10x!
Keep going!

xx
j.

As long as quality control is enforced, I think a lot of great opportunities for IFBers could come from opening the lines of communication to PR.

Have you thought about offering a query service like Shankman or ProfNet (similar but in a reverse sort of way). If PR people could submit queries to the IFB, it’d be great to see them all in a daily or weekly newsletter. This could bring tons of opps for bloggers to build out their sites…more giveaways, increased online visability, interview and networking opps, reviews and sample products..etc. It might be cool/easy if this was done via Twitter.

This way, everyone can be made aware of what PR ppl are looking for/trying to pitch, without the excess, novel-esque pitch emails.

If you like the idea, I’d love to help you brainstorm on how to get this off the ground.

pret.. thanks for letting me know you find the posts helpful and rich… sometimes i get lost in the content and it’s hard to know if any of this makes sense.

re giveaways: yes of course the affiliates and giveaways would be indeed edited to adhere to the IFB manifesto… figuring out what that means has been a source of controversy in my own mind. i’ve not yet come across a giveaway that’s compelled me to say ‘yes that does work for the good of the community!’ so it may be a while before that happens.

re: social networks/affiliates and i guess ad networks too… transparent reporting is of course the most vital part… in fact that’s why i started ifb to begin with… after not being able to find impartial information about a certain ad network, i had a bad experience with them. partially because i didn’t know what to expect, and i didn’t know what i should do to protect myself.

i was just curious if other members of the community would be interested in knowing what new ad networks were up, or what social networks are available…there’s alot of them, that’s for sure.

On the subject of affiliate/social networking opportunities, I do think that as a blogging resource, if IFB can remain impartial and still devote time and resources to that endeavor, it WILL BE beneficial to us all! Those areas can be very daunting and very dangerous (heck, they ask for bank account info!), and having a resource that breaks them down can help IFB members feel safe about pursuing them.

Giveaways… I have mixed feelings on. I feel if it were less a contest and perhaps more promotional, than it would work within the mission. If a company contacts you, and is willing to provide 15-20 samples for randomly chosen IFB members to try, write about, etc., than it would work within the mission. It’d help them in developing contact, how to handle PR/Giveaway requests, etc. However, just IFB having “contest giveaways” I feel is counteractive to the mission.

Maybe, rather than having IFB giveaway products, it can also act as a resource for these companies? If we all broke down our blogs in to types, what we focused on, we could have an opt-in option…. “Yes, I want to be contacted by companies for promotional purposes,” or “No, I do not want to…” From there, IFB could provide a list of those willing to participate and the companies could contact them further…

Just shooting out ideas, hone!

Having said that, some of the ideas are not bad. The affiliate/social networking etc. type area may be useful for some bloggers, but I’d say it’s only appropriate for IFB if there was no specific connection to whatever/whoever is on it. Giveaways are nice and I certainly wouldn’t think any less of IFB for supporting a worthy cause, but again, I don’t know whether it quite suits the nature of IFB.

That’s just my two pence worth. Whichever path IFB does choose to follow, the community will more than likely follow suit anyway (and vice versa), so I’m sure it’ll work out!