There is no doubt that the current financial situation is hitting the web as well as the rest of the media industry. This is certainly one of the reasons why we’ve seen blog networks close, cut costs, or rationalize their portfolio. So is the blog network business model in trouble, and what does the established blog network hotshots thing about these things?

I decided to find out, in the first roundtable discussion here on the Blog Herald. That’s why I invited these fine blog network heavyweights to participate in the discussion.

• Jeremy Wright, CEO of b5media
• Collis Ta’eed, CEO of Envato
• Mike Rundle, triad member of 9rules

So let’s get started and see what they have to say! read more

Blog network b5media is revamping their pay scheme, and that means a lot less money for the bloggers. More or less every blog within the network will see a drop in revenue because of this. TechCrunch broke the story by posting a memo from CEO Jeremy Wright, in which the following is key:

I’m sure by now you’ve run your blog through the system above and realized that (with a handful of exceptions), due to the change to Omniture as a stats package, your pay will go down. For some it will go down significantly. Obviously this isn’t the intent of the new pay system, it was just the flaw in the previous stats package. For the last two years, b5 has been effectively paying bloggers 2-3x more in traffic bonuses than they were actually getting. While, again, this isn’t a blogger’s fault, neither is the new pay system about “cutting pay”. Any reduction in pay is due almost exclusively to the reality of using an inaccurate pay system in the past vs an industry standard third-party audited system going forward.

Jeremy Wright has tried to respond to the post, but his comments are apparently getting caught in moderation, so he posted it on his blog for now. He points out the obvious culprit: read more

Know More Media will be closing its doors as of August 1, according to editor Easton Ellsworth, who confirmed the open letter from b5media’s Jeremy Wright to the KMM bloggers. Still no official announcement on the Know More Media blog though.

Jeremy pitches the KMM bloggers, asking them to join b5media by buying their blogs. It is all very tactful, I think. He also has an offer to the founders. read more