Why You Shouldn’t Join a Blog Network

Having looked at some of the advantages of joining a blog network it’s only fair that we look at the flip side. Blog networks will not suit every blogger’s personality, style and goals and you should take into account the following before signing up for one:

1. Revenue Split - While I argued in my previously post that a positive of joining a network is that it can potentially bring in a higher revenue to your blog – the downside is that with most blog networks you will be sharing this revenue with the owners of it in some way. In the larger more established networks you are likely to be paid a flat rate per month for posting a certain amount of posts and might be paid incentives based upon factors like traffic and revenue. In smaller and newer networks the revenue is generally shared between network and blogger in some way (usually some sort of percentage split). The methods of payment are varied but at the heart of all of them is that you don’t get every cent your blog owns. If you’re not willing to share a blog network might not be for you.

2. Ownership/Rights – Once again there are variations between networks when it comes to who retains ownership of content – but this is a key question that you’ll want to explore with the network before signing up. In many networks the content that you produce as a blogger is fully owned by the blog network and in a sense you are just contracted to write for them. This means that if you leave the network you leave with nothing but the earnings you earned during your stay. Other networks allow you to retain ownership but ask for some sort of exclusive rights to user your content in different forums. Other networks use a joint ownership system where both you and the network owns the content. There is no wrong or right way for content ownership to be viewed in my opinion – but it’s definitely something to think through before you join a network. Questions to ask a network might include:

• who owns the content?
• who owns the URL?
• what happens to the blog if/when I leave?
  

Why Should you Join a Blog Network?

After posting yesterday a basic Introduction to Blog networks I now want to turn my attention to some of the positives about joining a blog network as a blogger (the negatives will come in the next post in the series). Please note that I’m not writing about the benefits of starting or owning a blog network but looking at the positives of joining an existing one as a blogger. Of course the following factors will apply more to some networks than others (each network has it’s own configuration).

1. Relationships – today I did an informal survey of 10 bloggers from a number of blog networks (not just my own) on the topic of what they like like about being in their network and the most common response was that they enjoyed being a part of something larger than themselves and that it was the relationships both with network owners and managers as well as other bloggers that made the network experience most worthwhile. Many blog networks have some sort of internal communication systems (forums, wikis, email lists or even blogs, chat and VOIP sessions) – all of which can take blogging out of a space that can be a little lonely into one that is much more relational.

Introduction to Blog Networks

I’ve done a little study in the past few years on ‘movements’ as part of my interest in emerging forms of spirituality and one of the things that I’ve come to know a little about is how new movements often start as fairly chaotic and disconnected entities but generally over time will (in order to survive and thrive) self organize and form clusters (that’s a terribly generalized comment – but for the sake of succinct communication I’ll leave it at that).

This can be seen in many instances throughout history across many different types of movements (big and small) and is currently happening in blogging (I guess we could call it a movement) also.

With the rise in popularity of blogging we’ve also seen a variety of ways for bloggers to self organize and cluster together. This has happened in many ways through people attempting to collate blogs (like technorati and blog pulse) but also through different blog directories and lists that attempt to categorize blogs (eg blogtopsites) and blogging communities (eg blogcritics) where bloggers work together on different projects.

Introduction to Advertising Optimization – High Paying Ads

The last element of the mix to consider as you look to optimise your Advertising revenue on your blog is the actual amount that the ad will pay.

As we’ve discussed earlier in this series, there are many different advertising programs out there for bloggers – but most fall into three camps in terms of revenue. Firstly there is Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising, secondly Cost Per Impression (CPM – the M stands for the Roman numeral for one thousand and these ads are calculated on what you’re paid per one thousand impressions rather than per click) and thirdly there are programs that allow you to choose your own rates per time period (like BlogAds, Adbrite and private sponsorships).

CPM Ads – When it comes to CPM advertising programs it is pretty difficult to have much impact upon the ad value being paid. A program like Fastclick (aff) does let you specify which ads run on your site (or rather it lets you block some of the campaigns that it offers) and thereby you do have some impact on the level of income on your blog – but the process is reasonably messy and in my experience not really worth messing with (the tailoring of campaigns that is).

12 Tips for Increased AdSense Ad Relevancy

Pay per click advertising programs like AdSense, YPN and Chitika do rely heavily upon the positioning and design of their ads when it comes to performance – but another crucial aspect of them is ad relevancy. The principle is simple really – readers come to your blog in search of content on a particular topic – if they see an ad that relates to that topic they are more likely to both notice it and respond to it.

Irrelevant ads will almost always convert poorly so in the same way that publisher work on the design and positioning of ads they should also consider making sure ads are as relevant to the content they are positioned near as possible.

Each ad system will have different methods of getting ads more relevant. With a system like Chitika it takes some work and you need to choose keywords carefully (read a little more on how I recommend optimizing their ads here) where as with AdSense and YPN it has more to do with what you write than anything else as the ads are contextual. The following 12 tips for getting relevant ads are largely aimed at AdSense ads – but some will convert well also with YPN.

Introduction to Advertising Optimization – Ad Design

Ad Design

Another factor to consider with many advertising systems is the design that you’ll go with on your ads. While some ad systems do not let you customize the look and feel of your ads (ie many impression based ad systems like Fastclick) a growing number do allow you to not only choose from quite a few different ad sizes but also give the option to change colors of different elements including the text, links, borders and background colors (for example AdSense, Chitika, YPN, AdGenta all give some ability to change the look of your ads etc).

There are as many opinions on ad design as their are on ad positioning – but the trend at the moment amongst most publishers is to go for a blended look with your ads.

One might think that the best performing ads would be ones that stand out from the rest of your page and draw the eye – but most publishers that I speak with have found that such a strategy not only annoys readers but brings about results that underperform when compared to more subtle and blended designs.

In general – to blend an ad using a system like AdSense, YPN or Chitika you’ll want to:

• make the background and border colors for your ads to match the same color as the background of your blog
• make the links (title and URL) on your ads the same color (or a similar one) to other links on your blog
• make the text color in the ad the same as text on your blog

So on a blog that looks like ProBlogger ads might turn out like this:

Introduction to Advertising Optimization – Ad Position

Perhaps one of the most common mistakes that I see bloggers making with the positioning of advertising is with regards to position. In fact this is not a unique thing for blogs or even just online advertising as effective advertising relies upon positioning in all of it’s forms. This is why ads at Prime Time on TV, in the front pages of magazines and on the big billboards at busy intersections are in high demand (and are at a premium price).

The theory is pretty simple (and logical) really – if you increase the number of people who see an ad you increase it’s chances of converting (note that position isn’t the only factor, as we’ll explore later).

A good question to ask yourself as you consider ad placement on your blog is ‘where are people looking?’ Some of the factors to keep in mind when answering this question include:

Above The ‘fold’