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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