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DIGITAL-FOLDERS NETWORK - an Overview
By Marques | October 28, 2007
Some time has passed since we launched the Digital-Folders Network, about 6 months to be more precise.
We thought it is time to go back and see what we have achieved, the problems we had, and look a bit into the future of the network with what we have planned. As always, we’d appreciate any feedback from all of you. Suggestions, ideas, constructive criticism is always welcome and is the only way we can improve and meet everyone’s standards.
6 Months in Review
In such a short period of time we went to many phases that were extremely motivating and others that pushed us down.
The first idea behind the network was to have all the associated blogs running on our own servers with domains bought by us. This has proven to be a two-edged sword. If on one hand it gave us much more control, it was also a deterrent to our growth and the idea was quickly put aside. Now, our main efforts go into integrating already established blogs although creating a new blog on the network is still an option that some are following. Taking this path was, by far, the major change in the philosophy of our network and it’s showing promising results.
Achievements: We’d have to say that the biggest achievement for the network was managing to include 19 blogs on its blogroll with a few more in the process of integration. Besides the obvious SEO benefits, we are now backed up by over 100 advertising zones with a wide range of advertising plans for each, providing plenty of choice to potential advertisers. In the last month alone, the ads for these zones were requested from our server over 500 thousand times.
We have also included on the team an Ad Sales Manager to focus our efforts in approaching advertisers.
To improve the network brand and reach, we are aggressively advertising around the web. The ads for the network have been displayed over 5 million times.
Updates: As the network grows, so grow the requests by our members and the efforts needed to satisfy them and make the network more user-friendly.
Some of the updates included a new forum where members can interact between themselves as well as suggest improvements for the network and discuss technical problems they might be having. Also, a new Members Area was setup that allows members to update the statistics for the blogs and displays an historical overview of the ad spaces sold on the blogs. And, in an effort to improve the way our bloggers do their “jobs”, we created a Resources for Bloggers page listing some suggestions on how to increase the success of the blogs.
Problems: Too many to mention, but the majority was conquered with a little more effort and creativity. The biggest problem we are facing now is the loss of control over some aspects of the blogging platforms (as I mentioned above). Some of the features we wanted to implement are now much more harder to do so.
The Future
As the network grows, we are more motivated than ever to expand and improve not only our success in the media and marketing industry but also the success of the blogs and bloggers associated with us.
Goals: Maybe we are over the mark on these ones, but it is our believe that a company needs to aim very high in order to achieve something. So, for our goals for the next year we are getting out of our comfort zone and pushing ourselves to the maximum to try and conquer the goals we have set.
So, in one year, these are the numbers that we expect:
- 100 blogs associated with the Digital-Folders Network.
- 400 advertising zones.
- Ad zones displayed over 2.5 million times per month.
- Over 1 million page views per month delivered through all the blogs.
Yes, we know, it will be hard. Nonetheless, those were the numbers we plan to announce one year from now.
Updates: In the near future we plan to do a redesign of the Digital-Folders site to make it more attractive and informative to visitors.
We also plan to expand interactivity between each blog and the main site, providing real time information directly from the blogs.
Some of our bloggers are aware of our referral program, in which an associated blogger will be paid a percentage of the direct sales revenue incoming from blogs referred by them. We plan to expand this feature, with reports about referrals given directly into the members areas.
And now you know where we came from and where we want to go.
We hope to have given you a clear picture of what is going on behind the scenes here at the Digital-Folders Network. If you have any questions, just give us a “ring”. We will be more than pleased to try to answer everyone of them.
Also, suggestions are always welcome and the thoughts of our bloggers about the future paths of the network are of extreme importance to us.
Happy blogging…
October 29th, 2007 at 5:58 am
Sounds great Antonio. Did you notice the page rank update? I’m excited.