Whit: So David you know that it’s Green Month on my blog, and I said I would be featuring friends in the Green industry. Can you tell everyone why I chose you to start with you? What I’m asking is, what do you do for a living?

David Anderson: (are we pretending this is a phone transcript or something?)

Whit: I’m totally putting all of this in the blog, and yes.

David: Ah, direct copy and paste. Well, then, let me be as pompous as possible… Well, Whit, first let me say how much I appreciate the opportunity. I’ve been following your blog for a long time, because, well, blogs are my job.

Whit: Really? And what blog are you with, and what is your role at said blog?

David: I run the first blog network with exclusively environmentally-themed content. We’re called Green Options Media.
Technically, I’m the Publisher of the network, which is really a lot more fun than it sounds. Our editorial team does all the really hard stuff, and I just get to sit around and determine the strategic direction of the network’s editorial staff, content and marketing.

It’s my job to look at all of the other blog networks and other new media, and identify how those strategies can be applied to green media.

Blog networks are kind of a brave new world, and best practices, writer compensation, and all the other details are still very fluid. I’m particularly proud of the writer model we’ve come up with. In other verticals where blogs have become big business, it’s because the majority of readers are already very interested in a wide range of related topics, and it’s pretty easy to find knowledgeable writers.

Green Media faces a tougher challenge; to date, most successful green bloggers are just people who happen to be interested but have no particular expertise in a green field–instead, their expertise is in running a blog. At the same time, there are tons of environmental professionals who are looking for a way to share their expertise with the world. Many of them are starting blogs as that outlet, but almost none of them have the time or expertise to administer, market, and otherwise find exposure for their personal blogs.

Whit: Well I’ll be asking you to come on the blog a couple times this month. Just so everyone knows, what is it that you brought you to this position? Specifically, what is your background in the green world?

David: Like many web entrepreneurs, it started small and evolved unexpectedly. I graduated from college (UCSD) with a growing passion for sustainability, and started a blog on the interplay of environmental and energy issues.

Through that blog, I met other high profile green bloggers, and the idea for Green Options as a single, multi-author blog was born. We launched that in Feb 2007. That blog grew quickly, but we recognized that we were only successfully reaching an audience that was already very ‘green.’

We realized that splitting our blog into smaller, affiliated blogs on more niche topics was a much easier way to pull people into the circle of sustainability, since when most people start to “go green” they start with one or a couple topics that interest them–no one’s going to make a ‘green’ portal that claims to be all things to all people their homepage, but normal people are open to small introductory changes before getting more involved.

So, we have a food blog, a parenting blog, a cleantech blog, and so on down the line, each written to be accessible to a particular audience who might not want to dig into every green issue in the world… quite yet.

Which brings me back to our writer model: we set up what we call a ‘direct professional’ model — giving those green professionals a platform to bring their expertise to the world.

Whit:Well you know I love GO, I’ll have you back on the blog soon. I just wanted everyone to get to know you and your site before I proceed with Green Month. Thanks for the first chat.

David: Any time, Whit.