Three hundred and sixty-five days ago, the lovable creature that we have come to know as the Bloguin was hatched. It was a humble birth with only four small basketball blogs present to witness the event.  There was no fanfare or big press release as he made his way out of his shell and into the world, but on that day, the sports blogosphere was changed forever.  One trip around the sun later, Bloguin has grown from a mere hatchling to the mighty blog network you see today.  It's been a journey marked by hard work, creativity, new friendships, some lucky breaks, and more hours in front of a computer screen than I would ever care to admit.  As we celebrate the first year of Bloguin, I'd like to take a look back at the places we've gone and the people we've met, who have all shaped Bloguin into what it is today.

One year ago, I flipped the switch and four blogs got a fancy new make-over.  I had spent the summer telling anyone who'd listen about my plan to start a blog network.  Unfortunately, most people wanted nothing to do with the idea.  I can't say that I blame them.  I had no experience in running a network, no demo to show them, and no money to fund the concept.  All I had to sell them on was an extremely lofty dream. Most people ignored me.  A handful were intrigued, but ultimately didn't buy it.  Somehow, I managed to convince four people to hitch their blog to my wagon.  The grand plan was to start with five basketball blogs, grow an NBA presence, gradually branch out to other sports, and finally bring in some entertainment blogs to round out the coverage.  Before we'd even launched, one of the five backed out. Great sign, right? Although an ominous sign what I didn't know or expect was that 98 other blogs would manage to come along and join TWolves Blog and A Stern Warning by the time we reached the one year mark.

Starting a blog network seems easy enough.  You find a blogging system, a good template, and just start firing out emails until somebody decides to give you a shot.  What I never stopped to think about was all the extra details - like what happens when your "unlimted" hosting plan turns out to be not so unlimited and you have to scale to maintain 100 websites, or how do you convince ad networks that you're more than some joke banner ad network like the ones that had burned them too many times before, or where you're going to find help when the project gets too big to run on your own and you still have limited income, or how you're going to secure scarce ad dollars in the midst of an impending economic crisis?  I didn't have answers to any of those questions starting out.  Truth be told, I wouldn't even be able to give advice to a fledgling network on how to repeat the success as a lot of it fell into our laps. Looking back, Bloguin ended up implementing the strategy of my favorite football team, the New England Patriots.  Work your tail off, take care of the details, never quit, put yourself in the best position you can, and then hope that a "tuck rule" comes up when you really need. it. 

The initial plan with Bloguin was to build up a really strong basketball base - 15-20 sites over the course of the fall and winter and then make a move towards baseball by the start of spring.  Things changed, however, when the opportunity arose to dive into baseball a bit earlier than we'd planned.  The first baseball blogger to take the dive and joing a bunch of NBA blogs was Patrick Lackey of Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?  Patrick joining was a monumental moment in Bloguin's history.  Besides the inherent fact that he's a top-notch writer and opened the network up to baseball, WHYGAVS? also played a major role in our recruiting of our first hockey blog, The Pensblog.  This in turn, opened the door fo our first football blog, Blitzburgh Blog.  Thanks to the three of them, we were able to persuade the initially anti-network PSAMP to join the fold.  The newly-formed quadfector really helped put Bloguin on the map.  The network had now secured quality blogs among the four major sports, which was huge towards gaining legitimacy in the blogging community.  I can say for certain that the difficult job of recruiting got a whole lot easier once the city of Pittsburgh was claimed in the name of Bloguin. 

At this point, Bloguin was about three months old and 20 blogs strong.  We continued to grow slowly, building quality sites, creating great banners, and working as a community.  My goal was to make it to 50 blogs by the one year mark. My "reach for the stars" dream was to be at 70.  Then something happened that I would have never expected, and it changed the course of Bloguin forever.  About a month into launching the network, I had talked briefly with an employee of Yard Barker about a possible ad partnership between the two networks.  The discussions never really went anywhere and I figured that I'd heard the last of Ben Koo.  Then one day in the early spring, Ben Koo re-emerged inquiring if our network would be interested in a network RSS widget. (These are the widgets that are now on all our sites.) Anyway, during our talks Ben mentioned that he saw a ton of potential in our network and was wondering if we had a position for him to come on board.  It was a flattering offer, but at the time, Bloguin didn't even have 30 sites launched, had pretty weak ad ops due to the economy, and was barely making any money.  I regretfully informed Ben that there was no way we could bring him on since we didn't have any way to pay him.  To my utter surprise, Ben didn't care.  He believed in what Bloguin was doing and felt our chances of future success were so good, that he was willing to work for next to nothing.  That, my friends, was Bloguin's "tuck rule".

With Ben on board, Bloguin was officially thrust into hyper-drive.  I knew how to create great-looking websites, but as I admitted above, I knew virtually nothing about the online advertising world and the industry trends of sports media.  Ben hit the pavement running, getting us a real media kit, opening up previously unapproachable doors with ad companies, and working his recruiting magic.  Using his encyclopedia of web 2.0 knowledge, he took my part-time hobby and turned it into a legitimate media entity.  This transformation also allowed my long-time T-Wolves buddy, Dave Kelsey to become more involved in the network.  Dave had been involved with TWolves Blog since it's inception and had his hand in Bloguin since the beginning.  However, now that the network was really taking off he was able to take on a larger role and became our Network Operations Manager. 

Over the course of the spring, we worked hard at recruting more blogs, landed our big advertising partnership, and pushed our number of blogs into the 40's.  When we finally all met each other face to face for the first time at Blogs with Balls in June, we felt like there was a lot to celebrate.  Little did we know that the event would spark even more reason to celebrate.  In addition to allowing us to recruit Project Spurs, Blog with Balls allowed us to further spread around the name of our network, gain some solid advice for moving forward, and hear some encouraging feedback from the big names in the industry.  It set the tone for our summer where we went on a recruiting tear to really build up our NFL and NCAA coverage, as well as push our number of launched blogs into the 50's and 60's.

When September 1st hit, we transformed Bloguin.com from a static list of blogs into a full-fledged news portal.  While we still have a long way to go before we become a one-stop source along the lines of an ESPN.com or SI.com, it was still a landmark achievement.  The Bloguin Portal was the first of its kind among the major blog networks and continues to serve as an impressive hub for the network, featuring our best daily posts and collaborative blogger efforts.

By this point, my "shoot for the stars" dream of launching 70 blogs in our first year had become a reality.  With about a month and a half until our one year anniversary, I had the ridiculous idea of making it to the 100 blog mark in time for the big day.  It was a task that would require recruting a good 20 additional blogs and, even more improbably, building 30.  To this day, I still have no idea how we managed to hit the triple digit mark three days before our birthday, but I do know a lot of thanks belongs to Stephen Slesinski, our banner designer, and to Dave for handling all our new recruits.

So that's the story of Bloguin's first year.  One dream, one hundred blogs, and a lot hard work and good breaks.  As we move forward towards year two, our main goal is to build on the momentum that's already in place.  We want to take the areas of weakness and turn them into strengths, continue to improve the portal, come up with further innovative ideas such as the Blogpoll Power Rankings, the Bloguin Awards, and other special features, and, most importantly, continue to provide bloggers everywhere with a platform to be successful.  Bloguin was founded on the belief that bloggers don't have to be stuck in the corner, toiling away on some basic free platform.  We believe in "new media", in brining a voice to the fans, and allowing bloggers to display their work in a professionally-designed environment that gives them the legitimacy they deserve.  I firmly believe that it's our dedication to putting our bloggers first that has allowed Bloguin to reach the 100 mark in an unprecedented amount of time, and I also believe that it's our key to continuing the success in the future.

To wrap things up, I'd like to thank Ben and Dave for being amazing partners in all of this, Sonia Grover for keeping TWolves Blog alive and thriving, Mark Schiralli for sticking with me since Day #1, Stephen Slesinski for lending us his unreal talent, and all of our bloggers for the incredible work they do every day.  None of this would have been possible without you! no comments

I am going to write up the wonderful experience I had at Blogs With Balls at some point tomorrow. I can tell you it was a tremendous event filled with more highlights then the end of the year Baseball Tonight Web Gem Award Show.

At the heart of everything that was awesome at the event was the trio of founders who made Blogs With Balls a reality. They include Chris Lucas, Don Povia, and Kyle Bunch.

I was lucky enough to con Kyle into an interview talking about the unbelievably successful event. Props to him to doing it after a chaotic week for him in addition to a 5 hour flight that turned into 7.

Tomorrow I'll chime in with more thoughts, but for now here is a great interview on the vision, planning, and execution of what is sure to be a staple within the sports blogging community.

 

no comments