Probably one of the questions I get asked more then others is why one should join a blog network. I am sure everyone who has been involved with any blog network will have different reasons, but here are my reasons:
1) Community – In the past when I have talked to my bloggers and bloggers of other networks I have asked what they liked most about being part of a blog network and the top answer has always been the community aspects. Many networks offer a forum where bloggers can converse on blogging and many other topics. Most bloggers make lots of friends through the network and simply through the increased traffic to there blog. Thus my second reason….
2) Traffic – I have personally had several blogs over the last few years but have always let them fall apart because no one was reading my post. Unless you have a community of friends that are bloggers or own sites, it has become a chore to gets traffic to a blog. Another factor that comes into play is how do you stand out when 80,000 new blogs are being added to the web daily? When you are a blogger for a blog network you have built in traffic. Starting day one most blog network will advertise your new blog on related blogs and also let existing bloggers know and most will welcome you and start commenting right away following your first post.
3) Administrative – Most blog networks will handle all of the behind the scenes aspects of getting a blog up and running including optimization, design, SEO, purchasing and setting up URLs and hosting, finding advertisers, choosing a blog platform, handling upgrades and plugins, optimizing ads, etc. This lets the blogger simply blog. Another built in feature is support. Support can be obtained quickly through most blog network forums and most networks have several support staff on hand.
4) Revenue – This in some ways ties in with traffic. Most people know that you need some traffic to make some money. Since blog networks will increase your traffic, revenue should follow. Another feature of a network is they have connections with larger ad networks. There are other options beside Google Adsense when it comes to making money with your blog. Take Tribal Fusion for example; you must have 2,000 unique visitors to your site a day before they will even consider looking at your site. One thing a blog network can typically do is combine several sites together into a channel and sale the channel as a whole, allowing larger ad buys.
5) SEO – I really think that this one speaks for itself. When you have a network of X amount of sites linked together spreading the “link love” your sites get indexed quicker and start climbing the PR ladder. One thing I have seen first hand is new sites start with a PR of 0 and jump to a PR of 5 in a little as three months. So SEO seems to be another nice feature of blogs networks.
There are several other reasons why blog networks seem to make sense, but these reasons I have listed are among the top reason swhy one should think strongly about joining a blog network.
Steve Shickles
