Business Bloggers Wanted

It has been quite some time since we’ve put out a call for bloggers. Especially for starting new blogs. After a summer of relaxation, we’re thinking that now is the time to look at the possibility of launching some new blogs.

This time, we’re looking at the business space. So if you’re a business blogger, business person without a blog or even a goat with a real passion for CRM software, read on.

Since it has been awhile since we last did a call for bloggers, it probably makes sense to cover a few basics.

What b5media Does

There may be some confusion about what, exactly, it is that b5media does. Really, the best way to characterize the relationship, for me, is like the relationship between a book publisher and book author. The publisher handles the money stuff, does a bunch of promotion, takes care of all the difficult bits (design, printing, layout, etc), etc. The author writes the book, tells folk about the book and does his or her level best to stay visible in order to promote the book.

Similar things happen at b5media. We take care of hosting, design, SEO stuff, advertising, a bunch of promotion, training, buying the domains, etc. Bloggers take care of blogging, telling friends about the blog and generally being visible in order to promote the blog.

Ultimately, the goal would be that we would partner with you on your blog, to make it the best it can be. The best design, the best writing, the best readers, the best advertisers all coming together to make the blog a real gem.

The Subjects We’re Interested In

As I said earlier, we are interested in authors more than subjects. That said, sometimes it helps to have a few ideas to base your ideas off of. I should mention that even within these areas, we’re looking for people who can put a unique spin on things. The blogging world doesn’t need yet another marketing blog anymore than it needs yet another gadget blog. So if you want to write a marketing blog, make it uniquely you. Maybe you merge your passions for marketing and gadgets into a new blog on mobile-based marketing, for example.

Here are a few subject matter ideas (in no particular order) that we’ve come up with as valuable subject areas:

• Giving Back & Community Involvement
• Entrepreneurship
• Recruiting/Interviewing
• Venture Capital
• Taxes
• Small Business Advertising/Marketing
• Word of Mouth Marketing
• Press Releases & Business Writing
• Law
• Office space (Leasing, Real Estate, Scouting Property, etc.)
• Web Hosting
• Home Businesses
• Freelancers (Business of, getting clients, etc.)
• Business of Blogging/Blog Marketing

That said, we want to hear any and all business related ideas. Not just the above. The more unique, creative and passionate, the better!

10 Reasons to Join b5media

When we asked our bloggers why they joined b5media, they gave us about 90 different reasons. We narrowed it down to the following 10:

1. More traffic
2. More money
3. More visibility
4. A fantastic community of nearly 100 bloggers
5. Industry leading design, development, SEO, etc, expertise
6. You can stop worrying about silly things like Wordpress upgrades, plugin installation, making things work, etc
7. Great antispam technology
8. Access to better ad networks, with better deals, as well as sales from the direct sales we do
9. Consulting work, client referrals, and other opportunities referred through the b5 network
10. Crazy amount of fun

At the end of the day, it can be incredibly frustrating to get heard in today’s blogging climate. Being part of b5media gives you a greater amount of exposure, greater search engine visibility, more traffic and money to boot.

About b5media

For folk who are unfamiliar with b5media, it probably makes sense to provide a little background.

b5media was founded by Jeremy Wright (www.ensight.org, author of Blog Marketing, speaker, consultant, etc), Darren Rowse (Technorati Top 100 blogger, www.problogger.net, Mr. Problogger), Duncan Riley (started www.blogherald.com, now blogs at www.duncanriley.com, big bad bald aussie) and Shai Coggins (Blogging Editor at About.com, named Top 10 Most Powerful Woman Bloggers).

We founded b5media for bloggers. We knew we could make traffic and money fairly well, but recognized that many other people couldn’t. Some started blogs only to have them flounder, others wrote great articles every day without getting discovered and others simply didn’t know where to start. b5media was really started as a kind of “let’s help bloggers by doing the complicated stuff so they can just write.”

Since launching, we’ve grown to more than 130 blogs in a dozen verticals, with more than 1.5M unique monthly readers and more than 20M pageviews across the network. We’re the third largest blog network in the world and we are incredibly proud of what’s been accomplished - thanks in large part to our fantastic pool of bloggers.

b5media is really about passion, great blogging, community and, thanks to all of those things, making money for doing something we all love to do. If a fun, smart, close-knit team of passionate folk is your kind of group, have a think about what you are passionate about and drop us a line (see below for application instructions).

The Type of Folk We Like

More than anything, we want passionate and knowledgeable people. We don’t mind if you’ve never blogged before. We don’t mind if you used to be in the industry but aren’t anymore. We want people who have lots of opinions, lots of ideas, can be creatively critical and are passionate, passionate, passionate. Whether your subject matter is business writing, team dynamics, advertising or the law. b5media chooses to launch new blogs not based on a pre-determined list of subjects, but based on the passion of individual applicants. So pitch ideas, be creative and above all be passionate.

A Note on Existing Blogs

At b5media we generally don’t accept existing blogs into the network. However, we recognize that there are a huge number of particularly high quality business blogs out there already. As a result, we’re lifting this restriction for the business space. However, we are making a few fundamental requirements for existing blogs - mainly because of our experience with the few blog we’ve brought in:

• All blogs must be on b5’s servers (we’ll do this)
• All blogs must be on, or be moved (we’ll do this) to Wordpress
• All blogs wll use the new b5media template, or a subset of it (due for release at the end of the month… again, we’ll do this)
• All ads must be transferred to b5media before we launch the blog (we’ll do this)

While it might seem like we’re asking a lot, there are a tonne of good reasons for these changes. The core of it, though, is that we always want blogs to feel like partnerships. Everyone gives a little, everyone gets a lot. Everytime we’ve compromised on these in the past, things have gotten messy. This doesn’t mean we want your blog to give up its identity, design, etc. We recognize that your blog is yours. That shouldn’t change. So we’ll work on design stuff on a case-by-case basis, to ensure that the strong elements of your existing design combine with the strong elements of ours.

And, yes, you keep ownership of your blog. You keep ownership of your blog content. So, if things don’t work out, you can always leave, no strings attached

How to Apply

Send us an email to guys@b5media.com, with the subject “Business Channel Application” (or some derivation). In the email, include your basic info (name, email, URL, phone number, skype ID). Also tell us about the subject areas you are passionate about. If it’s a common idea, tell us what you’d do to make it unique. If you don’t have a blog, we ask that you’d include some writing samples. They don’t need to be in the “blogging style” necessarily. We can train you to blog. But they should show a solid grasp of the English language, and above all… Yes, passion!

Final Thoughts

This is a new area for us. In fact, until recently, we had few plans to enter into this space. However some recent events have persuaded us that the existing business blogging community, and the larger community of business people, can always use a new set of voices. And if we can help with that, we’re incredibly honored to do so.