WebbAlert

I scan a ton of news sources every day to pull WebbAlert together. The sources that I pay the most attention to are blogs. The blogs listed on my front page are among the blogs that I read daily, and they're all blogs that I strongly endorse and recommend to you. They're not the only blogs that I love and endorse - but they're all among my favorites, and if you haven't already spent time with them, I recommend that you pay them a visit.

In addition to being a fan of these sites, I also have what's called an "ad barter" arrangement with them. What this means is that I have a lot of unsold ads on my site - pretty much all of them for now, since my site is brand new - so I approached each of them offering unsold ads on my site in exchange for advertising units on their sites (this is a fairly common practice for sites with extra ad space). They agreed, which I think was very generous because they're all established, and they do have advertisers, which is why I'm extending my thanks to them here. Since WebbAlert is a videoblog, most of my ad spots are video ads. This is why you'll see a lot of unpaid ads from blogs this summer. Someday actual paying advertisers may discover me, and then you'll see less of them.

I approached these particular blogs for two reasons. First, they are among my favorite blogs, and they cover the sorts of subjects that I'll be covering myself. This means they have precisely the sorts of audiences that I hope to one day reach, which makes them good places to put my ads. Second, we all use the same company to sell ads on our sites (Federated Media - link below under "Advertise on my site"). I thought this would make it easier to administer the ad swap (tracking things like "Morgan got 100 ad impressions on site X, so now site X gets 100 ad impressions on WebbAlert"). As it turns out, this hasn't actually mattered, because our ad swaps are pretty informal (I'm throwing their ads into my videos, they're giving me an ad on a page or in an RSS feed, and nobody's really counting anything). But that was the logic.

I have made no commitments to cover stories on their blogs, nor have they made commitments to cover what I do. But since these are all blogs that I endorse, respect, and read daily, you'll probably see me talking about the stories they write on a fairly regular basis. When I do, it will not stem from some economic relationship, because I'll never accept money for coverage. It's my show, and I'll pick the stories that I want you to see. Last, WebbAlert and all of these blogs are 100% independent companies, owned largely or wholly by their founders (wholly, in WebbAlert's case). We all use the same company to sell our ads, but that company doesn't own a share of stock in any of us, nor does it dictate our editorial policies, nor our relationships between one another in any way.