Comments on: Big Blog vs. Many Small Blogs

By: Clive Allen

Clive Allen — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:10:08 +0000

Easy to talk about a big blog being better than many small ones when you have one. But doesn’t every blog start small and, if it’s any good, grow? It takes time to build a blog into something that can swallow little ones without noticing and time is what Jason has had. For all we know, some of the tiddler blogs of today will be the great sharks of tomorrow (and then their owners can wag their fingers at all the latecomers and tell them they need big blogs, not little ones). It’s an old, old story and only time will tell.

By: Blog World Expo Blog » Blogging News 2.8.07

Blog World Expo Blog » Blogging News 2.8.07 — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 19:05:39 +0000

[...] The Blog Herald has a post titled Big Blog vs. Many Small Blogs which examines the financial advantages of one blogging business model vs. the other. Jason Calacanis founder of Weblogs Inc. and Jeremy Wright CEO of b5 both respond in the comments section. Check it out. [...]

By: Jim Turner

Jim Turner — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:58:06 +0000

Jason,

You make a good point of course. Businesses believe that if they can reach 1 million people a percentage is liable to stumble upon their product. But if I can generate 100 definite leads from only 500 eyeballs, my money is on the qualified leads and not the by accident leads.

I would say that Jeremy’s model is not the best for branding but for a business to get good qualified leads it is probably a great model.

By: Jeremy Wright

Jeremy Wright — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:51:20 +0000

I’d much rather debate with Jason in person on this, as I’m sure it’d be a lively debate. Ultimately, though, only time will tell if the model works or not. So far, it appears to.

I’ve explained why we do what we do. If it doesn’t work, we’ll adapt and evolve. But until there are signals that it isn’t working (like advertisers not being interested), it’s simply too early to throw in the towel and do it someone else’s way. As long as we keep meeting or exceeding every one of our projections, we’ll keep moving along our blog, product, platform, syndication and partner release roadmaps :)

By: SYNTAGMA » Twenty Million Bucks to Build a Digital Network

SYNTAGMA » Twenty Million Bucks to Build a Digital Network — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 14:26:34 +0000

[...] Update: Jason adds to his critique of the “b5 model” in a comment over at The Blog Herald : “b5 media has great people, and I don’t mean to pick on them, but it’s the wrong model. I know this because I tried it back in the early days of WIN.” [...]

By: 5 Ways to Check Blog Growth » @ YugaTech | Philippine Technology News & Reviews

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 09:28:20 +0000

[...] P.S. Coincidentally, I also wrote a short piece on BlogHerald about One Big Blog vs. Many Smaller Ones. I’d like to hear your thoughts on that matter. [...]

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 09:11:34 +0000

Frankly, I don’t think B5′s model is going to work. You can’t make enough money off these small blogs, and advertisers want to spend a lot of money and get a lot of reach–they are not interested in small audiences in large part (an exception being B2B publications).

Anyone can create 500 blogs in a month and say they have the biggest network, but what does it mean if Engadget, Autoblog, PerezHilton, or BoingBoing.net get more traffic in a single day/week than all B5 in a month/qtr/year!??!

The market for small niche blog is best left to individual bloggers running ads from Federated, BlogAds, TRibalFusion, and Google. There just isn’t a market in it for a network. Also, you invest the same amount in a small blog in many ways (tech, logo, design, sales, etc) than you do a large blog. Why would you put all that effort into a blog about one TV show!??! makes no sense… the TV show will go away at some point and the audience will have to learn another domain name. With TVSquad you’ll know that brand for 10-20-30 years I’m sure.

b5 media has great people, and I don’t mean to pick on them, but it’s the wrong model. I know this because I tried it back in the early days of WIN.

By: A Single Big Blog or Many Smaller Blogs? | Content Writing and CopyWriting Blog

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 08:12:08 +0000

[...] It’s too early for me to talk about the commercial viability of my blog (I’m not even sure if I want to use my blog to earn direct money because I have other plans) but in terms of earning good money, is it better to have just a single, big, popular blog or run multiple blogs simultaneously under one network? This is a question a post titled Big Blog vs. Many Small Blogs at The Blog Herald asks. [...]

By: One By One Media » Is it better to deliver the single knock-out punch, or a hundred punches?

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 07:59:22 +0000

[...] Addendum: I had Abe’s post from Blog Herald open in a tab and it didn’t click that he was talking about the same issue. Abe takes the opposite view, fewer larger blogs are better. He does make some good points about scale and attracting advertisers. However I will still contend that niches are going to be where advertisers are going to want to be in the very near future. [...]