Take ten well known names in their blogging area of expertise - in this case baseball blogs - put them in a brand new website and stir.
The result is a collaborative effort called The Hardball Times.
As seems to be the case with many baseball ventures, ultra prolific baseball blogger Aaron Gleeman is right in the middle of the batting order.
You are probably scratching your head over why I'm giving some hype to a new baseball site. You have a point.
Well, for one thing, I'm a baseball fan. That of course, is only a tiny part of the story. The site wou;dn't have to be about baseball to capture my attention.
The value is in the concept.
What has happened here, is twelve bloggers have got together, and combined their expertise in one central location. By doing so, they have the sum total of all of their own visitor traffic, pointing straight at the site.
The various bloggers (and not all of them have their own blogs as some are already part of collaborative efforts) bring their own writing style to the site. They also bring in some built in traffic flow.
The Hardball Times is not like your average garden variety website, attempting to build a traffic base from scratch. They are starting the game with a walk, and they have already stolen second base.
The idea of a mega blog site with several contributing members is not a new one. It is already in evidence all over the blogosphere. Most collaborative blogs focus on the cooperative effort, or have a constantly changing cast. Not many have bloggers who maintain their own blogs too.
What is unique about this concept, is the already successful and mainly solo bloggers, have pooled their collective visitor traffic counts to the effort. Of course, their great talents at writing and analysis, are already known to those visitors.
Combining that initial traffic, with the high calibre of writing talent, and an instant blog home run hitter was born.
While continuing with their own individual blogs, the writers maintain that wellspring of new readers. By uniting, they share that growing visitor base. Not only will the new site gain traffic, but so will the individual blogs.
There is certainly room for various areas of blogging expertise to unite. Business blogs are certainly one area, where some established blog writers could join forces, in creating a mega business blog.
I thought of that idea immediately upon seeing the The Hardball Times, and how it is set up.
Perhaps some of the top notch business bloggers will form a merger, and develop a huge business blog or website. Of course, they would continue to maintain their own blogs as well. That appears to be one of the secrets, at first glance.
The concept of the merger blog may have a future.
Any thoughts?
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