Pro’s and Con’s of Joining a Blogging Network. Here’s a big Con:
There could be situations where a blog network has a blog that is doing very well so the blog network decides to branch out and launch another blog on the same subject. Or they hire additional bloggers for this particular blog. In both cases this might be good for the blog network but it could be bad for the individual blogger because his or her revenues might be diminished (depending on the payment terms) as they are spread around multiple bloggers.
Actually this is not so worrisome an issue, especially if the blogging team is linking to one another (as often seems to be the case). So far the best blogging teams I’ve seen have been the corante guys , and to a lesser extent the Houston Chronicle bloggers. They’ve started to add a lot of ad hoc blogs (Hurricane Katrina, etc)which can start out and be put into the backpage when their ostensible purpose has faded. I haven’t really addressed the revenue issue though. Presumably the Chronicle people are getting a fixed salary, while the Corante people are getting a share of ad-revenues (if even that). There are a lot of great special interest not-for-profit groupblogs out there: Tapped/Thismodernworld/Teleread/Worldchanging/China Digital Times/Crooked Timber/ Oreilly Radar/Greezine/Dynamist and probably a dozen others I can’t think of right now.