WP: Monetizing The Blogroll

Jeff Burkett reports that a new, experimental Sponsored Blogroll Service was announced by the Washington Post:

"A very small number of blogs enjoy hundreds and hundreds of inbound links - the A-list, as it were. But almost all others have very few sites pointing to them.

Basically, all of the B-list and C-list bloggers (who may well be very talented) link to the A-list blogs in hope of getting noticed. All this accomplishes is making the A-listers more powerful, while the B's and C's stay where they are.  It is very hard to break through the clutter, as many of you know.

Some bloggers are open to putting advertising on their site, so why not strike deals with them and help them do that. The revenue gets shared (in the bloggers favor of course) and we throw in one additional component... A link to their blog on the homepage of washingtonpost.com. With the potential of 8 Million monthly visitors seeing this link, it could very well be the catalyst that them noticed.

Admittedly, right now the index box is a little small and may not be in the most prominent position on the page. Okay, so its definitely in the ghetto position, but its a start. If the blogosphere embraces this and we see a lot of interest from quality blogs we will grow the size of the index and give it better positioning on the page. We'll just have to wait and see."

[via Media Landscaping]

Besides being a great way to tighten relations between the WP and bloggers, the WP Blogroll actually helps the newspaper to put a foot in the door of bloggers' balance of power; a balance that was being kept by the blogsphere among itself until now. I wonder how will quoting a price tag for a link (i.e. for being featured in a blogroll) will affect bloggers' link exchange policies and interactions... If a newpaper with ~8M views per month can set a price tag, why can't other A-listers do just the same?

Comments

[GorillaSushi]

Has anyone seen the ads the WP will be providing in return? I fear they would be massive/obnoxious banner ads.

[Xen]

Hi GorillaSushi,
I've only seen the WP ads: go to the WP homepage and look down the right side for a blue box.
Currently there are only 3 entities listed as Beta partners (Creative Weblogging, All Business and Bootsnall), I looked around but haven't seen ads. Yet I tend to agree on the massive/obnoxious banner ads...