We talk a lot about the financial aspects of a vertical network, but don't dive much into the other drivers for publishers to join and engage in the community of sites. The main drivers for sites to join a vertical media network today is really built on three things, Money, Fame, & Power.
The first driver and probably primary for the majority of sites that join a vertical network, is money. Money means high CPM buys from good quality endemic and brand advertisers. Many of the sites in a vertical network may be making good money already though Google AdSense, but there is still an opportunity to extend and grow their revenue through a top tier national sales team selling their site to Fortune 500 advertisers online.
The second driver is fame. Fame is really important to the network ecosystem, as it is not only a great way to establish and build your brand for the network, but it also provides for a real hook or sticky application for the sites to stay as active members of your community. Fame really means the association or prestige of being associated with something better and/or more important.
Some tactical examples of fame show up in everything from displaying a badge on the site with the network logo, all the way to syndicating video or content in a bisynchronous manner. What this means is you are out providing access to very high quality content and widgets, but in a controlled 
manner that is only available to your member sites. Providing tools, widgets, content, etc... to these sites as a premium to their site is seen by most publishers as a significant benefit of being associated with your brand.
The simplest version of fame is to provide a badge to your member sites. A Web badge is a small image used on websites to promote web standards, products used in the creation of a web page or product, or to indicate a specific content license that is applied to the content or design of a website. The "Powered By X Vertical Ad Network" on your website is an example of a web badge.
A common-usage standard for web badges are 88x31 pixel and 80x15 pixel (also known as Antipixel[citation needed]) images typically in GIF or PNG image format composed of a small graphic to the left with text on the right typically using the Silkscreen font. Web badges may however come in any size or configuration.
Standard dimensions:
- 36x13
- 80x15
- 88x31
- 110x32
- 120x60
- 120x90
- 125x50
- 180x60
The badge should be worn by all sites on at least their home page, if not elsewhere. The badge serves a couple of purposes, the first being the fame and prestige of being in the network. The second is so advertisers feel comfortable that the sites are high quality and vetted because they are wearing your logo and brand. The tertiary benefit is the lift in traffic and/or Page Ranking.
The badges many times have direct links from the site to your main site, which then provides more linking power to your main portal. Remember the SEO benefit must be implemented correctly and should be as clear and direct linked as possible, given the way most search engines work.
Most badges fit into standard formats on the sidebar, most fall into 120x90 or 120x60. You can do many other sizes, but these are the standards. A few examples of badges that fit best practices can be seen in current networks and across service and brand websites.
- Aral Balkan Brand Badge
- Know H2O Badges
- Website Designers List Badge
Though the fame bucket can be broad, a few good examples of fame can be seen across the web today through tools and/or widgets:
- Divine Caroline provides pregnancy tracker tools, podcast directories, rss feeds, and content widgets to sites.
- WMC local news provides weather and news widgets to sites.
- DeSmog Blog provides a tracking widget for the global carbon footprint.
- Last.FM provides a music quilt widget for associated sites.
- WeShow provides a TV programming video widget
- Epicurious Recipes Widget
These are just a few ideas that might be helpful as you think about what types of widgets you want to develop, support and deploy to your network of sites. The most important thing to remember as it relates to content syndication and widgets is the fact that in the network world the distribution is limited to your member sites. Unlike viral widgets like ClearSpring, where the majority of the widgets sit on MySpace an FaceBook, these widgets only show-up on the sites in your network that you have approved and/or accepted into the network.
The final benefit, or value driver, is power. What power really means is traffic. Sites all see traffic as power, as traffic really provides longer term value to the sites through more visitors, more readers, more subscribers, thus more revenue and more opportunities. There are a handful of methods that work to increase the power driver for your network sites, but the best is through repurposing their content on your own website/property or providing a feed of the RSS feeds across the network.
There are a handful of networks that are combining the Fame and Power, but pushing out widgets that include cross content from other sites in the network, thus driving more traffic.
A few live examples of these include, but are not limited to:
- Tech Dispenser Widget
- Blogroll Business Widget
- WPNI Blogroll Travel RSS Widget.
- Washington Post Overall Widget
Additionally, providing an active list of sites and links to these sites is another great benefit for members of the network to potentially reach additional audiences.
Washington Post Directory - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-adv/blogroll/directory.htm
Martha Stewart Directory of Links - http://www.marthastewart.com/most-popular?lnc=c479cf380e1dd010VgnVCM1000005b09a00aRCRD&rsc=navigationcorporate_Homepage_Homepage
Overall, there are plenty of best practices that you can be using to build out and engage with your publisher community. Going into this relationship with more than just the money in mind is the first step to ensuring a long term, durable network asset.
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