Blog software company Six Apart acquired creative agency Apperceptive, a company that built blogs for sites such as The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, BoingBoing, and iVillage. Now they’re launching an advertising network for blogs. They are also venturing into design, programming, and blog marketing services.
As an ad network, Six Apart is competing with Federated Media Publishing, Glam, Blogads, and others. Here’s how it will work – they will get advertisers, bloggers put the ads up, and the two share revenue (not sure what the payouts are like, but I believe it’s typical to get 20-30%). Six Apart is working with Adify to provide back end support so bloggers can see their payouts and manage their account.
What I like about Six Apart is that they are targeting their services to the little guy (or gal). Even more popular bloggers struggle to draw big name advertisers that pay well. They may be bloggers with a loyal but niche following and are good at writing but lack the know-how or clout to draw advertisers.
Most ad networks have minimum traffic and audience requirements. In this case, publishers can reject blogs they don’t want their ads to show up on. The ad network is currently in invitation-only beta and it’s just for bloggers who use Six Apart’s Vox, TypePad, or LiveJournal.
They are also providing services that help with technical problems that most bloggers face – like how to migrate your blog to another blogging platform. If you want to migrate to TypePad for example, prices start at $199.
I’ve seen companies who don’t get blogs and blogging trying to do this themselves. Then they have to start over or they’re not getting the traffic or response from their blog that they should get. I’d recommend Six Apart’s new services (especially if there was an affiliate program) but what I’d really like is a similar service from WordPress.
