The USA TODAY is one mainstream media company that “gets it.” Here’s an example of why:

Back in December Blogger & Podcaster Magazine teamed up with USA TODAY to launch The Blogger & Podcaster Guide (think TV Guide for blogs/podcasts to a mainstream audience). The motivation was for us both to make some money ($49.95 per month) while helping bloggers/podcasters to build their audiences by tapping into the 10,000,000+ mainstream consumer readers of USA TODAY.

After 2 months it became clear that while we had hundreds of paying customers, our $49.95 price point (a bargain by traditional USA TODAY standards) was too high for most of our industry to be able to participate.

What happened next has truly amazed me.

USA TODAY has figuratively “torn up” our original agreement and has voluntarily agreed to do the following for us:

1) Given us permission to reduce the price of from $49.95 per month to just $5 per month. They told me that they hope that this new price point will make The Blogger & Podcaster Guide accessible for everyone, no matter how niche or new to the industry. (If you’re already a customer of the guide no worries, the new pricing will happen automatically at your next billing cycle. You don’t need to do anything.)

2) Their going to help drive even more traffic into the Blogger & Podcaster Guide (beyond the franchise spot on the home page of USA TODAY.com they’ve already given us) by giving us 2,000,000 premium placed advertisements (leader boards, skyscrapers etc.) each month. That equates to just shy of 67,000 ads per day. We’re going to be all over USATODAY.com.

3) Perhaps most significantly and selfless of all, USA TODAY has given us permission to work with other media partners beyond themselves. Our agreement was originally an exclusive arrangement for them. This generous act has allowed me to already work out partnerships with 15 additional magazines/publishers with a combined audience of many more millions of pageviews per month. So now if you get a listing in the Blogger & Podcaster Guide you get The USA TODAY and ALL of the new publications for that same $5 per month rate.

I’m having conversations many other publishers and expect to add new ones to our network every month. You’ll be able to keep tabs on the complete list to date at www.bloggerandpodcaster.com/register.

When the mainstream media does something right, I think it’s important to acknowledge. Thank you USA TODAY, you’re helping the little guys, and we appreciate it.

- Larry
Publisher
Blogger & Podcaster

This morning TechCrunch reported our plans for the creation of The Blogger & Podcaster Media Network (BPN). I’ve been getting a bunch of questions, so let me share some of the specifics:

1) USA Today- Blogger & Podcaster Guide. There’s been a big development with USA Today. Thanks to their support of our industry we can now offer inclusion in the USA Today Blogger & Podcaster Guide (think TV Guide for blogs and podcasts to a mainstream audience) for just $5 per month…it was $49.95 monthly. In addition, beyond the position on the homepage of usatoday.com they have also committed to 2,000,000 premium placed ads each month, driving even more traffic to the guide. Perhaps most importantly, they’ve given us their permission to include other media partners in the Blogger & Podcaster Guide. Later today we’ll be announcing 15 new media partners beyond USA Today, making the $5 per month value proposition even stronger. Based on initial interest I anticipate having deals with over 100 media partners within the next few months. This will, for the first time, allow bloggers and podcasters to promote their content to a significant mainstream audience cost effectively. All current members will automatically be switched to the new pricing, you don’t need to do anything. If you are intersted in being included you can register at www.bloggerandpodcater.com/register (the page may not be live until later today, so check back if it’s not up when you go there.)

2) Eligibility. All bloggers and podcasters are eligible to join The Blogger & Podcaster Network. We make no requirements as to subscriber count, unique visitors or any other such restrictions. And, we don’t require exclusivity. You can be part of The Blogger & Podcaster Network at the same time you’re a member of another network, if that’s what makes sense for your business.

3) Healthcare. We are working hard on a group healthcare plan. We know healthcare (especially in the US) is a big issue for those looking to leave their “day jobs” and blog/podcast full time, so we are actively working on a group plan solution that will eliminate this obstacle. As you might imagine, this is a complicated endeavor, however I’m confident that we’re going to be able to work this out.

4) Earning You Money. This summer we will be rolling out the advertising portion of our program. We’ll provide members with the option of including useful content widgets (that can be simply installed on your web page) such as: polls of the day, video players (on topics of interest to your audience), news feeds, etc. The content widgets will have advertising embedded in them and we will share revenues from these ads with you. We prefer this approach, in contrast to a program like Google AdSense, where you schlock up your site by having ads stacked on each on top of each other. When all is said and done between this advertising and our affiliate program bloggers & podcasters will be able to earn a living from being a full-time blogger/podcaster.

There’s even more exciting news still to come, but I’m going to try and keep those details under wraps for now. Hopefully Scoble, Jason Kottke, Michael Arrington or some other intrepid journalist won’t scoop us when the time comes.

- Larry
Publisher
Blogger & Podcaster