b5media

April 3rd,2006

The Truth About b5media

By Jeremy Wright

Last week Know More Media (a business focussed blog network) asked me to write a piece on blog networks. Which I did. I called it The Truth About Blog Networks, largely because I felt there were some pink elephants in the room. Pink elephants that we here at b5 haven’t talked about, largely because we’ve been so busy building the business.

Crazy times.

However, since I penned the article basically telling bloggers to be hardasses when choosing a network, I figured it would only be appropriate that I took some shot at answering it.

Here are the 10 questions, and my views on how b5media would answer them. Note that for some of the answers I’m being a little evasive, because of the fact that we don’t really talk traffic or income publicly. However I’ve tried to be clear, even if I’m not giving exact figures.

1) How much power do bloggers have over their blogs?

Bloggers have near complete control over their content. We will really only step in if a blogger needs help (ie: doesn’t know what to do), is out of line or isn’t meeting the content expectations laid out in the contract (once or twice isn’t a big deal, an ongoing issue is something we’ll work with the blogger to address). In terms of design and logos, the initial color choices and logos are largely up to the blogger. Based on their ideas we’ll propose something and work with them until we’re both largely happy. We are happy to include a smattering of uniqueness beyond the template, but we’re also well aware of how painful it can be for everyone in the long term if too much uniqueness is permitted, since upgrades and new technology may not be available immediately to the blog if too many changes have taken place (ditto on ad deals). We try and balance everyone’s desire for their own little taste of heaven while knowing that long term stability is critical for the blog’s health and the blogger’s happiness.

2) What percentage of bloggers are active on the internal blogs, forums and mailing list on a daily and weekly basis?

Our primary method of communication is the internal forum. We had internal blogs for a while, and official announcement type things still go out via internal mailing lists (one for each channel as well as a main one for all bloggers), but the internal forums are where the vast majority of the communication happens. Of our 60 odd bloggers, 55 or so are currently registered on the forums. Of those, 50 odd have posted, and 48 or so have posted in the past week. I’d say those are fairly healthy numbers, considering we don’t require people to be active in the forums (though it sure helps). Sure, some people (Aaron *cough*) are more active than others, but more than 40 bloggers have more than 25 posts, and in the 3.5 weeks the forums have been up, as a community, we’ve produced nearly 4000 posts on the forums. Active, yes. I don’t think it’s skewed that heavily though. Also, with Announcements forums, the official mailing lists for big announcements, and channel-specific forums, the ability for an individual blogger to find the value they are looking for should be high.

3) May I talk to some of your larger, and smaller, bloggers?

Of course. I can’t imagine any of our bloggers (”large” or “small”) not wanting to talk to a prospective b5′er. Though I’d have to ask permission (likely I’d just make a forum post introducing you and asking who would like to chat). So, yes, but it would be up to each current blogger whether they wanted to chat on that specific week.

4) What percentage of your traffic and income do the top 10% of your blogs represent?

The top 10 blogs in b5 earn about 50% of the income, and represent about 30% of the traffic. While we’d like to see more and more blogs earning above the 250-500$/month mark, the truth is that all but 10 of our blogs are newer than 6 months old, and we don’t believe a blog really hits its stride until it is at least 6 months old. Most blogs that have PageRank and are 3-4 months old tend to fall int o the 200-500$/month range, though. It always depends on the subject area, the blogger, how active the blog is and a variety of other things, but a healthy blog can expect to see those kinds of earnings before the 6 month level, and to see even more than that after the 6 month level. So while the earnings are currently a touch skewed, we expect those to drop to a healthier level soon enough. Thankfully 20% of the blogs aren’t earning 80% of the money, that’d be bad.

5) How much are you currently paying out to bloggers (as a whole) every month, and how much has that amount been growing by monthly?

We don’t talk about our earnings in public (the previous question’s ballpark figures being the exception). However payouts have been growing at a steady rate of 25%+/month since we launched and, while they are nowhere near where we want them, they are quite healthy.

6) Who owns the content?

Bloggers own their content. b5media gets a license to it. This was one of the changes we made very early on. I can’t remember if we were the first network to do this or not, but our bloggers really clamored for it and it’s a great way for us to respect them as writers and experts.

7) What is the exit strategy?

Bleh at exit strategies. I wrote a post yesterday on my blog that touched on this. We are in this for the long haul. For our bloggers. For our partners. For our readers. Sure we might get bought out, who knows, right? If someone offered us 2B$ we’d probably take it ;-) But, we’d much rather build a business, build communities and change the way people find, create and manage content than to just cash out quickly.

8) What backups and disaster recovery plans does the network have in place?

This was on the list because it’s something we’ve been addressing internally. Not because we weren’t doing backups, but because some of our bloggers suddenly started getting nervous. Currently, b5 is on a cluster of 3 servers. All data is on all 3 servers all the time. One dies, no biggie. This month we’ll be implementing offsite backups as well, and this summer we’ll be switching that offsite backup to a redundant backup farm (in a different state than the servers are in). Safe? Nothing is totally safe in backups (I’m an old school IT guy), but given our size, we are doing very well. There is also lots, and lots, and lots of capacity in our current setup to grow quite nicely (probably to 25 million pages per month or so), and adding new servers is easy.

9) What differentiates you?

The age old question, and one I’ve had to think about a lot lately as we chat with investors and partners on new opportunities that are being created. We believe 3 key things differentiate us: 1) community: I love the community at b5. The forums rock, the personalities rock. Having 70 odd totally passionate bloggers working together is an amazing thing to behold. 2) niches: we believe we are touching a variety of niches that most other networks are totally ignoring. We choose niches based on passion, and we believe in providing a huge amount of value within those niches. Sometimes we are able to hit them big and hard (like Tech and Celebrities) other times it takes a while to build the niche out (like Hobbies & Crafts). Either way, though, we love seeing areas like Science & Health finally getting a decent showing in a blog network. 3) people: it might seem redundant to list community and people, but I believe they are separate strengths. The individals in b5 are fantastic. Collectively they have published something like 10 books. They have been quoted and interviewed in every major publication in the world. They are a passionate bunch with a vast amount of knowledge, and they have absolutely no fear of sharing that knowledge.

Oh, and are we a Weblogs, Inc. clone? To me, no. I think it’s still a little early to see the big differences from the outside, but we’re hopeful that over the next few months they will become clearer and clearer. Yes, we’re young and still finding our way, but our way is our own, it isn’t anyone else’s. We have a vision for the network and we’re sticking to it, even if nobody else goes the route we’re going.

10) Badgers?

We don’t need no stinking badgers!

;-)