Paul Scrivens writes about his so-called “failures” in the blog network industry, citing in particular Fine Fools.

This discussion brought out the passion in people who wanted to continuously remind me of my “failure” known as the Fine Fools Network. Fine Fools was my side project. It was my version of how a blog network should run. The idea was simple, you come up with a decent idea for a site and I would host it and you would earn all the ad revenue for the pages that you write. So essentially what I got was frontpage ad revenue while the writers got internal page revenue. My thinking was that if I am not going to pay them straight up for the work they put in, I might as well give them the opportunity to earn what they put in.

Things started off smooth, but some of the bloggers got hungry. Real hungry. The could taste success and they wanted more, which is exactly what you should want. That’s passion and I loved it (and hated it). Unfortunately I couldn’t keep up with what they wanted, albeit how simple their requests were because 9rules was/is my baby. That’s where my focus goes. If Fine Fools was my only focus and I could cater to the wants and needs of its writers I have no doubt that it would still be around today wreaking havoc. Instead I got rid of it to keep my focus.

Fine Fools seemed like a good model for a blog network. The blogger proposed a niche, and the network owner will set up the site and market the blog. Revenues are split his way: Network gets front page ad revenues, while the writer gets those from the individual pages. But then it went out of hand—partly because Scrivs says he could no longer give 110% effort to the network.

Still, Scrivs says these aren’t exactly failures, as Fine Fools has spawned excellent blogs and these have lifted several other people into A-list status.

And how exactly did I get rid of it? I gave the sites away to the people who wrote on them because they earned it. Again, giving away means not asking them to pay me for it. Let’s look at some of these people and you might have heard of some of their names.

Familiar names, indeed, like David Krug, Liz Strauss and Melissa Petri. These are now big names in the blogosphere. These people have also probably made big money from blogs!

Now don’t get me wrong, I do have some real legitimate failures where I lost money, time, friends, etc., but in some way they always turn out well for the sole reason that I learned from them. I’m just never going to see starting a Network for $0 and making thousands in return and helping people get their start in this blog world or watching non-failing companies buy up sites that I give away as falling into the failure category.

In this regard, I would call Scrivs a King-maker. While he’s not exactly at the top of the world when it comes to blog networks, those other people who are now king of the hill were anointed by this visionary.

Has Fine Fools failed? I would tend to agree with Scrivs that Fine Fools was not a failure, if you look at the success that the fine fools (sorry, I couldn’t resist) the community produced have achieved.