What am I addicted to? Communities.

Seriously. Well, that and Red Bull.

Ever since my first forays into that online world in 1993, I have been fascinated by and, really, addicted to communities. Sometimes I was merely a participant. Sometimes I was a moderator in forums. For a year back in 1999/2000, I bought and sold online communities for a living (buy low, sell high). Hell, I even picked my current physical home (St. Stephen, New Brunswick, ) based on one key criteria: how much my family and I fit into the community.

So it should come as no surprise that I currently help run b5media, a blog network. After all, while blog networks are businesses, and places to help writers earn money, the truth is that every blog network will (to me, the addict) survive or fail based on the strength of its community. For some networks their internal community on their blogs, mailing lists or forums is strongest. For others they are incredibly good at creating communities of interest on the blogs themselves. Either way, though, community is key.

Healthy communities tells your audience you value them, tells your writers you admire them and shows the industries you are blogging about that you are serious. After all, anyone can slap up a blog and slop some content on it. But it takes time, energy and passion to create community.

Whether you are looking at blog networks as a business play, as a blogger or even as an advertiser or investor, you really need to pull a Capital One and ask: “what’s in your wallet?” Because without a solid community and a solid foundation behind it, the blog network you are looking at could easily be just another carcass on the sludge floor of the Internet (and Web 2.0 specifically).

So, from a blog network owner, and addict (ie: I am not impartial), here are the top 10 questions I would be asking a blog network if I was looking at working with them in some capacity. The first few are community minded. The next set is for bloggers (though should be of interest to anyone). The rest are just common sense. Hopefully they help you find the right community (and network) for you.

10 Questions to Ask a Blog Network

1) How much power do bloggers have over their blogs?
While giving bloggers control over their blogs isn’t necessarily a sign of community, allowing bloggers to choose colors, logos and add custom elements to areas like sidebars shows a sense of trust in the blogger and shows that the network understands the needs of a blogger to make a site their own. Some blog networks exercise too much control to let a blogger feel like they really own the blog. Others allow so much control that they aren’t able to do things like network-wide upgrades in a cohesive manner. Make sure you are valued, but make sure you are valued enough to have (and know the) boundaries.

2) What percentage of bloggers are active on the internal blogs, forums and mailing list on a daily and weekly basis?
Almost every network has some type of internal communication method. But are only the top 5 or so bloggers active on it, or is it a larger cross-section of the community? How are official conversations separated from community conversations, and how are those separated from official announcements from on high? An active community is key, but knowing how to find the value in the community (and even being able to) is in many ways even more important. After all, a community that is too daunting to participate in doesn’t help anyone!

3) May I talk to some of your larger, and smaller, bloggers?
This question is a reality check: how much of what the company says do bloggers at the top (and bottom) actually feel and believe? If you’re told you can’t make contact, find the door. Maybe it’s just that the network is undergoing growing pains right now. This is a great question to find out with. Status check. Red doesn’t always means run, but if you’re afraid of getting burnt it could be. On the other hand, there are few better opportunities to establish yourself as invaluable to a network than when things are going wrong!

4) What percentage of your traffic and income do the top 10% of your blogs represent?
Far too many networks operate on some type of a curve. For some, their top 3-4 blogs represent a massive 80% of their traffic. For others the curve is slighter. It is important to realize that all networks will have curves. It is simply impossible to have more than 5 blogs and not have some that are bigger than others. Bigger is fine. What you are trying to find out with this question is realistically how much a smaller or midsize blog makes and how much traffic it gets. Be prepared to be understanding, though. It often takes 6-12 months for a blog to really find its legs, so if the blog network owners couch a little it can be fine. On the other hand, it could be bad news. Either way, get the facts before you sign the contract.

5) How much are you currently paying out to bloggers (as a whole) every month, and how much has that amount been growing by monthly?
Every blog network has secrets. One of the biggies is that while some people make great coin, others don’t. Knowing how much (on average) is being paid out to bloggers, and seeing that that amount is growing on a monthly basis will show you how healthy and how truly profitable the network is. Again, if the network is new and small don’t be scared off by small numbers. You want to see healthy growth in the numbers, though, and you want to be aware that if they are only paying out 1000$ per month to 20 bloggers that the average take home, right now, is pretty small. Thankfully healthy networks will increase this number quite quickly. Don’t be afraid to ask, but don’t be afraid to get in at the ground floor either. What you don’t’ want to see is a 1-year old network with 50 blogs and 30 bloggers only paying out 500$ ;-)

6) Who owns the content?
This is a critical question. There are very few reasons that you, as a blogger, shouldn’t own your content. You can then give the blog network an indefinite license to it. What you don’t want to do, though, is give away all rights to your content. After all, you wrote it from your head and your experience and your wisdom. Licensing is good. Giving up ownership is bad. Consider asking for full offline rights to your content immediately, and then the right to use up to a certain percentage after a reasonable period of time.

7) What is the exit strategy?
Every blog network wants to get bought out. Every single one says they will, “sometime this year”. But what happens if they don’t get bought out? What happens if more than 10% of the bloggers leave in a month because things get a little rough? How does the network plan to be viable? How will it function if the online ad market collapses again, or if AdSense gets shut down? Sure, the plan might not be all peaches and cream, but ensuring there is a plan is a Very Good Thing.

8) What backups and disaster recovery plans does the network have in place?
This is an IT question (my apologies, I’m an old school IT guy), but knowing that your data is safe is a very good thing. Knowing that there is more than enough capacity in the network to handle the growth is another Very Good Thing.

9) What differentiates you?
Lots of blog networks out there. Ask the big question: why should you care, why should readers care and why should advertisers care about the network? There are a lot of networks out there. Too many are just Weblogs, Inc. clones hoping to cash in. Quite a few have real value though. Make sure you find those, even if a few network owners get a little offended along the way by you asking the difficult questions.

10) Badgers?
The correct response, of course, is “we don’t need no stinkin’ badgers.” Any other response is a Very Bad Thing!

And, just for fun and to wrap this up, here are 10 lies that blog networks tell  ;-)

1. We will be bigger than Weblogs, Inc. by the end of the year.
2. We are signing massive ad deals every month.
3. We are seeing 80% traffic growth on a monthly basis.
4. All we have to do is get 5% of the market to dominate our niche.
5. We believe in serving underserved niches (whilst launching gadget, auto and video game blogs).
6. We don’t need funding to succeed.
7. The big blog networks are too slow to be a real threat to us.
8. All of our projects are conservative.
9. We have the best bloggers in the world.
10. We are profitable.

Okay, okay, so not all of these are lies. But if we, as an industry, can’t laugh at ourselves a little and at the silly things we sometimes say to keep ourselves motivated day by day, then who can?! Many thanks to Guy Kawasaki for the inspiration on these lists. You can find Guy’s blog at http://blog.guykawasaki.com. If you are in business, it is well worth a daily read!