Here’s the explanation on our blog http://blog.adegga.com/choose-a-wine-from-portugal-well-bring-it/

living in the online wine publishing since 2000, I think that the business model / monetizazion, is one of the most relevant topics of the conference. How to monetize the time spent in wine blogging ?

I think that one blog, alone, can't make moneys because of the small bergaining power that each one has individually. The things change if you pur a lot of bloggers togheter, but it is not enough. You need to have power and influence in the wine sector, you need some top publishers for each country you're going to involve in the network and you need to cover a big part of the long tail.

Following this philosofhy, and relying on the experience matured in the online wine publishing and in the online advertising, I have created a wine & food advertising network wich works as a collector for all websites and bloggers that have as the specific topic wine and/or food.

This project - http://www.vinoclic.it - starts in Italy but now I'm working hard for expanding it in Europe and USA because I think that higher is the number of countries involved, higher is the opportunity to attract advertisers from different countries wich look to reach different countries but similar targets.

Today we've almost fifty wine & food related websites & blogs and we plan to increase the number of publishers in a short time, taking from the european and north america area. In this way we can talk to advertisers and media agencies as a single professional referent on an equal power.

VinoClic - this is the name of the adv network - has given ethical rules to be respected. The important thing, infact, is to add advertising on blogs preserving the integrity of each blogger who join the network. Here you can read some of the most relevant rules and rights that every publisher must agree before joining the network.

- each publisher should not mix advertising and content

- each publisher should not talk about an advertiser in a complacent way

- each publisher has to strives in giving a correct and gennuine information to readers

- each publisher has the power to ask vinoclic that a certain campaign should not appear on his/her blog

- vinoclic must work hard to choose only high quality sponsors

- vinoclic shouldn't sell payed posts.

I think that EWBC 2008 will be a great moment to present this project and to answer a lot of questions.

Bye, Fil
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My detailed profile :
http://www.vinix.it/detail.php?ID=25016

I think we will almost certainly have to include this topic in some way. Our issue will not be what topics to cover, but how to keep the topics sufficiently focused that we can achieve something in the limited time available. Wine Communities and the role of bloggers is definitely important and we need to think a little about this as it relates to how/what/where we write and also what systems we might use so that it can be shared with others.

Keep the ideas coming and we can see how many we can incorporate in the final plans, and thanks for the suggestion

Note: I am running a wine community in Germany (Verkostet.de) which means I am biased on the one hand, but have some views from the other side, too.

Les escribo desde Mar del Plata Argentina.
Realmente si el tiempo me lo permitiera, me encantaría poder estar allí (haré lo posible).
Soy uno de los miembros de un grupo de Cata de Mar del Plata, Argentina.
En mi Blog ya puse un post sobre vuestro evento en La Rioja.
FELICITACIONES (CONGRATULATIONS) ! ! ! !
José