Forbes.com Moves Into the Blog Aggregator Space

Let’s see – I give you all my content, you post ads on my blog, and then you take most of the revenue from ads on MY BLOG?! Brilliant! (Very heavy sarcasm.)

This is actually a little better than what is currently out there. I can only see this working if:

1. The traffic from Forbes.com is significant, at least 2X normal volume for the blogger’s site.

2. The ads generate 2X more CPM than current ads due to Forbes negotiating power with the ad network.

At least they have the feature where only part of the post is displayed and the user has to click through to the blogger site. I will likely sign up for it and give it a shot for a week or two to see how it works. I am also going to put Google ads on the page for a comparison for the next month.

I still stand by my position that the first aggregator (and not just in investment blogging but in general) that gives 100% of the ad revenue to the blogger on article pages is going to crush all competition.

Should I start one? Leave a comment if you have any good domain names for me.

Here is an email from Forbes.com new blog network and their offer:

An Invitation to Join: the Business and Financial Blog Network

As the Home Page for The World’s Business Leaders, Forbes.com attracts a loyal audience of more than 20 million unique visitors a month; we are offering you the opportunity to join the fastest growing business/ financial blog network on the web, launching January 2008.

Our blog network gives you the ability to grow your revenues while providing our readers with new perspectives, best-of-breed research, value and insight. Inclusion into our network will give your blog power of Forbes brand association.

Exposure to new readers: The Blog Network will have its home here:

Content from selected bloggers will be displayed on the main aggregator website. — only the blog post title and short excerpts will be shown and visitors will have to visit the underlying blog to read the full post.

The page will have Forbes.com look and feel—this is a mock up:

Related Content: with our partner Sphere.com we will promote our Blog Network on our story pages :

Daily Newsletters:

Forbes.com users will have the option to sign up for a blog newsletter, which will be delivered daily to them.

Network badge: upon acceptance into the Blog Network and a written agreement to the compliance terms, you are then allowed to display the appropriate Forbes.com Blog network badge your own website. As a result, this badge will connote in association with Forbes.com, and a mark of quality.

Forbes.com Network Analysis: Semi-annual research from us and our partner Compete.com that sheds new light on trends and traction of the blog network to help you know more about your readers and other blogs in the network.

* Behavioral profile of each blog’s readership (% investment-oriented, % international-oriented, % tech-oriented, etc.)

* For every participating blog/site, a list of the top 10 other most read Forbes.com blog sites to reveal new opportunities for you to create connections within the network

* Survey of blog authors and blog readers to uncover the most interesting conversations that have occurred and will occur in the Forbes.com community

Networking Events: we will host a spring and fall conference at the Forbes Gallery for members of our the blog network– presenting new trends, tools and other aspects of technology which effect the blogging community in general

Increased revenues: the Forbes.com Blog Network will have its own dedicated ad sales force that will leverage our deep relationships with ad agencies and companies who specifically want to be in front of a discerning audience. We command high CPM’s. Consider us your outsource ad sales solution so that you can concentrate on what you like doing most—writing for your blog while being able to monetize it.

Revenue Share: you will receive a 40% revenue share if you enroll prior to December 15th 2007.

Ad positions:

* 728×90 Leaderboard
* 160×600 Skyscraper
* 300×250 Rectangle

Please note that we need your site to run the 728×90 Leaderboard PLUS at least one of the other two ad sizes – the 160×600 Skyscraper and 300×250 Rectangle.

Contextual targeted ads: Forbes.com has partnered with Adify to power this network and serve contextual targeted ads.

· We will ask you to insert an ad snippet (from Adify- our partner) on your site and the net advertising revenue generated from these online ads will be spilt 40/60% between Forbes.com and the blogger.

· Text and image ads will appear in standard units in above the fold. When there are no ads in our system, you can set a default through Adify (i.e. your Google Adsense ads) to run in these positions