1. What is the Revenue Share I get from the Blogroll? Members get 60% of the gross advertising revenue served on their site.
2. Do I have control over the pricing for the ads on my blog? Yes, you have 100% control over the minimum price of your Blogroll ads. To accomplish this, you will need to go in and set up a "default" or "house" ad for your blog. Your default ad can be another ad engine like Google / Yahoo and you enter into our system the effective CPM that this ad engine is currently earning you. By setting this up you are telling the system, "Serve my default ad provider on my blog unless the Blogroll has an ad that earns me more than my default provider does." Once this is set up, you have effectively set a minimum price for your blogroll ads. For detailed instructions on how to set up your default ad, see the Installation Manual.
3. Does the Blogroll take a revenue share from the default ads I serve through the Blogroll system? No, you keep 100% of the revenue that serves through our system from other ad engines. We will only take our share from incremental revenue that the Blogroll has created for you via our sales reps or the Blogroll Storefront.
4. What controls do I have over the ads that show up on my blog? You have 100% control over the ads that show up on your blog. No ad will appear until you have reviewed and approved it.
5. What Ad Sizes can I use? All Blogroll members should have at least one of these ad sizes installed. 160x600, 728x90, 300x250. A 120x600 can be used as a last resort if none of the other 3 fit in your template. Members are free to install any additional sizes that suit their fancy. The system supports text links and just about any ad size you can dream up.
6. When will the Blogroll Storefront be up and running? We are in the process of rolling out a self-service storefront where advertisers will be able to browse through all of our members sites and easily buy advertising there with PayPal or a Credit Card. This should be up and running early 2007.
7. What kind of traffic can I expect to get from my blog showing up on the washingtonpost.com homepage and in the Blogroll Directory? While we can't promise anyone a specific amount of traffic, I can give you a more detailed breakdown of how we will promote members, now and in the future.
The #'s work out like this: On average, the WP homepage gets 2.5M pv's per day. (side note: 80% of this audience comes from outside of the DC area!) Lets say that we have 300 blogroll members and we randomly display 6 blogs every time the page loads. This would equate to every blog showing up on 2% of the pv's (6/300). This means that every blog would show up on 50,000 pv's per day (2.5M x 2%). We are no where near 300 members today, so current members are being displayed much more than that. We hope that this promo generates a fair amount of new readers for our member blogs.
In addition to the homepage promotion and the directory, we plan a few other methods to help promote our members to new readers.
8. If I set up an account with ADiFY directly I get a larger rev share than the 60% the Blogroll offers me. What do I get for this extra percentage? The ADiFY system is a technology platform for bloggers to manage their ad inventory. By joining the Blogroll, members get the ADiFY system plus an additional layer of benefits that make the program extremely unique and powerful. These additional benefits include the promotion and exposure to new readers as described in #7 above, as well as a relationship with WPNI's 30+ salespeople who will be representing your blog to quality advertisers around the globe.
--A Badge for members to put on their blogs that will link to the directory.
--We hope to expand the promotion beyond just the homepage of WP. Example: Promote business blogs in a special widget that runs in the business section. Tech in the Tech section, etc.
--Enhance the directory to make it much better.
--Its a no brainer to do something with RSS and OPML.
--Special projects. If you have no seen BizBox on Slate
