b5media Launch New Home Page, But Still Lack Monetization Strategy
b5media one of the worlds largest blog networks has just launched a new home page design. I think the new design is a huge improvement from the previous one.
Navigation through the new site is a lot easier, and now it highlights nicely the key blogs within the network and all the network stats. However, it is a great start from the team.
The main downside is still the lack of ability to purchase advertising across the network and target the niche or sites that you wish. I think the strategy of the company is great, but they still seem to be lacking in the key area on monetization. Individual blogs are now running a variety of advertising from Google Adsense to Tribal Fusion, but there still seems to be no coherency. Additionally, the blog design for individual blogs is terrible, it really needs to be looked at and professionalised. Im sure they have some great blog designers in the team, but they never seem to use them.
3 Comments
Um… http://www.textpods.com and advertising@b5media.com are how you do buys. That’s clear (if you click on Advertising / Advertise With Us on any blog).
As with anything, it’s our goal to get better month by month. Current projects are tech/design/sales related, and you should expect to see new stuff from us in one of these areas every 2 weeks.
So we’re not slowing down by any stretch, in fact folk are starting to get sick of all the stuff we *are* doing
Not perfect, but the goal is always “good, better, best”. The new homepage and the portals fall into the “better” category. Our goal is to get all our resources, properties, systems and communications there by Q2 2009 (since it takes about a thousand hours to redesign the network)
Either way, thanks for the constructive criticism, we definintely welcome it!
They’re launcing two ugly assed portals too
Bizzia – http://www.bizzia.com and
Splendicity http://www.etoddy.com/b5/splendicity/home_v1_2.html
So they spend their money on portals, hire full time writers and a marketing pay and cut out pay for bloggers.
What’s wrong with this picture?
What’s wrong with it? You mean besides you violating the terms of your contract by posting confidential information “MM”?
If you have issues with what’s going on, there’s more than enough official (and unofficial) ways to get your questions answered.
But I’m not sure I get how us doing more to earn more money so we can pay bloggers more is somehow evil. Yeah, portals that drive more traffic back to blogs and allow us to sell ads more easily, that’s clearly the wrong strategy.
Hiring bloggers full time so they work in a dedicated way for the same $ they were earning as contractors. That’s obviously wrong.
And cutting costs in a down economy is also obviously a bad thing too.
C’mon. It’s attitudes like this that create things like “hmm, they just closed a new round of funding, why didn’t they mail me a cheque?”
We’re doing what’s best for the company, for our bloggers and for our future. While we could have just continued to overpay bloggers, that would mean we’d be out of money in a year, which is worse for everyone.
It’s all about balance. And that “balance” is being felt all over the company.