Want to set up your own blogging network on the fly and automatically share the ad revenue among the contributors? That’s the premise behind Fair Blogs, a new service from Fair Software. The idea is simple: you organize a blogging network or a virtual company through Fair Software, where each contributor enters their own Google AdSense ID and Fair Software then rotates ads from each members’ account accordng to their ownership share of the blog or blog network.
Fair Software CEO Alain Raynaud explains:
If you have a blog with Google AdSense making some money, you can open a project on FairSoftware and hire people. Let’s say you hire one contributor and give him 30% of the project shares.
On your blog, you replace the Google AdSense javascript by a script we provide. Then, every time someone visits your blog, we serve an ad from one of the members of the project, following the share ownership. So in my example, 30% of the time the ad will belong to the new hire. Then Google just pays each person directly.
This is the same model Fair Software has for software projects (minus the Google AdSense part). It launched at TechCrunch 50 with a way to create virtual shares for companies building software, but the model can be applied to other businesses as well. Fair Software offers a quick and dirty way to pull together teams and allocate a portion of revenues based on each person’s contribution.
Fair Blog is a good idea, but limited in its capabilities. At the very least, I’d want to be able to tie the revenue split from AdSense to each blogger’s performance as measured by Google Analytics. So that the percentage each person gets could be based on pageviews and automatically adjust every payout period.
The other thing Fair Blogs needs is to incorporate more ad networks. AdSense is usually the bottom of the barrel in terms of how much it contributes versus other types of blog ad inventory. But it does have the advantage that everybody uses it. Raynaud plans on adding Amazon affiliate accounts next, and then will move on from there.
Seems sensible.
I see, a entire service for what many scripts do? Its called “adsense revenue sharing” and there are many scripts that integrate into wordpress, forums and more. Look at this for example : http://communit...nvision_ipb.htm
@Imnot Moses what we do goes way beyond what scripts can do.
We build virtual companies which includes shared decision making, licensing, etc.
What happens if a blogger leaves the project: do you keep copyrights to the contributions?
Who decides when to hire a new blogger? How do you enforce those decisions? A script can’t do that.
Great idea, intuitive interface, nice potential, lots of beta testing though, do we get shares for this..:-) ?
It’s a good start. It seems like a way for contributors of different reach to be a sustainable collective. Perhaps an effective way for a new blogger to get a presence.
Interesting…? No, not really.
I think we have to just accept that this is the beginnings of a solution that’s needed, but maybe not all the way there yet – still, it’s a good idea.
I go to the site and try to sign in to FairBlogs but each time I get redirected to FairSoftware. I login to Fair Software but don’t see tabs/links for blogs, just software.
Bad UI.
@Harshal Patel:
The blogs are part of Fair software. Project management is common with software projects. The difference is the “Banner Ads” tab which lets you manage Google AdSense income from your blog.
in theory, this is a great idea. i have spent many months setting up my blog network for solar power, http://www.solarfeeds.com – there is ALOT of legwork…
There are blogs making money with Google Adsense?
You can check problogger.net for more detailed results, but AdSense is moving billions around and they don’t go to TechCrunch, they go to smaller guys!
That sounds very promising!
That sounds like a sureshot plan on increasing AdSense revenue just from partnering or I should say buddy’n up with people online to help increase blog posting content
This is exciting news, most of all from the perspective that it empowers bloggers to create their own networks …
…as opposed to relying on PrePackaged networks (like TechCrunch’s love/hate relationship with theirs).
Now that Fair Software and Google AdSense are empowering bloggers we need to network with one another to get this bad boy going!
why not blogger?
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It’s very interesting, I like it !
I see they have extra features in addition to Adsense revenue sharing are they going to add some more functionality that might persuade people that they can do much more than a script?
Virtual companies and licensing is a good start…
great post. I have been experimenting with adsense. This is a heck of a profitable income stream. I think starting a whole blogging network is not easy. I think getting traffic is the most challenging part. Great idea anyway!!!! thanks for sharing.
What a great idea for group projects and networks. It seems so incredibly sensible that I’m shocked we haven’t seen it before.
I don’t have the details on this yet (have only read this post), but my curiosity is totally piqued.
what if you use anything in addition to adsense for monetezation?
Bad Idea in Bad Economy and I see that this might soon enter the RIP list ….
This is close to what I need, but instead of a percentage share of the entire ‘Company’, I need to be able to allocate a percentage based on upon how valuable the writer is to me. For instance, blogger A should get 80% of the revenue from his contributions since he is indispensable while rookie blogger should get 40% of the revenue generated by clicks on her page.
You can do that manually today (or you can just let the rookie have their own ads on the pages they own).
But I doubt a purely technical answer really solves the problem. Do you think TechCrunch pays their writers directly based on the ads that their articles generate?
Think of yourself as the editor in chief of your blog. You are in charge. You know who contributes and who doesn’t. Make decisions.
Good idea, but it already the concept is old now. hubpages already master that business of blog network revenue sharing…
see the review here..http://site.realbigbuy.com/blog/2009/01/10/many-ways-to-make-money-from-hubpages/
still does not seem worth it to me.. 50/50 split, no way good post
1. it may be against google adsense TOS. you cannot alter the script. chk on this.
2. this can be abused by SEO masters. keep some control as people will start setting up blog farms which will result in a lot of junk being posted just for the sake of backlinks.
no it’s not against TOS….coz here you’re not altering the adsense code wat you are doing is replacing the adsense code by the script which rotates the ads.
So once I sigh up somebody elses adds come on my blog 30% of the time and my adds show on somebody elses page too??
Also how is it different from other networks like Orble.com which are a network where we can put our own adsense ads.
Alain Raynaud, my worry is it not against Google’s adsense Terms and can we alter the script?
Give me a final word on this so that i can join.
@Zola: this is not against Google’s TOS. We checked it carefully.
What would be against the TOS is modify Google’s script in any way. We don’t. A plug-in that asks you for your Google AdSense ID to insert in their own script is against the TOS. Notice how we don’t do that. We ask you to provide the entire script, unmodified, and we don’t modify it either.
what is Project is in the creation phase? message