If you’ve stumbled upon this little blog of ours, you might be wondering, “What is a blog network?” To answer that question, we’re going to follow that old English teacher axiom: show, don’t tell…
Ben Huh haz a cheezburger. Also, a blog empire.
Huh is the 32-year-old owner of the Cheezburger Network, a collection of 50+ blogs — and five books, one of them a NYT best-seller — which can all be traced back to a hungry kitty and some shrewd investing.
In 2007, Huh discovered I Can Has Cheezburger, the website with pictures of cats juxtaposed aside misspelled, irreverent text.
The site was already pretty popular, but would it stay popular? Huh thought so. He bought the site from its two Hawaiian owners with the help from investors and $10,000 of his own cash.
Over the years, Huh’s blogosphere has since expanded to include such popular destinations as Fail Blog, Daily Squee, and — of course — I Has a Hotdog, Cheezburger’s canine counterpart.
Huh’s Cheezburger Network makes all of its money from advertising, and the advertisers don’t come off bad either — the collection of sites saw 16 million unique visits in the month of May, a new record. Talk about exposure.
And really, that’s what blog networks are all about. They allow bloggers to express themselves (or fish for LOLz) in a specialized forum, while giving businesses the valuable opportunity to advertise on blogs with fairly predictable audiences.
Want to sell clothes? Advertise on a fashion blog. Video games? Choose an entertainment blog. As always, blogging is an exciting and ever-changing medium — why not come along for the ride?
