Hey food bloggers: Let’s build a new kind of network.
My partners and I are quietly working on a new publishing system for food writers, bloggers, or anyone who puts food content out into the world.
As part of our efforts, we decided to see if anyone would be interested in joining a new kind of collaborative network, one that shares high-quality food content, while also promoting the members of the network itself.
We ran a survey and the results were overwhelmingly positive; 95% of the respondents agreed that a new approach to promotion sounded like a good idea, and almost 100% thought our prototype design was one they’d like to see on their site.
The concept.
Just by looking at the increasing quantity and decreasing quality of banner ads on the average food blog, you can tell that the business of running display ads on the web doesn’t seem healthy. The use of content blockers and other privacy tools is putting a strain on ad networks’ ability to track users and even display ads at all. This results in banner ads that are distracting, voluminous, and destroy both site performance and user experience.
Secondarily, social media has proven itself unstable, as we realize that provding content for three or four giant corporations isn’t viable as the only strategy for growth.
Own your content, own your platform.
In the early 2010s, there was a network called The Deck. It wrangled up a few dozen popular technology sites, and sold small, simple, and (importantly) relevant ads. It was very successful for quite a few years, and provided a good stream of income to member sites, without compromising user experience.
Similar networks still exist in the tech space, but not (as far as we can tell) in the food space.
The “coasters”.
Our placements will be attractive, relevant, low-impact, and responsive to work on all screens. Each has one small image supported by text, with no video or animations.
The network.
The first step is to create a network of food sites, and build tools to let them create placements for whatever they want to promote, and run them on all the sites in the network.
If you’ve been on the web for a while, you might think this sounds a little like a classic webring, and you’d be right. We think one of the things missing from the food blogosphere is a greater sense of community, and — while we have more ideas for tools to help change that — this is an easy first step to help get some of that back.
Once the network is up and running, we’ll be able to gauge the size and reach of it, and —maybe, in the future — start selling high-quality ads to relevant advertisers. Our ads will be free of tracking, won’t use cookies, and won’t impact a site’s performance and user experience.
Easily said, now let’s do it.
Our registration form is open. If you have a site you think would benefit from being part of a community, sign up. If you know someone who would like this idea — please pass it on.
Once enough sites are on board, we’ll start running placements created by the network members, and in the future assess the viability of selling ads.
Hopefully, at the very least, it will be fun.
(Please do let me know if this makes any sense! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out via email or Twitter.)
