Archive for July, 2007
How many puns can you squeeze in a H2 tag?
A quick scan of the search phrases used to locate AustralianBlogs over the past month yielded some interesting results. AustralianBlogs has had fantastic support from the gay blogs community since our launch early last year, and a quick scan of the relevant tags reveals a vibrant and tightly-knit pillar of the local blogosphere.
Want to know more? Listen out for the upcoming podcast where we break down the stats.
I was fortunate enough to read this story from the Weekend Australian magazine after coming home from a long day at work. I was ‘burping’ my little boy (who is only 4.5 weeks old) in between paying my eldest (a 3.5 year old) somewhat incoherent spurts of parental attention - whilst my wife put the finishing touches on the evening’s meal.
The newborn had the expected disruptive effect on our normally smooth household routine and I had wondered over the preceding few days, “when will it get back to normal again?”
Suffice to say, after reading this story I am feeling appropriately sheepish.
Jackson is a young man with an intellectual disability, however with the help of his family he is the sole employee of JACKmail - a Canberra-based courier service that provides a post office pickup and delivery service.
I don’t want to dilute this great story - still evolving as Sally, Jack’s mum continues her efforts to ensure a full life for him.
In any industry just like any sports, there are usually two set plays - get big OR get smaller.
Not one to play small ball and send on a team of point guards, b5media (home of fellow aussies problogger and shaicoggins - and until recently, duncanriley) continue their push towards advertising critical mass with the acquisition of Level9.
With Level9’s eight blogs topping up b5media’s 230 existing blogs, they pull in a reported 3 million uniques a month - funded by the 2 million they raised recently.
Certainly, the network effect of crosslinking between blogs of the same stable would assist in reinforcing and recycling existing traffic - similar to Seven’s ‘Better Homes & Garden’ magazine driving traffic to its TV series of the same name and downstream/cross-selling to its other shows in parallel markets (eg the renovation shows, lifestyle et al).
I’d love to pop the hood on their financials, they are obviously subsisting(?) on a combination of direct ads, adsense, textlinkads, auctionads and a variety of other networks but the publishing game is about getting a couple of winners in the crew. I would bet a portion of my heavily-mortgaged residence that problogger would represent the bulk of the traffic/uniques, and Darren would not give up a prize like that without demanding a bigger cut of the revenue pie. So what would that leave you as b5media?
Would you make up for the difference by:
- paying lower retainers/profit shares to other lower-ranked blogs in the network
- drive higher ad payout rates by selling direct
- negotiate better payout rates with (e.g.) Adsense on the back of your size
Compounding this would be keeping blogger attrition rates down (i.e. bloggers interested and blogging for b5media) whilst searching for the next blog equivalent of the iPod (and then hoping that you’ve locked in that blogger for at least a little while).
The poster child of beancounters everywhere, Tim Pethick, the founder of Nudie Juice gives a great interview in the Robert Half podcast (not a bad idea for a bunch of headhunters to spread the viral street cred).
If you have a blog or are starting a blog, you could almost substitute [name of your blog] every time Tim says ‘Nudie’ and apply the same marketing principles.
He’s a very articulate speaker and very much worth the 30 min investment.
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