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Behind The Blog Herald Sale

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Disclaimer: I helped negotiate the sale of The Blog Herald between BlogMedia Inc, now ProBlogging Inc and Duncan Riley. I also brokered the sale of The Blog Herald to its current new owners who wish to remain private.

The Blog Herald sale was something that was in the works for a few weeks, and it comes at a great time for the ProBlogging Inc team. I personally have good faith in the historical value of that site. However, I’m a little suprised at what appears to be the initial desire for the management of The Blog Herald to remain private.

At one point in time I was in negotiations with The Blog Herald to take over management of The Blog Herald. It was during these negotiations that I decided to start this new site. I’m already really glad I did.

I’m very happy for the new management team and I look forward to seeing what they do with the site. It’s my deepest hope that they continue a high quality style, and treat its readers and bloggers with great care. In my own personal observation they have to be very careful on this ground.

However , I’m disappointed with their lack of transparency regarding the new ownership of the site. I think the blogosphere relies on the transparency of ownership and interests to be able to make a judgement on its reporting. Nearly every time I try to make disclaimers regarding any conflicts of interest that I might have. This will not be possible with a private/non disclosed ownership arrangement.

I wish them the best of luck moving forward. And will be cautiously watching the future development of the site.

Originally posted on December 3, 2006 @ 8:01 pm

Mena Trott ~ New Media/Blogging Innovator

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It all began five years ago with a blog entry about a banjo. Mena Trott had recently graduated as an English major from college and, at 23, was living as an under-employed designer with her husband Ben in San Francisco, passing her time by keeping a personal online diary. Called Dollarshort, it was a blog about her childhood, her pets and that sort of thing. One day, on a girly whim, she wrote that she wanted to buy a banjo but that her husband, ever the “tyrant”, wouldn’t let her. Mena’s friends and family, knowing that “Ben is the sweetest guy in the world”, recognised the humour, says Ms Trott. But all sorts of strangers suddenly blogged back with angry feminist advice, advising her to get a separate bank account, to tell off her bullying husband, and even to leave him. Ms Trott was livid. “Why can’t people take a joke, and who are these people anyway?” she wondered.

For More Check Out An Article On Mena Trott

Originally posted on December 2, 2006 @ 10:39 am

Listen to Calacanis’s Keynote at SES Chicago

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Jason Calacanis is already in the windy city. He will be the keynote speaker at this years SES Chicago.

jason calacanisJason’s appearance at the Search Engine Strategies conference, the largest and most important conference dedicated to the search engine and search engine marketing industries, will be his first and only public appearance since his recent announcement to step down from Netscape. This month’s coming event takes place in Chicago, December 4th-7th. WebmasterRadio.FM plans to provide continued coverage, including interviews, reporting and more, throughout the week’s events.

Jason McCabe Calacanis’ keynote address at the Chicago SES conference airs live Tuesday, December 5th at 9:00 a.m. CDT. All WebmasterRadio.FM programs are available in podcast, mobilecast and archived format at www.WebmasterRadio.FM

I know I will be all over this event, not physically but via Webmaster Radio again. I had the pleasure of attending SES San Jose and caught a few of the speakers.

Originally posted on December 4, 2006 @ 11:08 am

The Big Secret To Scaling Your Content Business

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Scott Karp has a great article up about Content Businesses not scaling. Hmm. I think I disagree with him which isn’t new. Here’s some hot tips on scaling your content business. That’s if you want to be 100% sucessful. Pay attention I don’t see anyone else out there doing it. Including the wizards of new media content.

So many people are entering the content business these days. And its slowly eroding the bigger box stores. Yes, the NYTimes, the Wall Street Journal’s of the world are losing ground and readership. But I don’t think the blog networks are winning this battle. 9Rules when faced with this dilema actually took some steps in the right direction. They modified a forum system to create a system where users could create their own ‘blog-like’ entries, entitled Notes. I expect more and more improvements like this from 9rules who understands the need to scale in the business.

Here’s a key to scaling your business:
Keep your readers on your site for as long as possible. Yes linking out is good. But for every link out, build more content that drives users deeper into your site.

Think about it.

When you go to a store to purchase something. Does that store want you to leave? No, they want to drive you deeper and deeper into the store. They want to drive you past various areas of the store so you might pick up other things on your way to the check out.

So many blogs drive users externally. Instead develop a system to keep readers going deeper until its time to check out.

It seems so simple. But so many blog networks, news blogs, and the like are driving their users outside the store to make their purchases. STOP.

The key to success is to drive your users deeper into your store, until they make their checkouts.

Originally posted on December 3, 2006 @ 7:30 pm