Ensight - Jeremy Wright

Last month, when we announced the Music Channel, b5media got exposure amongst a whole other crowd of reader that had never really heard of us before or, if they had, had no real concept of what we did, why we did it or how we did it. As a result, there were numerous posts around summing up why b5media was bad, comparing us to other blog networks (in weird ways), etc.

I contacted some of the authors of the posts and offered to do some interviews to set the record straight. Not because I’m overly defensive. Mainly because since we took our round of funding last year we’ve been so busy doing that we’ve had little time for talking.

Also, it seems that most people’s impressions of b5 are something like “decent sized blog network, with no big blogs, that took funding sometime last year” - and it’s probably time to start reshaping that image and to start showing off some of the things that make b5 unique. Not all of them mind you, but some of them!

Jon Yau, from Bugger All took me up on the offer, and his questions were intriguing, so I’m republishing them (and my answers) (with his permission, of course) here.

- Having a quick look around, it would appear to my untrained eye that the blog networks that come to mind all focus on a particular niche or target demographic, for example the 4.5 million uniques/month Sugar network (Popsugar etc) seem to target the women-based iVillage demographic, and ShinyMedia tends to have a more UK-based readership, ditto with Techcrunch’s web audience. What would you say b5media’s approach is in relation to building an audience?

In my mind there are a handful of network structures out there that work, each with their own challenges and opportunities. Many of the larger networks, like Shiny, PopSugar and even Gawker, have chosen to focus on one or two key demographics - and for them, that works incredibly well. I’ve always felt, though, that it would be much more exciting to develop a key set of skills as a company and to apply those more broadly.

b5media’s stated goal is to provide the right content to the right person at the right time on the right device (with the right ad tucked somewhere in there!). To me, that means we need to have a depth of content that’s effectively unrivaled in the online content world. We need to be publishing hundreds of posts each day, dozens of deeper articles each week and reaching a critical mass of millions in the US, Canada, Europe and south east Asia.

Our approach, then, has always been to identify certain key areas where we believe we will see significant growth, and to enter those areas with a large number of blogs that would appeal to just about anyone interested in that space.

- Shai mentioned that of the 230+ blogs in the b5media network, two blogs remain the flagship offerings - does this pose a risk to the organisation? Is this an issue for advertisers?

 Jon is referring to Shai’s comment, where she said:

Anyway, while Darren’s blogs do get a lot of traffic (and are definitely two of our flagships), we have a handful of other ‘big’ blogs that may not be as ‘well known’ but are still pulling in the numbers.

 So, Jon, the answer is that there are more than 2 flagship blogs in b5 (hence Shai’s “two OF our flagships”). Personally, I care more about the quality of the content, the passion of the author and how much the community the blog serves is being served. So blogs like Autism Vox, to me, are amongst our most successful - even if they don’t pull in millions of pageviews.

But, since folk seem to like to harp on that we don’t have any big blogs, here are a sampling of some of the larger ones in the b5media blog network:

• ProBlogger: Obviously everyone knows this, but it still bears repeating.
• Digital Photography School: Another of Darren’s blogs. At 200-300K pageviews/day this is actually the biggest (traffic-wise) in the network.
• Lohan Groupie: A b5-created blog that does well over a million pageviews a month (nearly 2 in fact).
• CopyBlogger: Brian joined us as part of the Business Channel launch, and we’re hugely glad he’s stuck with us!
• LifeDev
• HealthBolt: This blog was so good, we purchased it last month when Wade was getting tired!
• Silicon Era: Arguably one of the top 10-20 gaming blogs in the world, Spencer and his team produce fantastic (and original) content that most other gaming blogs simply love to reprint
• Parents Behaving Badly
• Slacker Manager
• Deep Jive Interests
• Google Maps Mania

All in all, I think we’re at 4-5 Top 100 blogs right now, with our goal being 10 by the end of the year.

When we do share this with folk, their immediate question, then, is if these blogs account for the vast majority of traffic. The truth is that in any system you’ll have “big” boys and “small” ones. The expectation is that the 80/20 rule will hold. At b5, we find that the top 20% account for about 60% of the traffic (ie: th top 25-30 properties account for 15-20M pageviews/month).

Which, to me, is pretty good. It’s like a flattened long tail. Obviously we want to see our big blogs keep growing, and we want to see small blogs become big blogs, but just as important is seeing small, truly niche, blogs finding a core audience and serving them really, really well.

- If not commercially sensitive, would you be able to give a rough indication of the split of advertising revenue source ie. 20% direct, x% adsense, x% textlink ads etc? And do you have a preferred mix - what do you see as your long-term goal re managing your advertisers? Do you see yourself moving towards direct or perhaps outsourcing it to providers so you can focus on content (like BoingBoing)?

That’s a great question Certainly I can share some of the rough figures of where revenue comes from. From memory, it comes out as, give or take:

• AdSense: 5% (we hate AdSense, but when we can’t serve anything else, especially to international visitors, we do use it)
• Direct: 30%
• Premium boutique networks: 30%
• Regular ad networks: 10%
• Text links: 15%
• Syndication and other deals: 10%

 In terms of what we’ll keep doing, that’s a great question. I see b5media’s core strengths as our technology platform (something we’ll start showing off this fall), our depth of content and reach and our advertising platforms, partnerships and relationships.

So, if someone came along and offered us substantially more than we could ever do on our own, then yeah we’d consider outsourcing our ad sales. However right now we have 3 sales folk in place, we have our ad server, we have our own custom-developed ad platforms and we have a huge number of fantastic relationships. We’ve also started representing other large blogs and networks (as a reverse of what you’re talking about), so it would take quite the offer to make us abandon our commitment to growing and maturing our ad sales strategy! 

- Everywhere I turn, it seems you are snapping up great local blogging talent (eg Sara Goldstein aka thebargainqueen, and Alister Cameron) - what is your approach to recruiting bloggers? Do you identify the content space first, then find the appropriate person to fill it or vice versa?

By local I’m assuming you mean “down under” talent?

We take a few different approaches to recruiting bloggers. First, anyone can apply to write for b5 at any time by going to the application page. We get about 20 applications a day, so we often find great writers just coming to us.

Second, when we have specific needs, we’ll often reach out to the community and ask if anyone knows anyone.

And finally, if we feel we know someone perfect (even if we haven’t worked with them before), we can be pretty aggressive in trying to recruit them

For us, Australians, Phillipinos (ergh, I’m sure I’m spelling that wrong, sorry!) and others from places where blogging is “big” it just hasn’t matured commercially make great writers and so we often end up finding fantastic writers both from south east asia and australasia (or whatever it’s called these days) a well as from every other corner of the globe. We have writers in about 30 countries right now, so it’s certainly not like we’re trying to take all your best writers!

- What light can you shed on your blogger remuneration structure?

Sure! While this isn’t something we hide, it’s also not incredibly easy to find on the b5media site right now. Right now, we have a “standard” agreement that 90% of bloggers go on. Sometimes a blog is big enough that it warrants inclusion in our Flagship Blogs program (ie: where we rep blogs, host them, grow their traffic and provide support). And sometimes bloggers really only want to be a part of the community and don’t really care about ads.

But for the vast majority of bloggers, the standard contract is what they’ll get offered.

The pay rate on the standard contract is (from memory):

Base pay: 50-250$/month depending on age of blog, quality of blogger and time with blog. Typically this is a sliding scale based on how long a blog’s been with b5media (this is especially true for blogs we start and then bring writers in for… which is still 90% of our blogs, so is, again, the norm. 0-3 months: 50$/month, 3-6 months: 75$/month, 6-9 months: 100$/month, 1 year: 150$/month, 2 years: 250$/month.

Basically the bas pay allows us to grow a blogger’s take-home pay, even if they aren’t getting a huge amount of traffic. It also rewards longevity, provides milestones (we do reviews each quarter, as part of the pay bumps), etc.

Traffic bonus: Right now this is sitting at 1.65$ CPM (ie: for every 1000 pageviews, you get 1.65$). We try to bump this every quarter. It doesn’t always happen, but we believe that if b5’s doing well, bloggers should see their pay go up as well.

What this means is that the average blogger who writes for a few hours a week and builds his or her blog to 30-50K pageviews/month over 6-9 months can earn 100-150$ and a mature blogger can easily earn 150-250$… While bloggers on large blogs can earn hundreds more.

It’s our goal to actually begin to do the traffic bonus on a per-channel basis (as some earn more than others), but for now this is the structure.

Realistically what it means is that bloggers earn about as much (or more) than they typically would on their own, they don’t worry about hosting/design/plugins/software/etc, they get to be a part of a great community and they get to have fun doing it!

We also provide a whole host of extra benefits like free hosting for personal blogs, regular training, contests, prizes and a whole whack of other stuff.

- For the potential new b5media blogger, would you say the whole point of joining a blog network like b5media would be the quality of the crosslinking between blogs within the network thus allowing the startup blog an opportunity to gain traction more quickly? With this in mind, do you track the cross-sell ratio, i.e. % of visits originating from the network? If so, can you give an indication of its magnitude?

Certainly extra traffic thanks to cross-linking, discovery tools, channel-wide feeds, search, tags, etc, is good. But everyone has different reasons for joining a network. A network blog will typically grow faster than a non-network blog (that has the same quality, quantity and consistency of writing). But there are lots of great reasons to join a network (that I’ve already mentioned like 4 times, so I won’t bore folk by repeating them!).

In terms of  data, we see about 10-15% of any given blog’s traffic is from another blog in the network. Which might not seem like much, but at our scale it means that some blogs can push a lot of traffic to the rest of their channel (the “halo effect”).

- Do you see b5media as more of a co-op publisher, or a publisher that contracts for content via freelancers?

Hmm, interesting question… I see b5media as a media company, so of the 3 options “publisher that contracts” is probably the closest. At the same time, though, I also see b5 as a community, as a supporter of WordPress, as a technology company and as a a place to just share ideas. But, yeah, from a business standpoint, I see our strength being our writers. 

- Landing VC funding of $2m has obviously allowed you to beef up the head-office function (marketing, developers, operations etc) and upgrade infrastructure etc - what has been the advantages and disadvantages of bringing in VCs? Does it translate to having to ‘Do more in less time’?

I’m not sure there have been any disadvantages for us in bringing in outside investment from our Venture Capital partners. In fact, just the opposite. They provide a depth of knowledge, experience and checks and balances that were missing in b5 pre-funding.

The extra cash has allowed us to do a bunch of key things. Probably the biggest was that it allowed us to ramp up blogger pay very quickly - from a revenue share basis to something much fairer. In addition, having a team behind the company to do things like marketing/development/operations (as you said) is bigger than most people realize.

Ultimately what it means is that we can do more. The biggest change is that pre-funding we were entirely reactionary. Something happened and we reacted the best way we could. Writing this response I’ve just realized that we don’t act that way as a company anymore. Certainly there’s a support team that answers day-to-day issues, but as a company we’re much more forward-looking, forward-planning and about taking the lead on issues before they become big things.

We aren’t perfect yet. For example we’re going to Gnomedex next week, and just yesterday decided to do stickers. But even that 1-2 weeks of lead time would have been unheard of pre-funding.

My hope is that over the next 4-6 months that we’ll have plans 2-3 months out, which will allow us to do stuff even better than we are now.

- What’s the blogger attrition rate been like since launch? And how to you keep all your hens productively laying eggs?

Hah. Our attritition rate has stayed at about 1-2%/month since b5 was created. People come, realize they dont’ really want to blog and then leave. Or they come, work for awhile and then decide to find a better balance. Or they work for ages and just find a better opportunity.

So people leave for all kinds of reasons. But they do leave.

How do we keep bloggers productive? The reality is that for all bloggers, and network bloggers are no exception, motivation is one of the biggest challenges. We try really, really hard to keep bloggers within channels engaged, we do regular b5-wide chats and contests, we have active forums and mailing lists, we interact regularly with our bloggers.

But it’s not like we can be there every day by their side, so even with our best bloggers still need to find that motivation.