What's been going on with blog networks lately?

[trisha]

I haven't been actively blogging for a while now, so I haven't really kept up with what has been going on. Last I was hearing is that a lot of blog networks were really having problems. Is that still the case?

Any advice or ideas concerning using WordPress MU?

Forgive me if this sounds terrible - but with the economy the way it is, I'm guessing it would be easier to get people to blog for less money. I'm talking about people new to it of course, not so much like the members here. Anyone here willing to share what the lower range rate for a blog post is?

Any creative ideas to get people to blog for free? (temporarily) Like a link to their own blog with every post? I'm not trying to be stingy, I just don't have a lot of spare money to pay people a lot.

And in my case, with the site I'm thinking about, I want to create a full community on the site. I have quite a few static pages with adsense which is what is making money on the site now. But I'd like to add more to it, and eventually have people other than myself blogging on it. Basically create a full site with a lot of value.

Yeah, that's a lot of questions from someone who has only posted here a few times, and probably no one here even remembers/knows me. Just trying to figure out what my options are at this point.

Thanks for listening.

[barefootford]

I don't know the status of most blog networks or exactly what you mean by that, but I would say blog 'networking' is as strong as ever. Most of it just isn't done through those big ads that people used to have on their Yahoo Sites, and instead are done through linking to other peoples content and communicating with twitter.

The bad side of this economy is that a lot of people are out of work and there is less advertising money to throw around. The good side is that people have a lot more time on their hands and if you can rally them around a purpose, they'll be more than happy to share their 2 cents or experience on something.

What is your blog about? I'd probably kick the adsense to the curb and not worry about making money for the time being. If you make $20 a month on adsense I'd be blown away, but I assume its much less.

I'd work on building your community of writers and experts about your topic for 3-6 months, then see if you can get advertising thats actually catered to your niche or think about starting some type of "premium" part of your website. Even a dozen readers paying $5 a month is infinitely more then you'll collect through adsense.

Just a thought.

[dillu143]

hi,
What is your blog about? I'd probably kick the adsense to the curb and not worry about making money for the time being. If you make $20 a month on adsense I'd be blown away, but I assume its much less. Any creative ideas to get people to blog for free? (temporarily) Like a link to their own blog with every post? I'm not trying to be stingy, I just don't have a lot of spare money to pay people a lot.
thanks to all

regards,
phe9oxis,
http://www.dynamicdrive.com

[trisha]

Sorry I hadn't responded to the response to this thread yet. I thought I had the instant notification set up, but I don't remember getting any notifications of replies.

Anyway, I don't currently have adsense on my blog pages, but I have it on the so-called static pages - regular html pages with articles. I make around $100 a month with it. It isn't much. But I really need to add more pages. I would like to add more blogs to the site to help create a community.

Since I started this thread I discovered that the standard WP blog now allows you to have several blogs and bloggers, so that makes things a little easier.

The hard part now is finding time - I'm a parent now and only have time to work on my sites after our daughter is asleep and by this time I'm half asleep too.