Erik’s Blog: Board Shorts and Business Suits

I’ve been doing a bit of researching on business models and plans for building an online media and entertainment company and stumbled across a few interesting articles about Weblogs, Inc.’s early days when Jason Calacanis was a pie in the sky dreamer it seems like.

The article was found from this reporting and deals with the critique of Weblogs, Inc.’s business plan. The critique was done way back in 2003 by Nick Denton when Weblogs, Inc was first starting out and Jason had big plans for how he was going pay bloggers with revenue share. (Nick Denton is the publisher behind Gawker Media.)

The article sites an early wired news article about the beginnings of weblog empires and how Calacanis want[ed] to take the industry (which was just starting and what he knew little about) and turn it into a money making machine.)

The articles are filled with doubts and rightly so. It appears Calacanis knew little about the blog world. However, as I’ve said in many conversations outside of this blog, a blog is just a fancy name for a newspaper or magazine which is just a media reporting medium and entertainment delivery system. Jason had been around for a while, through the bubble of the late nineties, starting Silicon Alley Reporter, and involved with the media and entertainment businesses and bringing them online.

Very interesting reads about all the early talk of what blogs could someday become. Even Jeff Jarvis of the great buzz machine had in on the talks of a weblog network when he spoke of Calacanis, Bubble Boy, and a crazy idea.

A lot of people, and I’m guilty as well, are jumping into the internet without a business plan in mind. They go in and even though they may claim to be an entrepreneur for sake of building clout with others like them (guilty again) they aren’t really building towards anything. They’re cloaking a hobby with words like entrepreneur, business person, start-up, mogul. Most phizzle off because they don’t have a good outlook for their business.

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in trying to become an Entrepreneur is to have an outlook for the business you are trying to create. You may not have a set plan, and for those of you who can’t even plan what’s for dinner the next night those words will be like music to your ears.

But you need to a plan for the next month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, and then a long term outlook. Of course these can change as you go along. There’s nothing wrong with having a fluid business outlook. You just need to keep to what you write. You need to stick to your plan as best you can.

As an example I’ll apply it to Blogtown Press:

1 month: Work on On-Site Search Engine Optimization and continue to get as many inbound links from directories as possible. (Or as time will allow). Build the internal workings of each page and have a sound backbone for search engines to find the information they’re looking for.

3 month: Continue to build the archives on all the blogs, and launch several new blogs. Within 3 months I see the Blogtown Press Blog Network consisting of at least 20 blogs. As they grow I will continue to try out new writers and possibly have several more writers working of Blogtown Press.

6 month: Although this depends on Google, work on all the factors that increase PageRank and try to achieve a page rank of 5 on at least 8 blogs. Having Page Rank will allow me to have more authority within the blogging community and especially look better for advertisers and increase my traffic. By slowly establishing Blogtown Press, at 6 months from now, I will become more of an authority on the subjects our blogs focus on.

1 year: Have a network of sites focused on Blogtown Press that brings in $5000 a month earnings. This is a bit lofty but you have to shoot for the stars. I say a network of sites because I am thinking about launching a forum shortly. I see Blogtown Press and it’s partners bringing in several network sponsors where I don’t have to go through intermediaries like Google and TLA (although I still love you guys). I would also like to be providing several writers with full-time gigs making several $100 a month.

From this business outlook I can now list at least 10 things I need to do to get me to each of those milestones.

Now you do a business outlook.

I was originally going to put this link I found on paid links in my weekend entrepreneurial links post but then did some digging and decided it needed some separate post attention!

I found an interesting article on one of my semi-regular blog stops OsWorld.biz that glared out at me with the title The Death of Paid Links. Yep you read it right and it isn’t just an eye catcher.

As I dug deeper into what sparked Oli’s post I found a few sites that discussed the topic of Google using others to combat paid links as a way to boost PR and not traffic. (How the hell are they going to do that is beyond me) But the post in question is from Matt Cutt’s blog, the leader of Google’s webspam team, where he casually brings up the fact that there’s an easy way for webmasters to report paid links.

Well that casual blog post sparked a huge uproar that has 523 comments and counting!!!

Comments range from WTF to more sane comments that are really trying to understand how the system won’t be abused and how an algorithm will be able to figure out if the link was bought strictly for boosting PR or for traffic purposes.

I for one am clueless as to how they could possibly trust a reporting system that is utilized by the very people who buy links to take over the spot from other webmasters. Won’t webmasters report links that may not even be paid for links simply to lower the ranking of the both the sites, in turn making their site the higher ranking site.

Does this list go on and on with the flaw in what is being proposed here?

I’d also like to point out the Matt several times says he is just trying to widen the dataset for testing purposes. Although he doesn’t say it isn’t being counted this may mean that they’re just trying out their cracked out idea. Also mentioned, here and responds to a lot of good points here.

The most intriguing comment of the first 150 that I got through was one by Scott Fish (I’m assuming the DP regular) who brings up the clearest thoughts on the subject here discussing how they’re going to know.

Also of interest to a lot of you out there is probably this post at weblog tools collection about sponsoring themes.

I’d like to finish with a little advice. Try and use real SEO techniques noted in this Calacanis challenge update.

What do you all think?

One of the biggest things I’ve learned in building my blog network is that I should really listen to what I read. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve browsed a blog post that says “Follow these steps to sure fire win SEO,” or something like that. Even if these bloggers were just writing what they read somewhere else I should have listened.

Over the past three months I’ve begun to organize and focus my efforts of SEO and you might not be surprised but, it worked. Not only do I have time working on my side (older domains do better) but I am actually seeing results with the keywords that I’m targeting. Some of my blogs are the number 1 Google search result for those keywords. Even blogs where all I was doing was link building instead of content creation. Tops!

Then one day I happened across a manual being freely distributed over a Digital Point. This isn’t a new eBook (at least I don’t think) but it’s a very detailed look at several methods to SEO. It gives tons of information that I wish someone would have printed out back when I started building blogs online and smacked me over the head with it.

I’ve written a little blurb similar to this over at Blogging on Empty and instead of redirecting you there to read the post I’ll just give you the direct link.

SEO Made Easy PDF by Brad Callen.

If I had to make a list of things that I would suggest you do with your SEO plan it would be the following.

Then just hammer on this. The book talks about determining where the top sites in Google search results have their links to but I found this to be difficult at first. I focused on good sites with a high PR that have been around a little while and seemed to do just fine.

Give r’ a whirl.

So the Blogtown Press blog network isn’t quite where I had hoped it would be 6 months after it’s launch back in November. But it has taught me a lot.

One of the main things it has taught me is that you have to be a go getter when it comes to the world of building a network of sites. You can’t sit around and wait for advertisers to come to you, wait for Google to make you rise in the ranks or make visitors visit your blogs. You have to do the steps to get them.

The steps that you read every single day from every other entrepreneurial blog regurgitating the same rhetoric, “link exchange, mind your PR, post regularly, stick to one niche.” You’d think I would have learned by now. But it’s taken me a year of learning from experience.

I know spend most of my free time at night and in the morning paging through Digital Point Forums looking for exchanges and deals to sell links on all the blogs in the network. It’s a lot of work and now I’m working at streamlining that process so people can find all the information at once.

In doing this I started to realize that I haven’t done that bad. I could have done worse. In my last earnings report I reported that Blogtown Press, including this blog, made roughly $350.00, showing that we’re making progress!

Also I began to work on a network page for advertisers to go to that makes it easier for them to see all the important stats about the blog network. Things like, PR, indexed pages, backlinks, uniques, RSS, etc. It’s all over at out new Blogtown Press Blog Network Advertising Page. Most of it is automated and as I work along I’ll figure out a way to automate everything.

But it gives advertisers a great snap shot of the network to see where they’d best fit their brands or products.

As I was doing this I noticed that the network now gets over 1800 unique visitors per day, has over 340 RSS subscribers (OK this is really low) and has over 1200 posts!

I’ve been told personally by several prominent bloggers, as well as read countless times that the easiest way to launch another blog or website is to have an audience. Of course this is quite obvious, and of course I didn’t follow the advice.

Launching Blogtown Press would have been much easier had I really focused on building the traffic to this blog first. Instead, I decided to spread myself thin write on 5-10 blogs at a time and get mediocre traffic to all of them, then launch the blog network, then get minimal traffic to all blogs in the network.

Since then I’ve revamped my thought process and along the way built several of the blogs in the network to good traffic. I’ve followed good SEO technique to rank higher in the search engines, hired bloggers to increase content generation and allow me to spend time on promotion, and I’ve slowed down on launching new blogs.

Next launch I’ll have an audience!

The proper way to launch a website can be seen from the video I have embedded below. It’s a clip from some tech show, The Screen Savers, that Kevin Rose, founder of digg.com co-hosted (or have a spot on or something).

In this short little clip you’ll see Kevin Rose use his current position at this TV show to weave into the show a little segment about social news and bookmarking websites out there at the time (2004 the video says) and their shortcomings. He then goes on to talk about this new social bookmarking site that solves some of these shortcomings.

The website he mentions just happens to be digg.com which he leaves out the part that he founded. Now whether or not that was semi-shady to use his position of what looks like all knowing geek power or not. It’s a pretty slick move and no doubt helped him get the word out. Pretty sweet move Kevin

As I said in my last article, I’d like to try my best to help others build their blog networks, and in doing so I’ve put together a little list of articles that I think might help some of you work your way towards a successful blog network.

1-5: Should you Start a Blog Network

Darren of Problogger.net wisdom writes about why you should join a blog network. Knowing why others would want to join a blog might give you more insight while recruiting bloggers.

Then Darren turns right around and tells us all why you shouldn’t join a blog network. Again, you can use this to counter anyone elses doubts about joining your network.

As if you didn’t need more to add to your doubt about starting a blog network, here’s a little begging the question are blog networks worth the money.

The recently controversial (due to their name) problogging.com network asks the question to network or not to network.

Should you start a spam blog network? Before you do, maybe you should read this great article over at plagiarismtoday.com about the birth of a spam blog network.

6-14: How-to Articles on Starting a Blog Network

Building focus in your Blog Network - I’m gonna start off with that first article I wrote, because I think it’s one of the most important things to think about when starting a blog network. In this new world of “everyone has a blog”, you need to use your time wisely to move to the top of the list. You need to focus on one niche, then build from there. Once you have income, you can create more time by paying others to write for you.

I’ve always liked this post by Mark Cuban about Blogs that just write about other blogs. There’s a lot of them out there, some of the most popular, where I get information, are of this type. Should you use this model in your network.

Why not listen to the President of B5 Media about blog networks. He may have something worth following.

10 Questions to Ask a Blog Network within this article by Jeremy Wright will give you a big advantage over the next guy or gal if you always keep this in mind while building your blog network.

Mac Slocam of the fodder network lists 5 mistakes he made in his first year in a blog network. These are always big gems when you can hear mistakes others makes.

Richard at ReadWriteWeb.com talks about sticking with niches. Which is always a good lesson.

Here’s a list of 10 things for your blog network to take it through the Web 2.0.

Here’s a top 5 list about how to make your blog network standout.

Although not a step-by-step guide, this how to create a blog network article can get you started in the right direction.

17-32: Making Money from Blogging and Blog Networks

Making money from blogs is tough, and if you want to start a blog network with many blogs, focused on different topics, that’s even tougher. Yaro Starak over at Entrepreneur’s Journey has put together a killer series on looking at blogging as a sustainable business model and what it takes to be a professional blogger. Whether you manage them or are one these articles will help.
I - Blogging as a Sustainable Business Model
II - Can you be a professional Blogger
III - Advantages Top Bloggers Have
IV - Key Resource For Sustainable Blogging
V - Are there more Business Blogging Models

Here’s a few interesting articles on the mother of all blog networks, Weblogs Inc. They’re from Blog Herald and deals with payments from weblogs inc and the other is and extension of the first and is about the state of pay rates in blog networks. Although it’s from 2005, it gives you a little more info and keeps you going on your blog network.

Performancing has an old article about payment models for blog networks and can help you out if you’re trying to figure out what to pay bloggers on your network.

Another Good article about payments for bloggers come from Blog Herald and looks into what’s the best payment model for a blog network owner. Abe Olandres looks at B5 media and Weblogs, Inc.

David Peralty of BloggingPro.com explains how payed blogging works. He lists several possible options like funding it from your own pockets, revenue sharing and using other projects as a fund source.

David also has a great article with actually blog payment numbers $$$. This is really what everyone wants to see anyway.

Jon over at the ArtofMoney.com recently posted about needing $130,000 to start his blog network. Which if you don’t want to spend all the time in the world blogging, promoting, link building, etc, etc, you may need a good chunk of change to really make an impact in the blogging world.

John Chow blogs about his blogs income for a few months which is always entertaining. He also helps you learn how to best monetize blogs with and without Google.

Here’s a good Wall Street Journal article discussing blogs and can they make sustainable money. The article features Weblogs Inc founder Jason Calacanis and JupiterMedia dude Alan Meckler. (Can you guess which one thinks they can and which one doesn’t?)

Rogers Cadenhead, of cadenhead.org, responds to a recent Toronto Star article in which they wrote a claim that only 100 of the 65 million blogs make money. Small articles, not as outlandish as you may think.

Here’s an old post about what to pay bloggers and how B5 Media caught heat during some fo there earlier rounds. Although there are enough blog networks out there and people realize you can probably make more joining a network (promoting, traffic, monetizing all takes lots of time), this article gives you more insight.

The blog-republic.com, a blog network itself, has some great articles about starting and maintaining a blog network. One, A Business model for small blog networks talks about how smaller networks might want to begin making money from their blogs.

33-41: The Bad and the Good about Blog Networks

The CEO of 9 Rules wrote recently over at his blog about Why Blog Networks Failed. It’s quite insightful and why not learn from what others fail at to help you succeed. This article also sparked quite a few other articles that I list here about blog networks failing. I included most of them cause you can learn a thing or two from each commentary on this wisdump post.

And here’s a rebuttal by VC’s. Tell us what you think about the VC money that’s now started to trickle into blog networks. Could it be that they actually do have a place in the business world.

Nate Ritter began a blog network related series about how to start a blog network that looks like it should have more in the series, (I but I couldn’t find them.) It’ll help you get those juices flowing.

The problogging dilemma, is there a dilemma? Do you blog your passion? If you’re starting a blog network you may want to start with blogging your passion because it’ll keep you going. But can you make money from starting a blog network about your passion?

How about one called why blog networks suck. Interesting points, good things to avoid? Warning though, sorry to send you to a site with a popup ad. (People still use these? that aren’t at sitepoint.com?)

A top 40 Blog Networks list to give you something to shoot for. There’s a lot of blog networks out there but making it to the top takes something special. Learn what these networks have that yours might not.

The popular SEOBook.com gave their opinion on why blog networks suck in that article. However, they did mention B5 Media as a prime example of “why we don’t need more networks” and that was before B5 raised $2 mil. None the less, once again, learn from the critics.

Although I don’t agree that “blog networks are fading,” having it pointed out once again that Weblogs Inc took 18-24 months to build some of their blogs readership can be relief when you hit road bumps.

Blog Networks in the limelight is an article that talks about money raised, networks that have failed, and networks that have succeeded. Good resource.

And there you have it. I hope these articles help you on your way to starting a blog network. I have followed a lot of the advice and need to learn more to help grow my blog network even more.

I’ve been contacted by several people asking questions like:

How do I start a blog network?
How do I make money from a blog network?
How do I hire bloggers?
Where do I find bloggers to hire?

And the list goes on. To all those that have asked me and who I haven’t responded to, I’m super sorry. Saying I’m rather busy isn’t a good excuse. However, since I’ve been asked many of the same questions regarding blog networks.

I’ll start by telling you a little gem, that really isn’t all that secret. However, if you’re like me, even though a million people tell you the same thing, or you read the same thing a million times, chances are you’re probably not going to follow the advice. There’s just something about learning for yourself that entrigues most people.

If you are limited on money and time, which most non-probloggers are, then let me tell you to take this advice and think about it everytime you make a decision regarding your blog network. If you had all the money to pay enough people to create more time in the day you wouldn’t really need this advice, if not then, The advice is to…

Start with Focus!!!

Simple enough to read, but to stick to it is tough. If you look at the big networks out there, the older Weblogs, Inc., B5 Media, and other blog networks out there, they all have or had one or two main blogs, focused on a pretty narrow topic (Think Engadget, and Blogging) and gained an audience for those blogs, built their position in search engines, focused on building links, and built them as a true source of content for their particular niche.

Once that was in place, they had well established blogs, both in the human eye, and in the search engine world, which is prime.

From the human side of things you get a person that goes and looks at engadget, they see a link to a few of the other blogs in your network, and then they look around, spread the word, it builds and builds, people talk, soon your generic cancer blog is primo too.

Then on the computer side, search engines love links, they love content, become an expert in one niche, you can slowly branch from there until your gadget blog builds PR and essentially search engine ranking for that obscure sewing blog in your blog network.

But the key factor here is that unless you have a ton of money to pay bloggers in the beginning, you need to focus your time on one or two blogs covering a smaller niche and build all the links you can, and get traffic to it. Trust me it works. Exchange links, build readers, and then expand.

I worked backwards. I started several blogs at first and then went to a more focused approach and his helping by leaps and bounds. I’m refocusing on my Hawaii blog which I hope to use as a spring board for the other blogs, that already have a ton of content.

If I had to do it again I would focus all my efforts on the Hawaii blog for 6 months and then expand.

Take my advice. Don’t expand early. I’m nowhere near where I could be had I focused on one or two blogs and then built out.

I’m thinking of undertaking a large shift in my blog network development and I’m finding the need for a Wordpress and Database Guru. I’ve thought about using a CMS like Joomla but I don’t think that it will be quite what I want and have too much extra junk that I don’t need.

So what I’m looking for is someone who knows the ins and outs of Wordpress really well, knows MySQL and also knows Java fairly well too. I know enough to get me by and I’m sure if I had about 40 more hours in the week to work on just programming I could find a way to develop what I want. But I don’t and I need to be efficient.

Therefor I’m asking my readership if they are or know anyone who is very keen at tinkering with wordpress, setting up and interacting with PHP and MySQL, and knows how to integrate all of that as well as throw in some JAVA. If you or they know how to and would like to do the design work as well that would be great!

I’m sure there’s a lot of small groups of people that run design “houses” but I just don’t know of them and would love it if any of you could point me in the right direction.

Thanks all, hope I get some good responses. I of course would offer money, possible profit sharing from the network, and maybe even some ownership of my to be formed corporation.

I recently sent out my monthly traffic report to the Blogtown Press bloggers and was able to report some great news! Ever since I launched the network with my link-baiting contest and hired bloggers I’ve been able to promote and create more incoming links, which I am happy to report has helped immensely.

Below is a quick recap over the past few months of the effects the contest, hiring writers, and focusing more on link building and site promotion has had on my network. The graph below displays only the 12 main blogs within the Blogtown Press Blog Network and doesn’t include this blog “Board Shorts and Business Suits”.

As you can see the increase, percentage wise is very large. My numbers are still relatively low compared to other Blog Networks, but the possibilities to grow are noticeable. From the Novemeber Blog Network Launch to the end of last month Blogtown Press has seen a 393% increase in pageviews and a 480% increase in uniques. (Sounds much better than 3.9 and 4.8 times more visitors don’t you think )

As for this blog, I’ve increased my unique visitors by 293% and my pageviews by 265% since November. I really feel like I can get my pageviews up with a few quick tweaks and more internal linking, but that’s another subject altogether.

I’m going to continue to push forward with the techniques I’m using right now as well as some new ones that I inevitably learn along the way.