blog network - advertising etc

**D* G* <d*@gmail.com>**

One of the things I've been thinking about recently is how to start working
together - how to raise all our boats a bit higher in the water.   One of
the first possible steps is to hook our sites together into a search
network.  Anybody searching on my site is going to find results from all
other sites in the network as well.   People searching on your site are
going to be given my site info as well.   We share readers and traffic.   I
have a research report I'm delighted to share with anybody who's interested
(contact me offline and I'll send you a copy) that details the gains of
sites that band together in this way to create a network effect.

I've looked at different ways to do this - and found a software
widget/company called Lijit  - talked to their marketing manager and have
their permission to form a network using their system.  There are two
advantages - the first is increased traffic, the second is that they're
serving ads and we'll get 50% of ad income from those ads.  I don't know
about you but I don't make any money right now on my searches so this helps
a bit.  It's also the first step in finding other ways we can work
together.  Once we have a network operating, we may be able to leverage it
in other interesting ways.

In working together, we'll also be creating an alltop style of search page
for gardening.

Qualifications for entry.

It has to be a blog (platform doesn't matter)  Websites are not eligible
because we're going to be using a widget

You have to control your sidebars and only have garden content on the site.
This means that blogs for newspapers etc are not going to be eligible.
Individual gardening blogs only because the search engine will search the
entire site and present non-gardening data to our readers

You can see the widget on my blog at http://blog.douggreensgarden.com in the
right hand sidebar at the bottom.   Lijit sends a very interesting stats
package on Monday morning that's a snapshot of my blog activities.

If you're interested, drop me a note OFFLIST and I'll send you the network
traffic report and signup info.

Doug

-- 
Doug Green @douggreen
Editor-in-Chief
SGF Publishing  www.simplegiftsfarm.com
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