Comments on: Why b5media Doesn’t Have “Big Blogs” (or: playing to niches, giving readers choice)

By: AhmedF

AhmedF — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 18:17:08 +0000

What a load of troll-inspired trite.

A blog does not become successful overnight. Or even in a year or two. It takes lots of persistence and patience. Engadget wasn’t an overnight sensation. Its not like I woke up one day and thought – “Damn. That Engadget blog is the place to go for gadget news”

By: Ankit

Ankit — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:29:55 +0000

Great response Jeremy.
I totally agree with you on most of the points. Blog Networks like Weblogsinc talk about Blogs while Blog networks like b5media and Instablogs talk about Channels.

Having huge properties do help in building new blogs easily but they many a times are trade-off on other bloggers and small blogs. I would like to see 80% of income coming from 80% of the blogs rather than 5% of the blogs in our blog network. This surely helps in building a better community.

Ask any big or medium sized blog network, and they will say Adsense makes up only 20-30% of the total inventory sold. Adsense is great for small or new blogs, but once you get into a decent blog network, it becomes easy to sold inventory to big advertisers who pays more than Adsense .25- .50 CPM.

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:46:20 +0000

Greg, we hate adsense because it devalues content. To me, a highly niche ad on a highly niche site served to a highly niche audience should be worth gobs of money. Not 1-2c/click or .25-.50CPM.

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:29:41 +0000

Great job listening to and not flaming anonymous Craig. Also, why is adsense so bad? I undertand the dangers of having a single source to fund your operations. And they can cut you at anytime. Without recourse. And there’s no legitimate competition. Is that it? I would have thought you guys were big enough and diversified enough that you’d be past that.

By: Dan Wilt

Dan Wilt — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:50:15 +0000

Thanks for opening up the b5 process.

You can’t milk a cow 24 hours a day – thorough process leads to richer results. Keep proving it, Jer.

By: Hsien Lei

Hsien Lei — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 09:21:00 +0000

All kinds of backend management tools plus lots of people who are happy to pitch in and do the scut work.

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 19:04:08 +0000

Scott: I believe traffic figures are only useful internally. We talk about our uniques sometimes (2-3M), but pageviews fluctuate wildly based on how you calculate them.

Martin: I’m not saying mega properties are bad Martin, just that I believe in a foundation of niche content. Oh, and managing the network is where we really have fun. All kinds of backend management tools

By: Martin Neumann

Martin Neumann — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:06:08 +0000

Nice post, Jeremy – your headline pretty much summed it up, there was no need to continue.

I’m still yet to be 100% convinced on the business model for the size you’re obviously after – I still think 2 or 3 mega properties is the best way to gain reach sooner rather than later. From the mega properties one can usually make numerous spin-offs.

But that’s just one person in 50m and from someone coming from a publishing background.

200+ really mini niches versus 2, 5, 10 mega sites? For the former, you guys are the leaders so we’re all watching. Bet the back-end (200+ x domain names, WP installs, plugins …) must be a real bitch.

Craig – that’s some nice formula you got going there – I might swipe it.

By: Scott Kidder

Scott Kidder — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 02:27:37 +0000

Good post, but are your traffic figures public? If so, where are they?

By: Clive Allen

Clive Allen — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 18:55:17 +0000

Sure, it makes sense, Jeremy. Having watched you and John Evans argue terminology for weeks, it ought to. But I think your strongest argument is in your answer to Craig’s comment up there – being first in the field is a big advantage and it takes time to claw back such a lead. The figures show that it’s happening, even if some can’t see it yet.

No empire lasts forever.