Fine Fools Community

I suppose when others think of a blog network they usually conjure up the typical blog topics that most blog networks tend to follow, gadgets, travel, etc. With the Fine Fools Network I knew what type of sites I would be interested in writing and so those were easy for me to start, after that, I had no idea what type of sites this network would be comprised of.Now after proudly launching Songossip, I still have no idea what type of sites this Network will be comprised of.

What is Songossip? A music gossip blog would be the easiest way to describe it. Does it talk about music? Only if there is some juicy story behind it. I am pretty sure I have a music blog coming out, but Jonathan wanted this site for himself so I let him run wild with it and he looks to be doing just that.

I guess you can say this Network is starting to develop an Open Source community mentality. Someone comes to me with an itch for a topic that I help them scratch it. A foolish way to go about things I’m sure.

Engadget links to ILC thanks to Darren. Traffic is growing, more sites are being added, and everyone is laughing. Those silly Fine Fools.

Going to be a slow day with light posting around the network. Expect things to ramp back up on Monday and maybe some more site launches next week. Those were quite possibly the two most exciting sentences you will read in the blogosphere today. Remember them.

Since Nick let the cat out of the bag I guess I should introduce everyone to Escape Blog. It’s a travel blog, but not really. Confused? So was I when the idea was presented to me by Melissa Petri, but I had faith in her idea and so I let her run with it.

Will the site cover travel destinations like other travel blogs do? I’m sure it will do that some if someone else decides to jump on board the site, but for now Melissa is engraving her personality into it and that’s fine by me. If you want to know the direction she plans on going with it you will have to ask her because I can’t say I really placed any guidelines on her with regards to what to write.

Kyle sniffed out the pre-launch Escape Blog, a travel blog that feels less marketed and consumption-heavy. It’s another Fine Fools blog, and already one of the most fascinating.

I’d have to agree Nick and that’s why running this network is going to be a lot of fun. I have a post explaining why coming up today or tomorrow, but it’s something I am surprised nobody else has even tried to do. For now go checkout Escape Blog to see what Melissa has been up to.

I have received more than a fair share of emails from people looking to start an idea on the Fine Fools Network or offer an idea of a site they would like to see. Since some of these ideas only have one person writing maybe one post per week I figured it’s best to start a list of topics that I would like to see writers jump on.

What you are starting to see in some of the Fine Fools sites is a hybrid type of site that offers links to other stories while also providing original content. Obviously as time goes on I would like to lean more towards more articles and original content so keep this in mind when looking at the topics below. Also everyone is more than welcome to join any of the current sites in the Network.

• Automobiles
• Finance
• Television
• Movies
• Music
• Sports
• Fashion
• Men’s Life
• Women’s Life ala girlspoke
• Travel
• Software
• Apple
• Microsoft
• Open Source
• Web 2.0
• Cycling
• Jobs
• Cards, Poker, Gambling (good gambling)

Of course nothing exciting by the looks of things unless you have a passion for one of the topics, but I am sure we can add a little bit of spice to them.

Two weeks ago I wrote about making the Fine Fools Network a public case study in building successful sites and possibly a successful network. One of the ways to measure this, although not perfect, is the amount of sites that link to them through Technorati. Again this is by no means close to perfect, but it does provide us with a picture of how well the sites are growing, if they are growing at all.

Many of the sites started at the bottom of the Technorati pile with 0 links from 0 sites and therefore earning a ranking of 775,745. I’m glad to see only one site is like that now (Movable Phone). Here are the numbers that I was able to retrieve today. First number is the ranking, second is the number of links and third is the number of sites linking to the site.

• Gardgy: 141,140/26/14
• I Like Cameras: 72,535/45/27
• Movable Phone: 775,745/0/0
• It’s Useless: 151,2459/27/13
• Insert 25: 24,063/137/68
• Damn I’m Cute: 141,140/29/14
• Fine Fools Network: 62,255/69/31
• Work Boxers: 9,092/270/133

And our two new additions.

• Successful Blog: 17,403/165/87
• Chef Vault 175,729/11/11

What’s important about these numbers isn’t the number of links, but the number of sites linking to the sites. I could easily manipulate the amount of links by including the whole list of sites at the end of each entry I post across all the sites, but this won’t change the number of sites linking to the sites.

Overall I am pleased by the growth and it’s not surprising to see that I Like Cameras was second behind the Fine Fools site in how fast it moved up the charts. Quality entries get linked by more places, it’s that simple.

A couple of months ago, Keith mentioned in the 9rules forums that he needed to get rid of Successful Blog because he didn’t have the time to maintain it. I offered to take it off his hands without fulling knowing what I was going to do with it.

Fast forward to last week and I receive an email from a wonderful lady with an idea for a site. I saw how it would fit perfectly under the Successful Blog banner so I started the site up again.

For now Successful Blog will offer tips on making your blog more successful (obviously). In the near future the new writer (I will let her introduce herself when the time comes) will offer a weekly feature that will only make the site that much better.

That makes 10 active sites in the Fine Fools Network. I don’t think we are going to stop here.

My business partner Matthew Oliphant loves to cook and I love to run sites for no apparent reason. So what happens when you put the two of us together? Well you get a website about food, cooking and whatever else anybody decides to write about. Introducing Chef Vault.

If you love to talk about cooking and food why don’t you join up with Matthew? I’m sure he would enjoy the company.

Careful, the pics may make you a bit hungry.

When I wrote about my posting schedule (mildly revised to include broader ranges) I couldn’t let the idea in my head that the sites I was writing for would simply be sites where every single entry is linking to another site. For the short term this may be the case with Movable Phone because I admit to not being as knowledgeable in that arena as I am in others, but with sites like Gardgy I figured I could offer a couple of entries with a bit more insight and it seems it has already paid off.

My mini thought piece on the video iPod and Sony has been linked on MacSurfer and they always provide you with a good surge of traffic. Hopefully I can keep up the posting and quality to keep some of the people coming back. Glad to see Yahoo picked the perfect time for their ad network to go down…

Today I spoke about quantity at Work Boxers and looking at some of the sites here I can definitely see some room for improvement and that all starts with me. So I have decided to create a posting schedule for myself and hopefully I can stick with it until these sites pick up.

• I Like Cameras: 1/week. Really I almost scared to post here now because I have to live up to the high standards being set.
• Movable Phone: 6-10/day. Site is dead in the water it seems and hasn’t been updated since 9/26. I wanted it to become like ILC, but realize that phones are somewhat different than the broad topic of photography. Therefore, for now this will just be another camera site until innovation hits me. Yes ten times per day is a lot, but I want the site to look very active.
• Gardgy: 7-12/day. Another suicidal task, but I must set a certain standard and gadget news can be found everywhere, which probably isn’t as good as it seems.
• Damn, I’m Cute: 3-5/day. This is the easiest site to write for because it is so fun so this requirement will not be a problem.
• It’s Useless: 3-5/day. Not as much pressure because the crew over there is starting to find it’s groove.
• Work Boxers: 3-5/week. I like to write more articles on this site and traffic isn’t a concern so once per day isn’t a problem and if I can do more then it’s just an added benefit.
• Insert 25: 3-5/day. I really want to get some reviews cranked out since I have plenty of anime to go through.
• Fine Fools: 3-5/week. If there is nothing happening in the community I’m certainly not going to make stuff up.

Will I be able to stick with this schedule and write for Whitespace, 9rules and Business Logs along with guiding our team to finishing up secret projects 1-5? Sure, no problem….starting tomorrow.