, there’s plenty of bitching in the blogoshpere today about Gawker’s latest move, but lets put this into some perspective before forming our opinions.

Under the more traditional model of purchasing content from freelance writers, if I were to pay someone $0.25 per word for a 400 word piece that would be a flat rate of $100 for the writer. Not too bad, but if you’ve spent any time in the freelance writing market online lately then you know there are fewer and fewer publishers paying over $0.10 per word because the labor pool has become saturated; and at $0.10 per word that 400 word piece would only earn the writer $40.

But, let’s stick with the $0.25 per word rate and $100 payout for that 400 word piece to be fair. That’s a flat $100 for their efforts and the publisher owns full rights to the material, preventing the author from repurposing it elsewhere for additional revenue. The writer is maxed out at that $100 earning from the piece.

Now, let’s look at the pay for pageviews model. At $5 per 1,000 pageviews–which is what Gawker has reduced their rates to–if a writer gets 1,000,000 pageviews (Gawker writer, Richard Lawson received 1.2 million pageviews in February 2008 according to Portfolio.com), then they would earn $5,000 from their works.

Okay, but that’s collectively over a whole month and not for just a single writing.

Well, sure…but even if the author published a posting every single day for 30 days then at the flat rate of $100 per piece (s)he would still have only earned $3,000 for the month, regardless of how popular those writings might be.

So, the $5,000 they’d earn in from the pageview model is still 66% higher.

And for a writer who is particularly good and engaging, there is no ceiling to max out at with the pay for pageviews model. The better your output, the more readers you’ll attract and the more money you can earn.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the disappointment and emphasize with the bloggers who were used to earning higher rates for their writing. I don’t want this to sound like I’m taking the side of publishers completely; I’m not.

The problem, in my opinion, is that many of these publishers were dumb about how they started out. They began paying high scales (to attract talent), and were prepared to lower their scales in adjustments once they were rolling to compensate for initially over-paying if needed based on income.

When I began paying bloggers I started with lower pay rates (and actually, several of our current bloggers began as unpaid Interns) and was able to adjust upwards once I had a clear picture of what the site revenue would be.

This made it harder to attract good writers early on, but I accepted that because I knew once the pay-scale leveled out we’d be close to what others were paying (without paying out to the point we were in the red), and that the writers who were with us through that time would be appreciative of the rising adjustments rather than upset with the lowering cuts.

What’s funny is that most of the writers publishing with us are making the same as Gawker’s writers do now, and they’re all happy. Oh, I’m sure they’d be happier making more money, but wouldn’t we all?

But the important point is that none of the writers feel any animosity towards me or the blogs they write for over having suffered pay cuts.

I will add that I said “most” of our writers are at that $5 per 1,000 pageview range because in most markets that I have sites in that’s the pay level we can sustain and remain profitable.

There are a few markets where it’s slightly lower than that and writers on our sites in those markets are still earning less than the $5 per 1,000 rate because of it.

But I see that as comparable to how the world works in general when you’re a service provider–which is how I classify online publishing; as an entertainment/informational service.

For example, a cashier at a specialty boutique on Rodeo drive may earn twice as much as the cashier at your local grocery store will. They’re both doing the same basic job, but the marketplace is different between the 2 stores which accounts for the differences in pay scales.

The same is true with online publishing as well. There’s far more revenue to be made with a Technology or Financial related site than there is with a History or Fishing related site. With each different topic comes a different marketplace, and that creates different levels of pay that publishers can afford to remain profitable.

The bottom line is I feel fair pay for bloggers (or other online content producers) is a variable, depending upon the market they’re writing in. However, it should be something above what they could reasonably expect to earn if they sold their writings outright in one-off deals on a per word basis.

What do you think is fair?

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Technorati Tags: blog for pay, Blogging, paid blogging