Glam Media’s Black Life
Glam Media, the largest women focused website network, has launched a content channel dedicated to Black 
Women. Glam’s Black Life combines some of Glam’s most popular black women focused content into a channel with groups like; Face & Style, Scoop & Celebrity, and Culture & Lifestyle. The channel will use Glam’s website as a portal to spotlight the hottest articles, photos, and videos, from their network of content producers, turning Glam’s Black Life into a one-stop-site black women interest.
Black Life is another interesting addition to Glam Media’s strategic alignment in the Black web community. If you recall Glam Media recently announced a partnership with Global Grind, helping them to expand into the Hip-Hop maket space. With black spending expected to surpass $1 trillion by 2012 and women controlling 80% of their households spending, Black Life is sure to be a vital part of maintaining Glam’s overall growth in advertising revenue. Lets see if their comptetors will start to follow suit.
Category: Blogging, Strategy, Trends, web 2.0 | Tags: black blogs, black life, black women, black women blogs, glam, glam media
Hey everyone thanks for the useful discussion..But i think the site is not necessary for the black women..It seems to earn money more..
Offshore Disclosure
your blog is great 426 gratz!
Great discussion. I learned a lot. Thanks everyone.
Great advice Dede, I was just thinking about whether I wanted to sell my own ads or not. You have just convinced me to go ahead sell them myself as well. Thanks Dede and BlackWeb 2.0.
Wow. Didn’t know this conversation was going on. Well, first I want to say THANKS for all the sweet words about Clutch! – It is truly appreciated and it really makes me smile
I can only speak for myself here, but I am not a fan of ad networks– period. Markus – you are right — my agency (Gorilla Nation) is making loads off of me too. But, the difference is I am waiting out my contract, and plan on ending the relationship.
I sell the majority of the ads on Clutch, myself. I actively reach out the Black/Multicultural agencies like Burrell and let them know we are here. Sometimes, they reach out to me, but I initiate the conversation.
I really want to let website publishers and blog owners know you can sell your own ads. It may seem hard too, but if you are really providing relevant and needed content you can probably find a brand; all sizes — that is interested in your content and audience or at least is open to hear what you are doing, so as you grow so does that opportunity for you both to work together.
As for me, I plan on selling my ad inventory myself/inhouse, for a number of reasons. But the main reason — is to provide brands campaigns I KNOW will work with our readers. Not, throw a black girl on an ad and expect brand engagement or ROI. But, create a campaign that really speaks and shows you care about us and our dollar.
I do not believe Glam drives traffic to it’s members sites. I would love to see some hard stats from a Glam publisher claiming it does. I cannot tell you how many times I have searched for something and ended up on the Glam network site via a post that came from one of the blogs in their network. The thing is though, Glam pulls the whole post so you don’t have to clink on that little tiny link that leads back to the blog the post actually came from. Glam is making a killing off of their bloggers not the other way around. Also, ever notice how many clicks it takes to get to a Glam publisher’s blog? They take you through 2-3 of their ad filled pages before the actual blog opens up in a *gasp* new window.
When I saw this site, I immediately thought of BlackVoices.com where I work. We are owned by AOL, which I guess is a “white” company in that all the highest executives are white except one Latino man, but in truth it is a publicly traded company. All the senior editors are black, and I feel that our site reflects black voices, because we are black, regardless of who “owns” us. We can use the site as an outlet to connect and inform our community, and we do our best to do so. I think the question of ownership is different than that of editorial control. I found the glam content to be kind of slapped-together, perhaps not lovingly administered to by black editors in complete control of the content and format. Partnering with large companies with resources, no matter what “color” the money is, is really important for black businesses that want to grow, and have the capital to reach large markets. But then the question is, can you maintain control of your voice? Also, shouts go out to Clutch magazine, which is really doing its thing in the space!
Wanna hear something funny? I’m part of the Glam network and I didn’t know there WAS a Black Life channel until a friend sent me this link! Then I saw my “big beautiful women workin’ it” post and realized that my articles are part of it. I need to pay closer attention to what’s happening — I mean, I was out of town last week, but I have no idea when this started. Off to investigate…
Thanks for your kind words, Lynne! And hey, Jamila!
Yes it’s true that Glam will be making money off of black women blogs, but so does the advertising networks associated with Clutch Magazine. In fact what advertising network doesn’t make money off bloggers? The difference with Glam’s Black Life is that it drives traffic and subscribers to their network members. Except for a few of the glam written articles, just about every post that I have seen on Black Life has linked back to the originating black blog. That to me sounds like a better deal than the average blog network.
Thanks for dropping that science Nolan.
Glam’s AA women channel is all about going up against Essence….not as a matter of direct force but because they’ve been asked time and time again in sales situations “whats your reach with AA women” so they went and built a channel for it. Glam’s core business is women reach so its natural that they will be asked about their coverage in the area of black women.
This reactive style of network building that networks undertake usually end up crashing hard with a few success stories.
Networks like these give a great deal of upfront wow dollars to sites because they have campaigns locked and loaded and ready to go…then later…it dries up because what these companies don’t get is that black ad dollars are not as proliferant as some think and companies with a great deal of overhead are the first to crash and burn.
@Jamie…you’re exactly right. They are making money in the black space when the dollars could be recycled to Jamilah’s point…but few people know that there are a couple of networks that are black owned, operated, and controlled (we work with one of them)
Looking at some of these sites…they seem to be more fashion oriented and less black focused than some may think (one blog was 98% about fashion and had one obviously black aligned post). Does black ownership of a women targeted or fashion centric blog make that blog a ‘black blog’…absolutely not.
Glam will make some significant cash off of this for sure….and they will use their tried and true formula of placing lower end ads on the network sites to drive users to premium content on Glam.com where the higher end sponsorship will exist. It’s a great model that is built on the sweat of all of those who lift them up.
Nolan
UrbanMecca.com
This is definitely an interesting conversation — and I really looked deeper into the Black Life network on glam. http://www.glam.com/publishers/category/Black+Life?sort=&page=1 and Honeymag is part of that network still. I understand what you folks are saying in the comments here, and I especially love what Deanna is doing with Clutchmag. But here’s a question if Black content providers are being paid a fair share for their content does it matter who is helping them to distribute that content?
I hear you guys on some of the content that’s being distributed in that network overall, as far as some of the sites there not catering to black designers etc. or some of the advertising not being from black-owned businesses or even the argument about some of the content not fully representing, but I still have this question — and I guess the real question is what is black?
Does black have to be one thing? Do all of those sites represented in that network have to do the same thing to be qualified as a good black site for women? If Honeymag, which is black owned, were able to do the same thing for bloggers that glam did, would it still be a problem?
These are just questions I’m asking just trying to get a clear understanding of what people want from black content, or what everyone feels makes content black. Also want to garner a deeper understanding of what people think the business practices of black businesses should be.
Anyway, the other thing I was going to say was that after fully checking out the channel, it doesn’t look as bad as I thought it would. They have brought on some of the more popular blogs within the context of what they’re trying to do. Afrobella and Tia Williams are actually pretty tight. What I’m seeing here though, is a model that glam is going to replicate across various genres, consider the hiphop one they are dong with global grind. And this begs a larger question — is glam trying to become, say, the Viacom of the Web? Or is it just simply trying to take on Essence, Lifetime, Oxygen, and iVillage all in one fell swoop? The hiphop take is still going to be interesting to see, because it’s not entirely women’s content as the rest of glam is shaping up to be.
Jamie – I agree.
I checked out the “Black Life” section of Glam.com and found that, while they had lots of images of African-American women, the content IMO lacked an authentic voice.
Contrast that with the 2 sites you named, YMIB.com and ClutchMagOnline.com, which each have a distinct and authentic voice, and who are interesting in *serving* the community of African-American women and not just exploiting eyeballs and pageviews for ad dollars.
There’s another angle to this discussion in addition to ad revenue. Both YMIB and Clutch proactively seek to discover and promote Black-owned manufacturers, artists, retailers, and designers.
I’m speaking from experience here. My own company, j.blossom natural bath and body products for young girls (which features an african-american girl and a positive affirmation on the bottles), was enthusiastically received by both YMIB and Clutch, who each ran a review of j.blossom products. The editors told me they were excited about my products and wanted to give them more exposure. I haven’t had nearly as much success getting white-owned media companies with “black content” to even pay attention.
Don’t be fooled — “Black content” isn’t just about stock photos of brown-skinned people!
Black owned media, online and off, is so crucial to our community as far as economic development goes. While it’s great to see images of people who look like us on their sites or in their print pages, they support other Black-owned businesses with their content – black ad agencies, black accounting firms, black manufacturers, black designers, etc. Many of these businesses get overlooked or straight-up passed over by majority-owned media outlets. In other words, BLACK MEDIA HELPS BLACK DOLLARS GET RECYCLED IN *OUR* COMMUNITY. Let’s not lose sight of that.
Thanks for listening.
Jamila
Jamila White, Chief Joy Officer
j.blossom and co.
info@jblossom.com
http://www.jblossom.com
(888)5-JBLOSSOM toll-free
*fun, natural bath & body products for girls!*
I agree with you Jamie. Seems like all the ad companies are after the black audience. In return we as black webmasters aren’t getting our fair share of the ad revenue. Pennies in some cases when it comes to CPM rates.
I agree with you Jamie. Seems like all the ad companies are after the black audience. In return we as black webmastesr aren’t getting our fair share of the ad revenue. Pennies in some cases when it comes to CPM rates…
As a black woman – I am not interested. I see this as a non-black company making LOTS of money from their underpaid black bloggers – boy they are smart! We need to support sites like YMIB and Clutch and help them grow – cause they are our voice.
It seems like this will cause more channel conflict for media buyers.
Interesting news. I wonder how this works out for Honeymag.com (http://honeymag.com/) as the site is part of the glam network. Wonder if this expands that site’s relationship with glam, or if glam is going at this on its own.