It looks a bit limp compared to today’s other birthday: the Queen’s 80th, but Syntagma is six-months of age, our half-birthday.

One shouldn’t be too effusive on a half-birthday. Only the likes of JRR Tolkien would hang the flags out for such a hobbity event. But there’s more than a touch of the hobbit about Syntagma Media.

We live in a hole in the ground, for instance. It’s called Syntagma Towers, but it has more depth than height. Vertigo is unknown at Syntagma. Earthworms in your pockets are the commonest complaint.

Looking back it’s all been a bit of a Ring-finding ride. Some projects just develop a momentum of their own. Like thoroughbed racehorses, they just keep pulling on the bit. And so it was with Syntagma.

In terms of success stories, Royal Anecdotes again leads the way. At one point, Aristocracy Anecdotes pulled ahead after an astonishing post on Sir Benjamin Slade, an English aristocrat seeking an heir for his stately pile in Somerset, England. The post was picked up by the Today show in the U.S. and scores of local radio stations. For a few days traffic was enormous and my inbox was filled with emails from folk desperate to become the new Sir Slade (sic).

Spiritual Nirvana is another of our humdingers, closely followed by Supernatural.

When Adelle Tilton joined us she took Syntagma down less-familiar paths. Craftmodo, Knitmodo, and Golden Agers, on self-explanatory topics, and Classy Classical on neoclassical music.

Soon she will be editing our new mini-network, Creme de la Femme, which will take us into even less hobbity regions.

We’ve now got our own publishing business, Dial Publishing, to handle print spin-offs from the network, and our Writers Blog Alliance has produced a book, Naked Tales: Stories By Writers Who Blog, to be published by Humdrumming early next year.

Tech Biz Writing is testing a new form of publishing: putting up a complete textbook in blog form, supported only by onsite advertising. It’s a book on Technical and Business Writing and builds into a complete course on the subject. We may well test other examples of this new genre.

We’re constantly on the lookout for other business opportunities compatible with a content-producing media operation, and a few are already in the pipeline, but strictly under wraps.

If that were not enough, we have plans to turn Syntagma (this blog) into a dynamic hub for the network, with much greater synchronization of feeds and a more integrated search facility.

The question that’s often asked is: how many blogs are you aiming for? Not as many as you might think. The plan was for 21 at six-months (we’ve got 22), and 50 at one year. That will probably be the limit for active sites.

In any network, 20 percent of blogs usually earn 80 percent of the income. Maybe half the sites will just tick over. We’ve gradually pruned the under-achievers and brought in new ideas to replace them.

Some blogs will be side-lined but remain up without visibility, adding a few page-views to the total. Others will be updated only once a week. The main concentration will be on the blogs that work. Fifty cracking performers is the objective, and that will take a lot of weeding out, and a lot of blogs launched.

At year-end I hope to have a strong content-producing network with great advertising support, and a range of options for further exploitation of our text and graphic-based content.

Syntagma won’t be the biggest fish in the ocean, but we’ll be the most profitable and have the most spin-offs.

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them.

Queen Elizabeth II is 80 today and the world is tumbling over itself to wish her well, express thanks for 53 amazing years on the Throne and as Head of State of the United Kingdom and many other countries around the world.

Some commentators are seeking a new appellation to mark the occasion. The historian Andrew Roberts wants her called : Elizabeth the Good, others Elizabeth the Great.

If you want to know what I think, slide over to Royal Anecdotes, where I’ve put up my own designation for this remarkable Queen.

But from Syntagma: Happy birthday, Ma’am.

Syntagma Media is pleased to announce the launch of our 22nd blog: Knitmodo. It will be authored by Adelle Tilton, and will form part of Adelle’s Creme de la Femme when it goes live toward the end of May.

Knitting is big business these days, especially in the U.S. where something of the pioneer spirit still survives. I’m looking forward to sharpening my needles. You never know, they might come in handy.

I’ve noticed that a number of our newer blogs, like LSE Latest, Craftmodo, Classy Classical and The Money Blog, are all showing PRs of 5. None of the others have improved yet, though.

This could be an interim update, or it may be the start of a major upgrade, which seems to be about due.

Update: The future PR tools are showing all the data centers are stable on the domains I’ve checked, so this is probably a minor update after all.

Yes, we’ve got onto those sticky greenbacks at last. It’s money time at Syntagma Media. Cascades of the stuff.

Well … we’d like to think so.

The Money Blog - Enrichment Daily is now part of the fabric of everyone’s existence.

Alan Greenspan, watch your back. You’ve got a competitor. Yes, I know he’s retired! But Gordon Brown doesn’t quite match up, does he?

For the best financial advice around, just pop on over to Greenspan’s retirement home The Money Blog.

And unzip your sporran before you come.

We are looking for a blogger who’s up to speed with most things Microsoft, to author our two Redmond-related sites: Vista Office and Microsoft Future.

These are fairly mature blogs, with current PRs of 5, and a good dollop of postings.

The reason for bringing in a new blogger(or bloggers) is that I no longer have the time to keep them up as they deserve to be.

Anyone interested can view the terms by clicking “Bloggers Wanted” in the sidebar.

At last a free course in Business and Technical Writing supported only by onsite advertising.

Syntagma Media believes this is a model that will be increasingly used for books of a certain type on the Net. So today we release another blog: Tech Biz Writing, which does just that.

The course, which I wrote a few years ago and was published as a textbook, will build gradually on the blog. An index in the sidebar will show what’s up and what’s not, and provide links to individual posts as they become available.

Syntagma Media is pleased to announce another blog in the network: Dial Publishing - Books and eBooks.

The blog will fill in the details of Dial Publishing’s development and address the issues of book publishing in an electronic age. We will also comment on new technologies, personal publishing, and all the topics of the moment.

Dial Publishing is a relaunch of a publishing house I set up a few years ago to publish educational courses. It’s now being “reawakened” to serve a more general purpose as the publishing arm of Syntagma Media.

The aim is to develop our book publishing facilities for launch in the second half of the year. This will make use of new technologies in printing and distribution. Quality on-demand printing is beginning to emerge now and will become mainstream for anything but blockbuster novels by the end of this decade. We intend to make full use of the technology, where appropriate.

It’s great to announce that our newest blog, Naked Tales, is now live. This is part of a raft of blogs launching, or on the brink, over the next month or so.

http://www.nakedtales.org

Naked Tales is the official authors’ website for the book of the same name to be published by Humdrumming early next year. It’s a book of short stories written by members of our Writers Blog Alliance, a community of writers who blog.

It will also provide a virtual pressroom in the run-up to the pre-order stage before Christmas.