There can’t be just one

A couple days ago I was talking to my friend Phil and I mentioned that there are only 3 ways to get consistent traffic to your blog; you have to be famous, an expert in something, or part of a big blogging network. Granted, there are still some exceptions, like Cute Overload and Postsecret, which are so creative that they have taken on a huge following… but with each blog like them, there’s one less creative niche to fill. For the rest of the blogosphere, you are either well-established or you fit into one of these 3 categories.

It wasn’t always this way. It was sometime around the move towards Web 2.0 (whatever that is) and social networking that blogging networks really started to take off. Now blogging networks are an integral part of the blogosphere. The way I see it, the blogosphere is different than it was a few years ago, and anyone entering it this year has a lot more work cut out for them if they want to climb the long tail.

What I find most interesting about all this is that, despite all the blogging networks out there, there is still only one for people who blog for the sake of blogging. If you want to blog for money there are a lot of options, but for blogs that serve a greater purpose, there is only 9rules. In an industry that breeds imitation, I find this very surprising. 9rules is obviously a great business model, and they have even shared how you can build your own. The only thing missing is the courage and hard work to do the same thing Scrivs and Co. have done. The question is, why not?

It might be because too many entrepreneurs only see the conventional blogging network model (put bloggers on payroll and have them write contrived cookie-cutter blogs) as the way to go. It might also be because very few entrepreneurs looking to imitate actually have the courage to do something as difficult as what Scrivs has done. (I’d like to hear Scrivs’ take on this.)

Either way, it leaves the Z-listers in a bit of a bind. 9rules remains as the only way to boost a blog (without selling out). You can see the influence 9rules has whenever it gets close to submission time… on November 14 it seemed like every blogger on the net knew about the submission round and for only being the third one, there were 509 sites entered. I think it’s safe to predict that round 4, which will take place on May 17, will have well over 1,000 entries… and as the blogosphere keeps growing, there’s no reason for future rounds to have less than that.

This is all very exciting, but at the same time it’s very bad. I say that there can’t be just one network like 9rules because 9rules has changed the face of the blogosphere entirely. For one thing, 9rules has just about become the official word on what makes a good blog. Any blog that submits on May 17 and gets rejected is automatically seen as a lesser blog than any of the ones that make it in… even though approval is not dependent solely on quality. Some blogs are rejected because they are too similar to other blogs in the network or simply because they are not established enough, while others are accepted because they are totally unique and bring something new to smaller communities within 9rules. No matter the reason, users see the 9rules round as a litmus test of a blog’s quality, and it is not good that this test is dependent on the opinion of just one group of people. There’s no other network to turn to if 9rules rejects you. All that one can do is spend the next 6 months improving their blog, waiting for the next round.

Another problem with 9rules being the only network of its kind is that there is no way it can reasonably scale to accomodate all the blogs that belong. If 9rules is to be the best blogs on the net, there is a lot of growing to come. The question is, when does 9rules get too big? The 9rules team was smart enough to add communities a while back, but as they continue to grow there are only so many things they can do to accomodate their size. Imagine if they had 5 times as many blogs… which is possible. Would each one be better served if their community (there are 29 in 9rules) was a separate blogging network? (the answer is yes and no).

The last problem is that 9rules has become one of the first (and sometimes only) places to look for new blogs. Besides, if you look at the advertising for 9rules (Damn I’m Cute has some) the tagline is basically “Stop looking for blogs, head to 9rules and you won’t need to look again.” For the rest of the blogosphere, the choices are few and far between… one cannot rely on search engines, link sites like del.icio.us and Digg do not provide consistent traffic, and any other “blog promotion” schemes are almost always useless. Besides, any time spent on self-promotion is time that could be spent on quality blogging. It doesn’t help if 9rules, with all its clout, is zapping any blog-finding services.

In short, the world of blogging has become: either you are in 9rules, or you are not. I know this sounds like a stretch, but if you kept up with SXSW then I think you can believe that 9rules is the club everyone wants to be in. It’s the old saying, “anyone who’s anyone is in.” Even reading the 9rules blog is a prime example… the PR lingo (which is great by the way) is a lot of “our blogs are the best, we highlight the best blogs, good luck trying to get in.” More importantly, 9rules is a great thing, and there should be more communities like it.

So I’ll ask again… why isn’t there another site like 9rules?