From his entrant post:

Probably the main purpose of this post is to announce that I am now a member of the GrandEffect blog network! Woohoo! Thanks go out to Sarah Perez and the whole gang at GrandEffect. You will now see the GrandEffect bar at the top of the page listing all of the members of the network. I highly recommend reading all of them if you do not already.

With this, the network has ten members, and for now, I think that is more than enough. Sarah has been talking about “what’s next” as we go forward, and it seems like we will be working more on the Grand Effect network site, as well as working with PerformancingAds on bringing our network together in selling network wide ads, once they re-enable the bundled sale feature.

It is definitely an exciting time for the network as we continue to all build our brands, and pass traffic to each other.

Please help me in welcoming Rob, aka Regular Geek to the mix by checking out the site.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

Aaron Brazell started me thinking about this thanks to a video on his blog Technosailor about blog consolidation.

Then I saw a post on Inquisitr talking about what Aaron said and Duncan added his own thoughts and opinions on bringing blogs together under one flag to sell advertising as a group.

These are both people that I highly respect, and who probably have more knowledge about the business of blogging than I do, but in this area, I don’t think they know what the heck they are talking about.

I am the co-founder of Grand Effect, a great blog network, with great blogs, written by great bloggers. We were all independent and came together for the purpose of passing traffic to each other, as well as a bit of link juice and of course banding together for network wide advertising sales.

I assumed because there would be a great deal of higher quality, focused blogs that we could get some high advertising rates, and when you bring our traffic together, we have a fair bit of page views, but still the advertisers aren’t running to our doors. I’ve shopped around the network a bit to some companies trying to gauge their response, and so far it has been a really lukewarm response.

We just don’t have the five or ten million page views that the big brands are looking for, or a tight enough demographic or the required star/networking power to make those big deals with friendly companies. We also aren’t high enough currently on the thought leader chain in the blogosphere for certain brands, making things even more frustrating as we work hard to show how powerful our brands have become.

While we have a lot to offer an advertiser that can come in with a three to five dollar CPM rate, we haven’t been able to secure that yet across the network of nine sites, and so bringing together a few blogs under a banner is definitely not enough to entice companies to sign up and tap into that combined traffic.

Also, I have found that the more page views that you bring together, the lower these companies want their overall CPM rates to be. So while a 50,000 page view blog might be able to sell some advertising space for a consistent $2 CPM, or $100 per advertising spot per month, a 500,000 page view blog, won’t instantly get $1000 for the same advertising positions.

Everyone also seems to be forgetting the time and effort that needs to go into selling these companies on buying advertising from you. This can take an immense amount of time depending on the company and it can also be difficult when the coalition is young and thus the brand everyone is flying is unknown. I always thought 9rules should have done something to help its membership make money through a network advertising service, but I realize now, in working with Grand Effect, that it just takes so much time.

You either have to develop an advertising platform, use one that already exists (thus giving them a cut) or do things manually. Development costs a fair bit of time and/or money. Using one that already exists can be frustrating because it might not have the features you want, and they’ll want their cut. Doing things manually can take huge amounts of time, and lends itself to mistakes.

How does everyone expect to manage network wide advertisements? Who will take the lead to create relationships with companies and sell them on advertising positions, and does this person get extra money? Who will handle the receiving and disbursement of advertising payments?

The information that the others have put up don’t really cover the important questions, instead lingering on about other less important things like freedom of creative control on your own blogs, and trying to quickly pull everyone under your wing in hopes of selling big advertising blocks.

Too many unanswered questions. I think people are going to jump in with both feet, only to find themselves disappointed. Doesn’t anyone plan things out properly in the blogosphere anymore?

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

Over on Sarah in Tampa, there is a great mention of the recent interview on BloggerTalks, where Sarah answered questions about herself and Grand Effect. It is a great read.

On Ghacks, you can find out more about online desktops, something that I believe is still a growing market, despite the numerous competitors.

Next, we have a great article about establishing your web identity over on SheGeeks. I have worked hard on my online identity, have you?

Over on ParisLemon, you can find out something very close to my heart as MG Siegler talks about the stresses of dealing with cable television and the hefty bill it creates.

Echoing my own problems, and I am sure many others, The Last Podcast talks about quitting Twitter. I have to admit, using anything that isn’t stable online makes me grind my teeth.

WinExtra covers the advantages bloggers with sidebars have if they use them correctly in a recent post entitled, “A blogger’s secret weapon – the sidebar”.

Second to last we have Webby’s World and a great article about being an experienced blogger. The article culminates in asking how people define experience level online.

Last, but certainly not least is Mark Evans’ blog where he talks about hiring the right people, something that more and more blogs are trying to do to reach out to the masses. I like to think of myself as fairly smart, but feel free to correct me if you think I am wrong.

So many great articles on so many great sites. It is definitely an honour to be in the same group as these fine blogs, and I highly recommend that everyone subscribe to all of the Grand Effect blogs as they are amazing writers, with valuable opinions.

Thanks for reading eXtra for Every Publisher – xfep.com.

So here, for your enjoyment, is the first Grand Effect Member News Roundup.

The first good news is that both Sarah in Tampa and SheGeeks have been added to the very popular AllTop aggregation site. This, in my opinion is recognition of the hard work and great content that they have both produced.

gHacks lets everyone know that EA Games is going to add even more copyright protection to their upcoming titles in the form of a Securom protection program that requires internet access to validate your copy of the game, not only during install, but every ten days thereafter. This is a bit ridiculous and no doubt crackers will find a way around it just as they have with Windows genuine advantage and other such systems, but it is near and dear to my heart because Spore, a game I am very excited about will be protected in such a way.

It made me wonder what it would be like if blogs had the same type of protection systems, where not only did you have to log in to a site before reading it, but the site was so paranoid that you had to re-login every ten minutes. I doubt many of us would be able to make a business around those types of restrictions. Penny Arcade makes good fun of the security issue at EA’s expense.

ParisLemon asks for multiple account switching for Gmail and with the number of Gmail addresses I have for various things, I have to admit that his idea really appeals to me, though I doubt it would ever sit very high on their priority list. I mean, who needs more than one e-mail account with multiple gigs of storage space?

Over on The Last Podcast, I suggest you all check out episode seven of the Elite Tech News Podcast which includes two members of Grand Effect.

WinExtra makes a great comparison between Twitter and IRC, which makes me go “wow, so true” as I realize my youth was wasted on various IRC channels, and now Twitter has become the replacement for me as an adult. Scary, but true.

Joe Anderson of Webby’s World asks, how would you describe modern technology to someone from the 18th century? It really made me think, as even just describing my job to my parents has been complicated.

Mark Evans echoes my problems in a post dedicated to not having enough time on Mark Evans Tech. For me, time isn’t really the issue, but instead I suffer from lack of extended periods of focus. I know I can get a lot done, but it comes in spurts and short periods. On a bad day, I do ninety percent of my work in ten percent of the day. Maybe I just have too many time sinks in my life.

The big news though is the new members we have added which includes some brilliant, interesting, and powerful bloggers.

Joe Anderson of Webby’s World is a tech blogger from the U.K. His current site has been around since 2005. He is also a 9rules member, and thankfully neither network has a ban in place on being part of both, and I think that he has been selected by both is a credit to his blog and its quality.

Next, we have Steven Hodson of WinExtra. Steven is a self-described “cranky old fart” but his analysis of technology and the web is definitely not old. He will definitely be a fun addition to the team, and I have a feeling he and I will get along just fine.

Lastly, we have someone that I am a fan of, and it also helps that like Steven, he is Canadian, bringing Grand Effect to a membership that is one third Canadian: Mark Evans of Mark Evans Tech. Mark is one of the organizers of the Mesh Conference in Toronto, and the director of community with PlanetEye Inc.

I couldn’t be happier with the new additions, and I owe Sarah Perez a lot for organizing member submissions and whatnot, and the other members for their continued support and patience. I really believe we have one of the best groups of bloggers ever and I hope we can put that talent to good use.

Lastly, now that we have filled out our membership to a respectable level, I will be collecting statistics from the various bloggers, and working on advertising sales and helping support their various blogs. I have also set aside some time for members to come to me with blogging and WordPress related questions, as a service I am willing to give freely to them in hopes of making their blogs even better.

Grand Effect has a new design! There are still many features that need to be rolled out, and content pages definitely need some more tweaking both in the CSS site, and just in imagery and whatnot, but the main skeleton of the site is ready, as well as the features that were prevalent on the original site.

I have also added a combined RSS feed to allow people to subscribe to all of the Grand Effect blogs with one Master RSS subscription link. This is really handy for us as we will be adding a few more members soon. If you want to subscribe to each blog individually, we have also made that easy to do.

I hope you enjoy some of the small details I put into the site. Content related concerns will get tightened up over the coming weeks. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to one programmer, Andrew McCloud, that I will definitely be highlighting in more detail shortly, as he really saved me by converting it from an image into a full xhtml/css template that I was then able to change into a WordPress theme rather easily.

Please feel free to let me know what you think. I know I am no designer, but I really think that it is my best work yet.

Corvida is definitely a name to watch in the blogosphere, and that is why we are glad to have her in the Grand Effect network. Her passion is quickly being recognized, and rightly so. Personally, it is always nice to see Grand Effect members continuing to do well. We definitely have a network of stars.

From the interview:

Allen: Is Facebook worth the $15 billion valuation?

Corvida: Hell no! lol Facebook is not with $15 billion. If it were, they wouldn’t have half the problems they have now. If they were, monetization wouldn’t be a problem. They’ve gotten too big for their own good and in the process I feel their value has actually decreased. Facebook was worth a lot more when it started out than it is now based on my usage of Facebook and why people joined it in the first place. What made it special when it first launched, that excitement is long gone, especially if you were apart of Facebook before the hype, like I was.

Check out the full interview for more information on her thoughts regarding the newest trends on the web and don’t forget to check out SheGeeks.

I always secretly hope that a competitor to 9rules would stand up. With the new 9rules coming shortly there will be more defined targets for us to keep an eye on. Chawlk goes head-to-head with plenty of other sites and if we don’t do better than the competition we die. Grand Effect is very similar to 9rules and I like to monitor what is going on over there to see what we can steal or do better. That is why you want enemies and although I have no problem with David Peralty or Sarah Perez I am going to put their network on my enemy list. “Enemy” may be too strong of the word, but I hope you can understand where I am going with this.

I haven’t yet figured out if I should be excited, or worried, as Scrivs has always done well when he gets competitive. And the support team he has in 9rules with Mike Rundle (a talent set that Grand Effect could sorely use), and Tyme White (we could use a person like her as well) make Grand Effect look rather small. The flip side though is that Sarah, myself and the rest of the Grand Effect members are getting very excited over the attention we have been receiving from all the wonderful blogs that are taking interest in what we are trying to build.

Much like I thought 9rules original intentions were, we have decided to keep things small, leveraging the power of the group and helping members with things they don’t have time to become experts on, namely advertising and promotion.

I never saw Grand Effect as competition to any other network out there, as none of our membership belongs to a network and they are all self-established brands, but if Scrivs needs to have a business enemy to remain competitive, then I look forward to helping increase that competitive spirit to really see how far he can go, while still attending to the needs of the people around me.

Do we really need business enemies to remain competitive?

I almost feel embarrassed though as we have such great members, but the network site is in disarray. I am working on a redesign which should be up sooner rather than later with tons of new content which highlights our great members and the advantage of advertising with us as a collective.

I am no Mike Rundle though, so please be patient as I put it all together, and I hope you will like it. It will be a marked improvement over the current site, and it will have many more features and rate cards for advertising on each member’s site as well as the network as a whole.

I want to give a huge thanks to Mark at Mashable for mentioning us. I am very humbled that we got a nod from such a great site, and I hope the hordes of people stay away until I can get the new site unveiled.

For those that are interested, here is a little snippet from my attempt at a new design:

With the addition of these two great sites, the focus now turns on building the network site, as well as getting ourselves organized where monetization and support is concerned, and so I hope to see some great movements on the Grand Effect website soon.

I hope you will check out all the Grand Effect blogs, and welcome our new members as well.

As always, if you’re interested in becoming a Grand Effect advertising partner, you can reach us at our main address: advertising@grandeffect.com.