Going solo means having freedom to explore a lot of options. After months of careful negotiations, trips to the Vatican, badge tweaking, and a foiled bank robbery in South Dakota, I'm here to tell you that I've thrown in with the crew at 9rules.
Airbag is now a member of the 9rules Network.
I've been watching and pestering these guys for a while now, I like their work and what they do. That I know of they are one of the few groups (companies) who figured out the business side of blogs very quickly and already have measured success.
Now Airbag is no spring chicken, it's been around for a long time, but you can never learn enough and these guys are at the top of their niche.
My entry into this foray is an experiment to see what the power of a network can do for a website like this. In return, it's my hope that Airbag will help promote some of the hardest working guys (well Mike anyway, I'm not so sure about Scrivs) in the blog business.
More on blogs and business later.
Join the fray by reading through and commenting at the end.
Wow, didnt see that one coming. I'm not sure exactly what 9rules in going to do for you, but youve certainly joined a club of good sites, many of which were in my feed list before becoming members. Hope it all goes according to plan.
Sorry to hear the SD bank bust didn't pan out. Best of luck joining 9r.
Greg just wanted a piece of the parking lot worth of traffic 9rules seems to swim in. He's a greedy guy, no doubt ;)
Welcome to the fray, G-Money.
NOOOOOOO!
Does this mean there will be ads on airbag soon? I'd be fine with that, it's how I do things.
I'm still unclear on how the 9rules network turns a bunch of blogs into rent money for everyone involved without ads on all the sites. I sometimes I see members discussing pagerank and SEO tactics a bit much, so I hope there isn't anything weird going on.
Greg - thanks for the nice comment about being hard at work. Its nice to know that our hard work is appreciated.
Matt: There are ads on most of the network sites. We're no Mullenweg. Whoa!! Too soon?
Larry - What's so bad about it? We don't control the content. If Greg wants ads on the site that is his decision. Look at the other sites in the network. We haven't changed them at all with the exception of adding the 9rules button on them.
Matt - As stated above, ads are an option for Greg to choose from. Not every site is about making money and we have bigger plans in the works for our revenue models that do not involve any shady tactics. If we do anything shady it reflects badly on our members who we are trying hard to keep happy.
Advertising has been a part of the discussion but nothing is set in stone.
I go back and forth with advertising on Airbag. A few months ago I tried site sponsorship at the request of the sponsors but that didn't last.
There was a time I wanted to try Google's ad program but they kept denying my application, and after they removed this site from their search results for the word 'airbag' I saw the writing on the wall and moved on to more interesting things.
Welcome to the darkside. Your entrance is much appreciated :)
Congrats on accepting and I hope it pans out very well for your site. I am glad it was accepted, because I read your blog a while back and actually forgot about it. So now I can add it back to my rss feed.
errrr. let me rephrase that. I read your blog like over a year ago and at that time, I did not have an rss reader, so now I can ADD it to my rss reader :)
Scrivs, my comment was supposed to kinda be a joke and end with "Darth Vader voice". I, more than anyone, know that ads are not an evil thing. They pay my salary and are very much needed unless you like paying to access content. And does look like you're running a tight ship with minmal changes to the sites... I'm very interested to see what the next phase is for the network.
I thought you were using your Luke Skywalker voice. If anyone gets to be Darth Vader around here it's me!
Larry - After I posted my comment my Star Wars Geek of a CTO Colin told me about the Vader reference. And he has now labeled me an asshat for the day. I guess somebody else had to wear the hat besides Rundle.
These comments could definitely turn into a Star Wars quoting battle, but I will restrain myself.
Must. Not. Turn. To. Dark. Side.
Ha! Damn glad to have you abord there Greg, and you didn't need to start a whole new site to do it. That's balls.
Finally, a true smart ass in the network.
Damn sell-out.
;-)
Good luck!
I think 9 rules even though I always sported the number 11 jersey growing up. I liked that it just looked like two lines, like a bar code. I think 3 rules too. It's like a backwards E and 3 x 3 is 9, or so they say.
The 9rules Network's lexicon was sorely missing the word "asshat." Now the 9rules Network is complete.
Okay, I read a lot of the sites under the 9r umbrella all the time, I dig the content, but I just don't understand the business model. I've read pretty much every page on 9rules.com and still don't understand any sort of revenue source. If anyone is still reading the comments for the post, can you explain in plain english how you make money??
p.s. congrats, you're in good company