When Weblogs Inc closes down a blog on a specific topic, you know something’s going pear-shaped in that particular field.

WIN has announced that its Digital Photography blog has been “retired”, though apparently not yet placed in its home for golden agers.

We too have had trouble finding effective authors for our Digital Camera Latest site, which will continue on a shared arrangement after Labor Day in the States.

By contrast, Darren Rowse’s prolific Digital Photography School continues to make waves, even meriting an article in the Wall Street Journal. What are we to make of this?

Coincidentally, it’s on Darren’s Problogger site that Jason Calacanis explains the move in the comments on the post: “Even the Big Boys Call it Quits”.

WIN is consolidating its blogs because :

a) the big ones are sold out on advertising and need more inventory
b) the small ones are having a hard time becoming money makers for us because advertisers want blogs with > 1M pages a month.

They want to focus on the big winners that advertisers can’t get enough of — not just Engadget, but also Autoblog and others, those in the range 500k to 3m pages a month. The aim is get them to 5m pages/month when they will start to mop up a lot of incoming deals that have no place to go at present.

“Bottom line: we are in phase two at WIN, and phase two is about scale. We knnow we can make money, the question is can we scale this business to a LOT of money. Like move the needle at AOL money–and we’re on the way.”

If these numbers seem out of reach of smaller operators that’s because WIN is now part of AOL and draws traffic from a global media conglomerate. I don’t think those of us who have yet to achieve that massive advantage should throw in the towel in despair.

But despite the different league these stats come from, there’s a lot of good sense in the principles used. Consolidation is a good way to add strength cheaply to promising mid-range blogs.

Where acquisitions will cost you money, consolidation can save you money while at the same time boosting mid-performers into that magic >1m PVs range which expands your saleable inventory to a different kind of advertiser.

Here at Syntagma, in our tenth month of operation, we’re growing our page views at around 300pc a year, and that rate is accelerating. We’re happy with that — few businesses get that kind of growth. But Jason’s words on consolidation will be top of the agenda next time we consider the road ahead.

In an intriguing media experiment, The Washington Post is offering to sell advertising space on commercial blogs on a revenue-split basis. Blogs accepted into the beta program will be rotated in a box situated bottom right on the WashingtonPost.com front page. With 8 million readers a month that could be a useful place to be.

Syntagma has thrown in a few blogs to test out the system. However, the designer of the scheme, Jeff Burkett, in a comment on Problogger, has already stated what we all thought : “Not only is pricing going to be a challenge, but the volume of blog submissions has been very high and it is a lot of information to sort through.”

Here’s part of the description of the scheme :

The Sponsored Blogroll is an index on the washingtonpost.com homepage that promotes bloggers who are participating in a partnership with the advertising team of WPNI. If you are a blogger or blog network looking to expand your readership and advertising, our Sponsored Blogroll program can be the boost you’ve been looking for.

Here’s how it works:
A link to members’ blogs will be featured in our Sponsored Blogroll index, giving your writing promotional space on the washingtonpost.com home page and giving you an introduction to an audience of 8 million readers monthly. At the same time, our hardworking sales reps will help connect your signature musings with the huge number of advertisers we deal with every day who are looking for the next big, slightly-outside-the-mainstream idea. …

We are primarily interested in blogs that focus on Technology, Business, Health, Automotive and Travel topics, but welcome submissions on any subject.

It will be interesting to see what kind of advertising results from this. Non-commercial bloggers may have to sharpen up their expertise unless the Post makes it easy for them. Clearly, there’s still a lot of development work needed to make the scheme fly, but all plaudits to Jeff for giving this some wellie.

Many thanks for the responses to the launch of our AdsViral.com beta website, and for those who emailed me. We will be improving and extending the site as time marches on.

Although many of the responses concentrated on the viral advertising we offer, the site leads with more conventional advertising models.

Companies who are already taking advantage of Syntagma Media’s wide and varied inventory include:

Shopzilla
Office World
Sholar Group Architects
Equifax
BizRate
Office Depot
Shopping.com
PopCrunch.com
Bizinessnews.com
The Melancton Directory
ProactionMedia.com
AdviceOnline.co.uk
MostChoiceRealEstate.com
1Carinsurance.org
SerenataFlowers.com
AtomicPark.com
SecureMyCompany.com
ProFlowers.com
LifeInsuranceChoice.com
PartSelect.com
FuturesGroup.com
ColdHeat.com
PhotoJewelryMaking.com
CertainSight.com
MoonWhisper.com
… and many more.

Thanks to all of them.

Drop us a line for more details to: ads(at)SyntagmaMedia(dot)com.

Syntagma Media is delighted to announce our new advertising website, AdsViral.com Beta.

It’s in Beta because it will eventually cover more ground and also offer advertising opportunities on other sites and even blog networks. At some stage we will employ fulltime ad-space sales staff to meet our growing needs and those of our partners.

If you would like to respond in any way to these activities and you are a player in the field, just contact me via the links given on the site or here on Syntagma.