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(Editor’s Note: For the purposes of full disclosure, the following article describes a joint venture by Blogger & Podcaster magazine’s executive leadership and a number of other companies providing services to the new media community. While the venture described in this article is competitive with other new media businesses, Blogger & Podcaster magazine remains committed to covering all news within the industry.) | ||||||||||||||||||||
Four new media pioneers to join forces to create the Blogger & Podcaster Media Network. The arrangement offers a rare opportunity for “non- A-listers” to realize a full-time income from their new media commitment – as well as an ownership stake in the venture. Podcast Pickle (the original podcast social network), Fuel My Blog (a leading U.K. blog social network), SocialRank (a blog discovery engine) and Blogger & Podcaster magazine have agreed in October to combine, to create The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network (BPMN). The venture is designed to serve the interests of thousands of small- and medium-size blogs and podcasts. The mission of the BPMN is to put power and money into the reach of the smaller bloggers and podcasters who make up the vast majority of the blogosphere. BPMN’s founders are committing to offer members an equity stake in the company, and expects to distribute the majority of revenues to members, allowing them the opportunity to earn a full-time, six-figure income by practicing their craft. The network is free to join and requires no long-term or exclusive commitment. The BPMN will offer members an avenue to promote their content to millions, through dozens of mainstream media partnerships. BPMN also offers healthcare benefits, multiple streams of revenue and a $2,000 in press release services through BPMN partner PR Newswire. BPMN’s First Member – Self-Made Billionaire Bill Bartmann The owner of private jets and ranked in the top 25 on the Forbes magazine list of wealthiest people, self-made billionaire Bill Bartmann isn’t necessarily who you’d call a “little guy.” When it comes to his blogging and podcasting endeavors, however, Bartmann started out just like the rest of us – huge passion, small impact, miniscule revenue. Through an ambitious video podcast effort (www.billionaireu.com/bp) Bill has set his sights on reversing the failure rate of businesses throughout the world. Podcasting allows him the ability to provide in-depth business instruction in a way that’s not overly burdensome on his limited time or cost prohibitive to the end user. Bill is joining The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network not because he can’t go it alone, but because his experience tells him when it comes to his online marketing, blogging and podcasting endeavors, going alone is not the smart thing to do. Bill hasn’t always been the mega success he is today. He grew up in abject poverty, was a homeless teenage alcoholic and a high school dropout. He’s been bankrupt twice, a millionaire three times and a billionaire once. His spectacular failures have taught him the value of doing everything you possibly can to increase your chances of succeeding. “When I learned the details behind the upcoming launch of The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network – especially that it was comprised of and created particularly for the thousands upon thousands of ‘little guys’ I wanted to be the first one at the table,” said Bartmann. “Every, and I do mean EVERY, business needs to aggressively seek out partners who can do for them the things that they can’t or don’t want to do for themselves,” Bartmann explained. “This is the brilliance of what The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network is doing. It provides the exact services, business model and infrastructure needed to harness this industry’s collective strength, turning the industry from a loose confederation of hobbyists into a powerful alliance of professional new media entrepreneurs.” Bringing the Blogosphere (and a Six Figure Income) to the People The blogosphere (I refer to both bloggers and podcasters here) is arguably the most powerful media force ever created. Yet there is something really wrong when only a handful of its component parts, the “A-listers,” are able to earn a full-time living. An industry that is over 100 million strong, receives a greater audience in one day than all the major media networks together get in a month, and generates more page views everyday than Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and AOL combined should not see its people lining up at the digital “soup kitchen.” It’s time to put an end to this, and that’s what The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network is all about. As powerful and ubiquitous as our industry has become, there is no reason why every hard working, competent blogger/podcaster shouldn’t be able to earn a full-time living practicing his or her craft. BPMN makes a six-figure salary a reality. And, all members on board at launch will be given stock in the company, allowing them to benefit from the success they help the BPMN become. All it will take is a little leadership and a lot of cooperation. Here’s how we’ll get there. Removing the Obstacles That Are Holding Us Back There are several obstacles preventing most bloggers and podcasters from earning much money today. Here’s what they are and what we need to do to fix them. Obstacle #1: It’s Too Hard for Marketers to Reach a Mass Audience through Blogs and Podcasts. Big advertisers and ad agencies don’t like to make media buys with minor players. The more they spread out their media buy between media outlets, the more it costs them to plan, implement and track a campaign. And, the more their investment is concentrated, the greater leverage they have to negotiate price, placement and supplemental perks with the media companies they buy from. This is a major reason why the A-list blogs/podcasts and other mainstream media providers get such a disproportionate share of advertisers’ budgets. You can’t really fault an advertiser for making one ad buy with TechCrunch (www.techcrunch.com) instead of 350 smaller tech blog/podcast sites (that would in aggregate add up to the same audience). Who wants, or actually has the time to, negotiate 350 ad buys, sign 350 invoices, send out 350 ads, verify 350 ad placements, cut 350 checks and track results from 350 campaigns? BPMN makes it as easy to buy from the little guy as the behemoth. Obstacle #2: It’s Too Difficult for the Average User to Find Blogs and Podcasts Walk down the street today and ask 10 people if they’ve heard of blogs/podcasts. If you’re in the U.S., it’s likely that eight or more will say “yes.” Then ask the same people if they themselves have ever checked out a blog or podcast and the number will drop dramatically to as few as two or three. This is because we’re still in the “Early Adopter” phase of the blogosphere adoption cycle. (To be completely fair, this isn’t entirely accurate; many people may have consumed blogs or podcasts but just didn’t realize it.) The big money will roll into our industry once blogs and podcasts “cross the chasm,” as Geoffrey Moore would put it. This means moving from the small Early Adopter audience to the massive market of mainstream consumers. We’ll know we reached the mainstream when we pass the “mother-in-law test.” What’s that? Say my mother-in-law wanted to find a blog on something she was interested in, like Bridge. To find a Bridge blog she’d probably go to a general search engine like Google (she’d have no clue about Technorati or Google Blogs) and type in “bridge.” She’d start scanning through the few million results and quickly conclude that finding a Bridge blog in this search is like trying to find “needle in a haystack.” It will take her somewhere between 10 and 23 seconds until she gives up. BPMN will make it easy enough for all of our mothers-in-law to quickly find blog and podcast content. Obstacle #3: Consuming Blogs & Podcasts Is Too Complicated for the Mainstream Today the blogosphere is like the early days of the PC, where you had to know those esoteric DOS prompts to get your software to work. We need to take a big lesson from the Apple playbook: Make technology extremely easy to use and then get out of the way. No one should have to know a whit about RSS, XML, blog readers, podcatchers, syncing, subscribing or feeds in order to read, listen to or watch our content. BPMN will make it so that if you have the ability to turn on the computer, you’ve got the skill set needed to access, manipulate and interact with blogs and podcasts. Next Steps – Clearing the Way to Six Figure Incomes The good news is the solutions to the obstacles are well within our reach. In fact, BPMN has been quietly working on them for the past year. Here’s where we’re going: Step #1: Band Together to Create Critical Mass for Marketers Unquestionably, we need to make it easy for ad buyers to work with us. The way to do that is for all of us to unite together into one combined media network. From God bloggers to tech podcasters, from the U.S. to Indonesia, from old-hands to newbies, all are welcome to join with us. The more the merrier. With this critical mass brings the added benefit of subdivision and targeting. This is one of the biggest advantages of marketing through blogs or podcasts and staying at the top of the list of what advertisers crave. BPMN’s network of thousands will lay the foundation for ultra-targeted “unwired” sub-networks to allow advertisers to hone in on the demographics, psychographics and/or geographics they desire. There’s strength in numbers. When we band together we have significant, highly targeted audiences. This is a better marketing “mousetrap” and will command the business of marketers around the world. It’s cliché but true: United we stand, divided we fall. The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network will provide advertisers the centralization and efficiency they desire – enabling them, with one ad buy, to reach very targeted groups of prospects through hundreds or thousands of blogs/podcasts. Step #2: Use Mainstream Media to Distribute Blog & Podcast Content Right now, we’re collectively sitting back hoping for people to stumble across our content. Hope is not an effective business strategy. If we want a mainstream audience to start consuming our blogs and podcasts en masse, we need to reverse our approach and bring our content to them. This means partnering with mainstream newspapers, magazines, trade publications, Web sites, radio and TV stations to deliver our members’ blog and podcast content to their readers. We’ve got to fish where the fish are. Blogger & Podcaster magazine began this initiative last year by striking a partnership with USA TODAY to launch the co-branded “Blogger & Podcaster Guide”– a “TV Guide” for blogs and podcasts to the mainstream. The goal was to allow USA TODAY readers to more easily find blogs and podcasts on the topics of interest to them. Later we added additional features, including reader ratings, so the best content would “bubble” to the top. This winter the BPMN will add in all of our members to The Blogger & Podcaster Guides and promote them to an expanded network that includes Fuel My Blog, Podcast Pickle, SocialRank and over 15 magazines. Our goal is to within six months to have over 100 media partners in place, affording BPMN members with promotion to over 20 million unique visitors per month. Step #3: Make Blog/Podcast Technology “Idiot” Proof for Mainstream Consumers BPMN will remove the need for the average consumer to know anything beyond how to surf the Web to access content. The next generation Blogger & Podcaster Guides (again distributed through our mainstream media partners) will come with blog reader and podcatcher software already included. This will allow millions of mainstream consumers to subscribe/unsubscribe, download, sync, watch, listen or read blogs/podcasts without needing to know anything technical beyond “point and click.” This will allow BPMN members to reach an audience of millions of new consumers each and every day and generate revenue from them. Call To Arms -- Taking Back the Blogosphere “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Now is the time for bold action. Time to stop complaining about working for “the man” and time to take control of our financial destinies. Here are highlights of what free membership in The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network will offer BPMN members:
The Rollout – Getting Started at www.bloggerandpodcaster.com There’s a lot of work to be done and it’s time for us all to get rolling. The first step is getting critical mass of members signed up as quickly as possible so marketers and advertisers can begin to set aside portions of their 2009 budgets to us. You can also start telling your blogger and podcaster friends about BPMN too. The more qualified members we can bring aboard the better it will be for all of us. And when you communicate with them, remind them to enter your name in the “Referred By” field when they sign-up. This way you will receive the affiliate revenue share from them – as well as anyone they refer in to BPMN, too. Let’s Do This. We’ve got a fundamental choice to make. Do we want to remain powerless like individual droplets of water, or do we want to band together, with lots of other water droplets, to become the extraordinarily powerful ocean? The teams at Fuel My Blog, Podcast Pickle, Social Rank and Blogger & Podcaster firmly believe in the power of being the “ocean.” We’ve staked the future of our individual businesses on joining together for the collective good. We truly hope you’ll join us. Let’s do this! |
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