A blog network is a group of separate blogs controlled or run by the same publisher.
We have one friend who has a virtual empire of them, over 1,500 at last count, some about niches so obscure you’d think no one would care, others about major news subjects.
In December 2010, when we wrote this post Jeff and I have about 100blogs in our network, and we’re adding about 10 a month. Some are networks within networks. We have several blogs about bicycling, several about tech gadgets and gizmos, three on natural health and a few on things that, well, we just found interesting, like the environment or religion.
We’re constantly seeking new niches to start a blog about. The other day, Mike got a projection clock for the bedroom that displays the time up on the ceiling. He found it co cool he started a blog about it called BestProjectionClocks.com.
Our point here in mentioning all this is not that we want to brag about our blog network but to point out that just as we have all sorts of diverse interests and hobbies, so do you and so you, too, can start your own blog network.
There’s more, of course, in starting a blog than just putting it up. If your interest is to make some money, you need to do some research to find out whether there is a market for the blog. There are a variety of tools and training programs you can find listed under resources in the sidebar that will help teach you how to do this. But we have found research to be one of the most fun things in setting up a blog for our network.
You can determine how many people are searching for a subject and even know the exact words they’re tying in. And you can find out whether advertisers are willing to pay you if people click on those words on your site, and how much. And you can find out, as too often happens, that many of what you hoped would be the most lucrative niches are already oversaturated.
That’s okay. There’s plenty more that are not.
When it comes to making money, blg networks are not get-rich-quick operations. Our goal is to kaie at least a buck a day per blog.
At 100 blogs, that’s $100 a day. But the truth is, some blogs don’t make a cent. That’s okay, if we can;t make them profitable over time, we just let them go. But others make lots more than that. Lots more.
We’re not ones to kiss and tell and brag about how much we make. All we’ll say is we’re very happy with where we are and where we are headed with our blog network.
I don’t know if we ever want to have 1,500 blogs like our friend. He has a fulltime staff of several workers and just managing the empire he created is way more ambitious than we’re feeling we want to be right now.
