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

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 7:50 am and is filed under Blog Entry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.