Slashdot Mirror
Wanted - An Online Publishing Business Model?
Eric Smalley asks: "Wanted: an online publishing business model that falls somewhere between lone weblogger and corporate media behemoth. Technology Research News (TRN) has been publishing original news stories for over five years, but we have yet to find a way to cover our costs. We are fairly popular and well-woven into the fabric of the Web; we have over 200,000 unique visitors per month, we are well represented in Google, Yahoo and MSN search results, and we are regularly slashdotted and pointed to by Wired News, other media sites and countless weblogs. Our overriding goal has been to keep the news free, including our archive. Is there no place for a small, independent media company founded and run by journalists?"
"We make money by selling subscriptions to a PDF edition, selling white-paper-like reports through our site and resellers, supplying other media sites with our content through a newswire, selling subscriptions to an off-line electronic edition through a reseller, collecting fees from Lexus Nexis and other online databases, and carrying Google's Adsense advertisements. Most recently we have begun a PBS-like fund drive. That's a lot of revenue streams, but they don't add up to enough. Our costs are modest: two full-time editors, one contributing editor and two part-time staffers."
Patents.
Try advertizing on Slashdot!
They had a successful run for awhile via subscriptions. High-quality writing was the main draw, as far as I know. Plus they had a teaser where they'd show the first part of the article to everyone.
Our costs are modest: two full-time editors, one contributing editor and two part-time staffers.
In other words, you have no full-time field reporters. You're not going out there and finding new stories, you're repackaging stuff from other sources.
If the world really needed more sites like that, maybe making a profit would not be so hard.
Sorry to be cynical here but they are running AdSense and need to raise more revenue....
Q: "How can we get a load more hits"
A: "Get a slashdotting"
How exactly is this news for nerds, rather than "Advertising for a Web Business".
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
You have a page rank of 8/10. Thats insane. You have one tiny Google Ads box. While ads can be annoying, just choose non-annoying ads. With such a high page rank you should be exploiting that.
Is there anything better than clicking through Microsoft ads on Slashdot?
There is a small on-demand publishing company called LuLu. You give them the PDF file and work out some pricing system things, and then when someone orders your book they print a copy of it and send it to them.
Unlike a regular publisher, they don't print a huge number of books at once to rot in a wearhouse and reduce profit, and they can print the books relatively inexpensively, meaning most of the profit finds its way into your pocket.
Independantly sell advertising for top spot banners and other links, if spots aren't bought up fill them with Adsense or other PPC advertising programs until they are
With a PR8 and that much traffic, you would have people lining up to buy text links alone to help them in the search engines. You must exploit all aspects of your site when trying to make revenue, not just the content.
Business Voyeur
Try www.rawstory.com JF
You're asking /. readers for advice on marketing? you must be new here......
You can NEVER have too many revenue streams. Everybody complains about too much advertising... people do it because it works. Let them bitch. They'll come back if you are giving them what they want... pop-ups, flash banner ads or not. Make it clear you want their freaking money and be done with it.
Put a big, fat PAYPAL DONATE button and every single page. Link to every piece of crap you can think of that your visitors might be interested in... not just Quantum Physics. Even Physicists need penis enlargers and mortgages. Hell, find a place that sells condoms with nuclear radiation symbols or whirling atoms on them. Can you say, "Glow-in-the-dark Condoms"??? ;-)
Affilliate, affilliate, affilliate...
There is no shame in advertising on your own website. Just don't be a frakking spammer. They suck.
Capitalism Rules.
All men aren't pigs... we just smell that way.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is this a joke? Seriously- with 200K unique users a month, if you can't keep your head above water, you have a business problem. Not all ads are annoying. You don't need pop ups and Java ads. Throw some text links on there.
If you want to be a zillionaire, that may not work for you. But lots of sites have ads and people aren't annoyed. Those who expect ad free, cost free content are out there, but anyone with a brain understands someone has to pay the bills. And PBS fund drives? Keep in mind PBS also gets taxpayer support, and they have unobtrusive ads (This show brought to you by Archer Daniels Midland, Supermarket to the world...)
We make money by selling subscriptions to a PDF edition I would never pay for any pdfs, I hate them, but thats just me.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Nothing hard about this, it's the same model every successful business has. Just convince people to send you money. That's the only model you need.
200k visitors is not great. It's not weak either.
You want a business model? At this level of visitors, I'd say slap ads and pop-unders on there. You'll make $3000 a month. Then add some subscription-only content for members.
Thats the best you can hope for, and as you can see, it can only sustain 1 employee.
The site is craptacularly html-coded, too. This is just a ploy to get /.'d.
The website is a mess to navigate. Visiting the homepage, it's not even obvious what the website is about. And why should I care. And it fill past my browser window even if im in 1024 resolution. 3x Google Adsense Wide Skyscrapers at the bottom? Please redo your ad placement, your CTR will improve greatly.
:(
It could make millions with 200 000 uniques a month
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
A cloud of fairies brings you golden coins. Make sure you have enough to pay the billy goats gruff!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Slate Magazine? http://slate.msn.com/
I have one word of advice you need to dig through all your stories and find those that offer services or products that are sold online and find out if there is a sweet deal directly from the company if you refer them. When most of your articles are static there is no reason to use Adsense on that page. Adsense is great and all if you are lazy or have a dynamic site but if you have an article on "foobar" and foobar's company offers a 10% finder's fee as opposed to per click from adsense what do you think is going to make more money?
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I'm a tech journalist, just like you, and I've never, ever heard of your site.
I think the problem is marketing. I was recently reading about Apple's early days and one of the first things Steve Jobs did was to recruit marketing and advertising people.
There's a myth that quality always succeeds but this isn't the case, or at least not in a market place consisting of other quality products. You need to advertise, you need to market, and you need to brand. It's the modern world. Actually, it's been that way for years. Jesus had a couple of marketeers - they're called his disciples.
it's no exaggeration to say that you should have as many marketing/advertising people in your organisation as you should have journalists.
And don't make the mistake of thinking that anybody can becoming a marketeer (ie we'll get one of the staff to knock up a press release during a spare five minutes)! It takes skill, knowledge and experience.
I also think you should look at what tech sites have managed to become successful and ask yourself why. The Register and The Inquirer are run on shoe-string budgets with barely any full-time staff. They recycle news from other sites (via contra deals), and they work hard to get advertising (The Reg in particular).
"You may need to scroll right to see all the ads"? Are you serious? Nobody's gonna do that.
Do one of two things- 1) follow the advice of the people posting here. 2) Hire one of the people posting here as an ad consultant, if it makes you feel better (give them a percentage of the increase in revenue), then follow their advice.
Seriously, your present scheme is about as wrong as it can get.
There's only so much overhead that 200k/mo uniques can cover (I assume these are unique, domain-wide visitors, and not just PVs) when all you have on the front page is a tucked-away AdSense box. You are going to have to bite the bullet and put some banners and skyscrapers on your site if you want to survive. Slashdot does it, EFF.org does it...
You see, the gradual traffic growth on the Internet, fueled simply by more and more people having an Internet connection every, does not necessarily lead to increased traffic (and more revenue) for your site. The major hubs can and do find ways to keep those increasing numbers funnelling towards their domains. There's an intertial snowball effect as well.
If you don't have a dedicated employee pimping out your content, and at competitive prices; if you don't have sufficient ad presence on your pages; if you rely on natural market growth to provide increased revenue, you will very likely fail in the niche you have chosen.
I would strongly recommend appointing someone to whom you will have to grant more branding control than you would like. A cheerleader/publicist/marketer you appear to be lacking. And I would recommend aggressively pursuing sponsored bandwidth. Your site obviously has a lot of prestige, and I think it's past time to leverage that.
Good luck.
1. Publish news and articles on the Web.
2. ???
3. Profit!
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Don't embed your editorial and navigational content in image files like this. Your design should accommodate the content, not the other way around...
Wanted: an online publishing business model that falls somewhere between lone weblogger and corporate media behemoth.
So, really, you just want to have credibilty, integrity and influence while making tons of money? When you figure that one out please post a follow up article. It's been done and *can* be done, and I'd love to know the secret. So would just about everybody else.
That's funny, I don't see any adverts on your site at all.
Ohhhh.. that's right. I've got an adblock list a mile long.
I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it.
Looking at the Alexa traffic details for your site, I somehow doubt that you have a real userbase of 200 000. Compare it to for instance kottke.org's traffic details, I'd say that you need visitors before anything else. Kottke has loads of more traffic, and took a hefty paycut to blog full-time
And yes, I am aware that Alexa is not an exact measure, but it should act as an indication that you very likely won't find a business model at all that is fit for supporting a full-time staff.
As for maximizing revenue with what you have, the colors and placement of your Google ads is pretty appaling: They are below the fold for many users, and they are hidden where users won't look for them, and they have a color scheme as inviting as a World-War II bunker.
http://virtuelvis.com/
I'm the editor, not the publisher, so I can't release financial details, but I can say that if you don't do it for love, you shouldn't do it at all.
"Even for Slashdot, that was a very obscure reference!" - Anonymous Coward
You're trying to pay 3 full-time and 2 part-time employees off a 200,000 hit per month non-commercial site?
You can't get your revenue high enough because your costs are too high. You can break even my increasing the money coming in or my reducing the money going out - the latter is far easier. There's no way you need 5 people for that kind of site.
That trust is money
The short route is to sell out and use that trust to push a specific conglomerates' product line and/or political affiliation.
The longer route is expanding that trust with an aim of a ½ television spot and magazine (dead tree type). (then betraying that trust to a conglomerate's product line or political affiliation)....
The impossible is start something new, avoid betraying the trust of your readership, create your own form of hip-ness (do not think wired, there's a few persona's that'd do well in this jaded consumer market) and have other agencies imitate you (and you'll slowly get pushed out of business while they betray their trusted readership (this is a heads up when to sell/retire and count your dollars)---you did nothing wrong but there is a psychology in western media that cares little for money and wants a population that is irrational and stigmatized). If you can get that hip-ness going, an analyst desk or reporter type position can be used for capital and name brand expansion.
If any of the three above are to work, you need to know who your demographic readership is. Start with polls and questions (with feedback). Ask if readers would subscribe to a (dead-tree type) magazine, ask readers what they would like to see in a magazine (or what could be included with). If you have enough interest, approach a publisher (do research) and make an offer (they like long term detailed plans, they likely know online polls are not always accurate but are indicative).
aren't there highly paid consultants that answer questions like this? heheh.
Live according to the Categorical Imperative. If the Categorical Imperative tells you not to live by it... ignore it
Your donations page pretty much stops anyone willing to donate less than $10 from donating at all, and asking for donations of $200 or more dollars just makes those considering small donations not bother because it doesn't seem worth it. You're unlikely to get more than a couple of donations of more than $100, your many money will come from $10 donations and below - encorage those.
Here's what to do: 1) Ad banners to your articles. 2) Create a Press Release section where companies can submit PR's for a small fee ($5-$10) and if its good enough you might just write about it. This should help
Andrew PlugStar.com
An online directory is a good way to generate extra ad $, and it's fully automated so you don't need to hire more people: http://www.edirectory.com/
No, there really isn't much room left for an independent, commercial online publisher. If you want to make money you have to cater to the people willing to give money. You have to represent their interests (ala Fox) and/or entertain them (ala CNN). If you want to do good, independent journalism, go non-profit (ala Wikinews).
Ah... I believe you're completely ignoring the concept of article SUBMISSIONS, by writers who ARE out in the field. Reading, rejecting, accepting, and editing article submissions is what editors get paid to do.
So unless you believe that every article in every magazine has to be written by a staff writer to be original, your assumption falls rather short of actual fact.
With "insights" like that, one can see why you post as an Anonymous Coward...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
First, yes there is "a small, independent media company founded and run by journalists." The key though is that you need to run it like a businessman, not as a journalist.
I know hundreds of people who want to be freelance writers or journalists. Some of them quite well. But, for every one I know who makes a living at it, I know two dozen who don't.
The secret? Treat it like a business first.
What's your business plan? You describe several tried, true and _lame_ ways of making money from journalism. Online advertising and newsletter subscriptions are the only ones that have a proven track record of working.
How many online publications do you see making living money from the methods you describe? I can't think of any.
Google ads by themselves though, won't cut it. You need someone who spends all their time looking for advertisers.
If you go the newsletter route, you typically have to become the Expert in one area that people with money want insider information on.
Now, that can be pretty broad. Fred Langa does very well with his personal computing newsletter, the Langa List (http://www.langa.com/), but Fred, former editor of chief in Byte in the good old days of print tech. journalism, already had a lot of fans.
OK, so those models can work, but you also have to content people value and want to read.
200K unique readers a month is good, but it's not good enough.
Still, with 200K, and aggressive, non-intrustive advertising, you should be able to generate enough cash to survive on.
But, income is only part of the equation. In a real business, yoy must learn how to manage your money. This isn't a skill that for some reason many writers or journalist have, but learning how to keep costs as low as possible while maximizing revenue is a must.
That sounds simple. It's not. It's a skill your group must master though.
I've made more money in journalism years ago than I am now, but I'm doing much better overall. My secret? I finally learned finance 101.
Finally, you really aren't staffed up enough to "deeper understanding of the wide swath of research discoveries poised to affect the technologies driving day-to-day life and business."
Pick a narrow area of technology, stick with it, and you can probably provide the "deeper understanding," you're striving to cover. Once people learn that your site is The site for nano-engineering, which seems a reasonable goal based on your existing coverage, you can probably make a go of it.
Good luck.
Steven,
Senior Editor, Ziff Davis Internet (http://www.eweek.com/
Editor, Practical Technology (http://www.practical-tech.com/
Chairman, Internet Press Guild (http://www.netpress.org/
I like TRN mag a lot, I can see things on there that other sites haven't discovered yet. The reason I don't read the page daily, is that the page stays the same for a week or so. In the internet world, that's equivalent to 1 yearly issue.
If you look at Wired and Newscientist, they have in depth articles, AND they combine it with daily/hourly tech newsfeeds. News is addicting, you gotta feed the hunger.
Oh, come on. Google wants to make information easily available: that's a great goal. If they can make money on it, great. They still can't publish for-pay material, and they won't unless they pay for it. When's the last time that Google ripped off copywritten material?
Besides, lots of people (like me) are very happy with the traffic that Google generates to their sites.
Most of the responses to your question have been revolved around increasing ad space through banners and so forth. I think you should go a different direction. Broker the knowledge.
As journalist you must do a far amount of research before publishing an article. If you publish an article without revealing individual names, sources or complimentary articles you would still have interesting literature for everyone to read for free. However, for those professionals that need to know the names and sources behind the article you can ask for a nominal fee of $5 for that information.
This is a BUSINESS MODEL suggestion that may work to your advantage. I believe you should follow the ad optimization suggestions as well.
Please fire the moron who decided to make all of your menu/navigation links be images with unreadably small (pictures of) text.
Google Weblog said it best IMO.
"Publishers, in typical copyright-holder paranoia fashion worried that perhaps the two line snippets Google would be providing of their books would spell the end of the world for their entire industry. They wrote articles attacking Google for their cruelty and finally, today, Google announced it would back down.
That's right: Google won't even scan any book copyright holders ask them not to, even though doing so is perfectly legal. It's as if copyright holders got to dictate what books get placed in libraries. Their short-sighted selfishness will cost us all, depriving us of our heritage in our online Library of Alexandria."
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
According to alexa.com:
Traffic Rank for trnmag.com: 155,360
Traffic Rank for seifried.org: 148,844
Traffic Rank for slashdot.org: 1,134
Traffic Rank for cnn.com: 28
Now people will say Alexa.com isn't accurate/etc/etc and I would agree. However in this case it's showing my personal website and a web site with commercial aspirations to be about equal (actually I outrank it, sweet! =). And of course it shows Slashdot clobbering us, and in turn CNN clobbering .. well nearly everyone.
I get a click through rate on my Google page ads of about 1-2% (which is pretty solid), in part because my content is specific (information security) which lends itseld well to ads (firewalls, anti-virus, and so on) and mostly because the people at my site are interested in those ads. If you want to go the advertising route you need content that brings in people that will respond to ads, and the ads have to be content appropriate. Your site displays ads for physics and nanotechnology, at a site targeting the general public (at least I assume that's your target, your website content is overly generic and unfocused).
If you go the subscription route you need to provide information that is useful, timely, unique, or ideally all three. Again your information isn't really all that unique, timely, unique or even well presented or analyzed.
In short: your website is not all that interesting, it's not targeted, it's ugly as sin and poorly laid out, basically everything you can do wrong, you have done wrong.
Your Google Adsense implementation/presentation of ads is severely non-optimal. I think you can increase revenue by a factor of 2x - 10x. Essentially place the ads front and center and make them blend in with your site. Email me for specifics.
Sorry, Google does not provide "two line snippets". Take a look at the books they currently have. You can search for text within a book and read the entire book at your pleasure. Most of the books I've looked at have only a handful of pages (less than 5%) that are missing. Some technical type books have missing figures and such, but most of the text is available.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I agree that you can devote more of the page to advertising... For example the whole right column is ads on many free information sites.
First things first: Find out about your audience demographics. Demographics is what sells targeted advertising. Clicks sold is less 1% of the world's advertising. A lot of advertising is geared towards garnering brand recognition in a target group. For example the "Diamonds are Forever" campaign by deBeers. If you can show that 20% of your audience is repeat viewership, and has high disposable income, then selling that kind of ads becomes possible. Another example is investor services: The high net worth individual only has to be 5% of your audience, and suddenly folks at Morgan Stanley or Credit Suisse First Boston will be interested...
Also consider an "in depth" page for subscribers, and pick up say $5 with PayPal for an annual subscription. The Economist has a web site with that kind of subscription model.
Be sure to check out high-income glossy magazines, and see which ads might be good in your pages. Look at magazines like Fortune, The Economist, Cigar Aficionado, Yachting, and so on. Also find out which ad agencies represent the likes of deBeers, Cartier, Ferrari, and Netjets. They may try some "small bucks" ads on your site, which are big bucks to you!
But start with demographics: You are selling a product to the advertisers, and that product is your viewers attention. Emotional advertising is very effective when folks are geared towards picking up factual data. Your site is perfect for that. You have to "know your product"; that's the first rule of sales. Your demographics characterize the product which you sell to advertisers.
Keep up the good writing! And good luck!
"You're asking /. readers for advice on marketing? you must be new here......"
Just be glad he didn't ask us about sex.
If you want a survey of revenue streams, http://www.indignantonline.com/dojo/149/v.jsp?p=/c omics-ecommerce/index was on this board a couple weeks back and is a good overview.
Now specifically looking at your site, you have a little tiny area with google links that I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been looking for ads.
You also have the obligatory cafepress/merchandising link buried in your navbar below the fold.
You can't make money if nobody can find your revenue-generating links. Put your advertising in more prominent spots and a little bigger - you can't click what you don't see. Likewise your books and merchandise links need to be higher and stand out more.
Aside from traffic, that's the most immediate problem.
With all the other people saying "duh, adverts of course", I'll play the devil's advocate.
Consider "adblock" and its probable descendants. I'd lay even odds they'll utterly wipe out bulk advertizing on the web before 2010. Advertizers will try stealth, and be beaten back by collaborative and statistical filters. There's no way they can win that arms race when the browser-side does the rendering. You may be able to duck the blow by carefully choosing innoccuous and relevant ad providers - or even they may fall.
Adverts are certainly the best-paying revenue stream right now, but you'll need a backup plan!
Answer to question on line three;
1. Bad buisness plan.
3. ????
4. Profit
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
WeblogsInc makes a million a year on AdSense alone (Google for the interview). Gawker Media makes very good money and was entirely bootstrapped. These two companies are making it, and making a nice pile of money to boot.
Because I'v seen every project that I'v continued on in, to be a success-- at least to some degree, in spite of people telling me I should 'give up'.
And be sure to garner at least some of the other wonderful advice that you will get here at /. :)
I will gladly loose all of life's battles.. in order to win the war..
Let's run through the funding options again. Oddly enough, these are the same as for traditional media:
- Advertising. Online advertising can work, as any Google stockholder will tell you. But there's a finite number of advertising dollars. Clearly not enough for everybody who would like to sell ads.
- Subscriptions.I keep hearing people say, "people won't subscribe for online content because they're used to getting it free." Nonsense. If you have the kind of content where people spend a lot of time at your site, you can get away with charging a subscription. But most sites only have a few items that are of interest to any given user. Online readers are mostly grazers -- they follow dozens of sites, and aren't about to pay subscriptions each one.
- Fund drives. Only works if you have a really rabid following. Public broadcasting has the additional advantage of being able to hold its shows hostage until people pay up. Hard to do with a web site.
- Micropayments.. People keep telling me this won't work. But I don't know of a single major web site that's really tried selling little bits of content for a few cents a peek. It's the payment model I'd most like to use, but have never had a chance to.
There aren't any options that don't fit into one of the above categories. So you need to look at them and find one that you can modify to fit your needs.1. Make the look and layout of your site more appealing... pretty, even.
2. Narrow your scope and specialise in one interesting niche sector, then branch out slowly.
3. Place ads where people will see them and check that your content generates useful adsense ads. Double-check the ads, they are critical!
4. Cut your business costs, every day.
5. Find a more memorable name. I already forgot it. Also, a slogan, a logo, a mascot, a symbol. Anything to stand out a little.
6. Increase your traffic considerably: 200k unique visitors is not enough to live on.
7. Find sponsors systematically: for band width, for hosting, for special issues, whatever.
8. People will not pay to read tech news unless it is really, really, special. Make it so. Then charge for it.
9. Allow people to discuss articles and issues. Get your audience involved and clicking.
10. Find excellent writers/contributors. People will read the articles and come back, if the articles are very good.
My blog
JIVE has all the attributes you mention you want but are actually doing a good job at keeping everything free. They publish a nice color glossy too. You might check with their publisher about how they make their magazine tick. The ads aren't too bad there either.
Here's a solution:
The government allows eCash. The government must be involved so that the money can be universal. eCash should be world-wide, so other governments must agree.
You put $10 into eCash using your credit card, and get $10 of eCash minus the credit card companies' hefty cut of all credit card commerce.
You could put money into eCash by asking your bank to transfer the money.
When you visit a web page, you pay 1 cent, $0.01, to view a page. Or, maybe 1/10 cent, $0.001.
The online media company that is able to attract 50,000 readers for a page at 1 cent per page makes $500 for that page.
Problems with this:
The credit card companies will pay politicians for government corruption, to try to block eCash. They won't care if the government is more corrupt, they want their hefty cut.
Banks will pay politicians for government corruption, because they won't want some of the commerce to eliminate their involvement, and their hefty profits.
The FBI, which seems to secretly want to take over the entire government, will demand to be able to read everyone's eCash transactions, without a court order. This kind of thing has already happened.
Every media company has very unintelligent people who do what they call "marketing", but is really just sinking the company by being adversarial to customers. Generally those people think they are gaining because no one will notice their sneaky tricks. Those "marketing people" will say, "Wow, if we charge $1 per page we will make 100 times more." The New York Times does this now. They charge more than the cost of the newspaper to download one article.
Once the really, really dumb people and the really, really angry and self-destructive people can be eliminated from powerful positions, eCash can transform our lives. Here's how:
Any society that depends on advertising-supported news is a deeply corrupt society. For example, GE makes weapons, and GE owns NBC. That means the GE shareholders have a motivation to engage in Vietnam wars and Iraq wars, which will make them richer. That means that GE management has a motivation to find and hire amoral, see-no-evil employees who are happy to kill anyone so long as it isn't in their country.
When the media can be supported by direct payments, a single investigative reporter can build a reputation for good work and accuracy. Independent news would eliminate a huge wasteful infrastructure of advertising departments. It would eliminate advertisers influencing stories by saying "I don't want my advertising next to negative stories. Why can't killing Iraqis be given a positive spin?"
Independent news would unbundle real news from "P.R." that tries to seem as though it is news. There are many, many very corrupt organizations that would not like that. But, independent news would make our societies far more friendly and honest.
There would still be large news organizations. They would achieve a reputation for hiring only the best investigators and writers.
A more well-researched development of this idea would make me $500 if I could attract 50,0000 readers at 1/10 cent per page because of the clarity and completeness of my communication. As it is, I still own what I say here, copyright 2005, as I own all my Slashdot comments, but I must give even better developed articles to everyone free because there is no accepted manner of re-imbursing writers for their work.
--
If your gov't chose killing as policy (CIA trained Arabs in 1980), expect others to choose the same.
Correction to the comment above:
"That means that GE management has a motivation to find and hire amoral, see-no-evil employees who are happy to kill anyone so long as it isn't in their country. "
should have been:
"That means that GE management has a motivation to find and hire amoral, see-no-evil employees to write the news who are happy to kill anyone so long as it isn't in their country.
Get an agency to sell ads for you. You aren't good at it.
-- $G
HAHAH, asking slashdot readers for "business plans" -- what a fucking riot! Half of you guys can't even manage to get a piece of ass, GOOD LUCK coming up with profitable business models! Stick to jacking off with your slide rules and working you incredibly boring engineering/nerdy jobs; maybe one day you can build a robot like the nerd in the simpsons and have a love life.
considering most slashdot readers have the social skills of a fucking cinder block, i find it amazing "business" is even brought up here.
jesus h. fucking christ, this place keeps going downhill...
LWN.net seems to be quite successful in selling subscriptions.
Forget about ads, the key is quality. The quality and consistency of jornalism is enough to squeeze subscription fees out of even the cheapest of cheapskates (a.k.a. me).
XJS*C4JDBQADN1.NSBN3*2IDNEN*GTUBE-STANDARD-ANTI-U
"You can break even my increasing the money coming in or my reducing the money going out - the latter is far easier."
Might I recommend outsourcing to India?
--
The "are you a script" word for today is instruct.
Good luck!
A short patronizing history
Before the growth of the merchant class, nobility used their money, power, and influence to promote ideas through the use of patronage. If they favored an artist, philosopher, musician, writers, orator, scientist or even a jester, they would patronize them and in this way their ideas would flourish. The patrons, who were often egotistical, would take credit for the ideas and would circulate them to further their own fame.
After the growth of the merchant class, nobility lost sole control over money, power and influence and patronage was partially replaced with commerce. Artists, philosophers, musicians, writers, orators, scientists and even jesters were forced to please many people instead of just one in order to survive. Spreading their creative ideas became much harder because they did not have the money, power, or influence of the nobility.
With the advent of marketing artists, philosophers, musicians, writers, orators, scientists, and even jesters were forced to associate with advertisers, distributors, branders, promoters and other middlemen in order to reach an audience. In essence these marketers became the new patrons.
So ideally what you want is for your readers to patronize you. That means they get some kind of control over what you make. Give them a method to directly influence your content in exchange for currency.
This really isn't as bad as it sounds. I'll give you two quick examples:
Make a list of potential articles that you want to report on. Rather than have your editor pick which he thinks your audience wants to read, allow your own readers to vote on them. Each vote costs $1. The highest voted article ideas get written.
Other things your readers want control over that you can get them to pay for... let them give you ideas for articles, for $1. Let them assign writers for article ideas, for $1.
Basically you have what no newspaper or magazine ever had, which is direct contact with your readers. Let them pay you to give you feedback on what they want from you.
"Adverts are certainly the best-paying revenue stream right now, but you'll need a backup plan!"
Kind of like the backup plan the software industry should have when F/OSS eventually destroys the give-me-money-for-software market.
Or the backup plan the movies/music/games and books should have when the Internet destroys the organized content business.
Or the backup plan all white collar workers should have when their jobs eventually go overseas.
Or the backup plan we all should have when GWB leaves office, and we're stuck with a humungous defecit, a cratering housing market, soaring gas prices, and a war that'll go on for four more years.
Put the Google Ads at the top of the RH column where they can be seen and clicked on. That will make a considerable difference. Have a subscription system similar to that used by Linux Weekly News.
Come on own up, how much did you get?
My Journal Entry describing incident
-AD
Ad revenue is a zero sum game-- one site's gain is another site's loss. As a niche publication with low viewership compared to real news sites, you can't expect untargeted advertising to pay for your staff. You're going to need to go to a subscription model to have any chance. And if people offer free shit on their blogs that even remotely challenges the quality of your site, why would anyone pay? There are already thousands of similar sites on the internet and I think you are going to have a very difficult time keeping the site running. Sorry.
Well, I have nearly 200K visitors a month too and I can't even get a living for myself. So TRN isnt doing that bad. But their subject is of course more commercial than mine (free classical downloads).
That said I miss all the obvious advertising for an IT site (IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Dell, etc.). There is a lot money going around in IT, but you won't find it all with only Google Adsense. Maybe they should look at the more commercial IT sites to get an idea of which advertisements they are missing.
I'ts "copyright", not "copywrite", so the past tense is "copyrighted", not "copywritten".
And if you don't think that "right" has a past tense, consider:
If a chair tips over and you set it back up, have you "written" the chair?
No, you've "righted" the chair.
To summarize: copyrighted, copyrighted, copyRIGHTED.
OK, I'm done now.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
You should place your ads in the middle of your story. Or towards the end, but not at the end. If someone reads it, they're interested. If they're interested they're going to want to know more. Placing an adsense ad in this kind of position makes for good CTR.
The comment by the man from Ziff-Davis was really head on.
:)
You are trying to do too many things, cover too many areas, and have too many links and distractions on your site.
Also it would have been nice to have something for people to buy when you got your slashdotting.
One thing I can tell you straight off is get rid of Cafe Press. I was in San Diego at ComicCon and there was a seminar about how individual artists could make money on the net. One said DON'T use Cafe Press because they will rape you etc. In general they said you should source things locally and try to get a good deal there. Not that I imagine t-shirts and Google ads are really valuable to anyone. I would say you should stop in your tracks and get someone with experience to do a serious analysis of your business, create a new approach designed to make you cashflow, and execute it continually.
Also I really think (as the poster quoted above does) that you should focus on one scientific area if you can and go very deep, making personal connections to various research institutions. I never heard of your site even after 10 years of reading science on the net, and though I did add you to my sea of bookmarks, I'm not sure what is the compelling proposition. If you had an insiders report that periodically covered advances by many labs that would be more interesting, but I really hate the "warmed over" news idea of many sites (/. too). I don't want to hear you talking about "submissions", that's bull.
If you consider yourself professional journalists and want to get paid like them, then how about doing some journalism. Scrap the entire site and provide a single great original story every week. Hell, get on a plane (or hire a pro in the vicinity) and get some deep interviews with those nanotube ribbon researchers. Talk to others about what they think about that and where else these things are going. If you just made a nanoribbon journal and made yourselves important to researchers and/or businesspeople I think you could make money, get sponsorship, and provide an eminently useful service to people who want to pay for it.
I don't understand how you can make everything you create free and then complain about not making any money. Why aren't you already bankrupt? Not to sound nasty, I may indeed go back to your site if I remember it on a slow slashdot day (though my firefox personal menu bar is quite full..).
Okay, I just opened the url again (now I've memorized it's trnmag.com, a good start). I saw a link to books and thought, great! This is like MIT's OpenCourseware right? NO. First it talks about how you "secure a space on the physical bookshelf" in your office. What the heck is that? Why do I care about a shelf in your office if I'm on the net, which can hold unlimited numbers of books? Okay, I clicked on the biomimicry book, sounds interesting. It just takes me to a page at the Amazon bookstore where I can buy it. Where is the review you said would be there? Turns out it is just a SCAM that Amazon is probably paying you for my traffic. Screw that! Did you say professional journalism?
Now I open the Classifieds section. What could that be I wonder? It's more scam bullshit! Delete that annoying crap!
Okay let's talk about ads. The comic guys talked about some very interesting things. For one thing, one moderately successful guy carefully vets companies that want to advertise on his site and turns down a lot that are not appropriate in his mind. Then he is even harsher about companies for whom he makes a customer banner and page, since it gives that company some of his cachet. You need to learn about that. There is at least one person though making upwards of $1M per year with an online comic. The story wasn't completely discussed but they said merchandise was big. If you must have free content and you can create a high-involvement brand (which you don't have) then that is a possibility I suppose. For now how about focusing on improving your product, scrapping the distractions, and selling some of it.
Okay I've had enough. If your site was blank except for articles I would read it. As it stands, I have enough of an immunological reaction against it that I doubt I'll visit your site again.
I manage/edit a journalistic website that has been continuously running and profitable since 1995. I can tell you what's worked for us, but I don't think it'll be much good to you.
1) Pick a narrow niche with a clearly defined audience. Make sure this audience has money. We publish tightly focused daily news for a specialized industry. Trade journalism ain't glamorous, but it is profitable.
2) Make sure your news has business value, then charge a lot for it. We don't have a huge audience, but our readers pay $300 a year for access because our news can make them money.
3) Pare overhead to the bone. I mean nothing. We have a full-time staff of two. We work from home. Apart from web hosting and phone bills, we have basically no regular expenses.
4) When you have a tightly-focused audience, it makes identifying and landing advertisers much easier. Arrange your layout so the advertisers get pride of place. Don't go for a zillion blinking ads. Aim for a few big advertisers who can be relied on to come back for more.
5) Run text-based help wanted ads. We have a careers section for the industry we serve, and we could probably make a profit even if we scrapped the news and just ran that.
6) HTML email edition. You think it sucks, I think it sucks, but readers and advertisers lap that crap up. We've got three times more email readers than web readers.
So there are the secrets of our modest success. We're not making a fortune, but we continue to roll along. Good luck.
An Anonymous Editor
Theres No RSS Feed so you be getting a thumbs down from me
If You can read this sig you are on the internet
Posted anonymously (no karma whoring).
Daniel Rutter discusses this in the following article...Minnows 1, whales 0.
1. Keep it small.
2. Keep it specialised.
You can google for it. I don't know if it can handle being slashdotted.
This free computer magazine has been around since the early eighties in print form. They had a their magazine in BBS form before the web, and have continuing evolving web version of their magazine. Initially a local San Diego magazine they have expanded to a city in Colorado and one in New Mexico.
This magazine in no way competes with yours. The articles are beginner to intermediate level, and there is a lot of local advertising. One of the reasons prices are so competitive is San Diego. The advertising isn't as easy to flip through in the online version, but it is a work in progress. The magazine is free, and distributed around town to computer stores, coffee shops, libraries, drugs stores, and such. A subscription for a mailed print version is offered for a fee. Although their magazine is available free online, they have just started a email subscription. It is free right now but has left the door open to charge for this service later. I suspect it just may be a way for them to verify its' online readership to its' advertisers.
Many thanks for the comments. One thing is clear, we need to revamp our advertising strategy. Our goal had been to minimize the impact of advertising on the reader experience, hence the lack of banner advertising and the positioning of the Google AdSense ads. A couple of questions: As a reader, do you care about ad placement? When do ads become annoying (in terms of number, placement, type...)?
Eric Smalley
If you want something to be available to the public, put it on the internet. If not, don't. What is so hard about this concept?
Put 90% of your stories open for everyone to read without registration.
Make the other 10% available to everyone who registers. Place ads. A lot of ads. Everywhere.
Offer a small monthly or yearly subscription fee to get rid of the ads.
Small is like... $5 a month, or $36 a year.
Figure 1 person out of every thousand will subscribe, you get between $7200 and $12000 per year for every 200,000 unique regular readers.
No, you're not going to make a fortune this way, but neither do print magazines. Hit the 1.4 million subscriber range and your revenues on the subscriptions go up to say, $50,400 to $84,000.
Now make sure your ads are all relevant to the stories AND to your demographic. Embed them in a way to draw attention from the flow of the articles, and sell your ad space aggressively.
Your ad revenue might reach up to twice your subscription revenue. Call it a rough gross of $150,000 to $250000 in combined revenues.
This is why the magazine market is so quick in turnover and why so few online 'magazines' are unprofitable. You will have to keep your expenses low, hire an aggressive marketing company, and promote your site non stop while working to assure that you have the freshest and most relevant content.
I suggest you also offer print copies, rss/atom feeds, emailed digests, and 'swag' such as clothing and novelties with your brand on them.
You can make money in magazines, but it isn't easy and the margins are narrow. It's harder with even more narrow margins for a web based 'magazine'.
Good luck.
Innit?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
TidBITS sounds similar: a Web magazine staffed by a small number of paid journalists/editors. On their site, and in various magazine articles (e.g. the ones about their subscription model) they explain in a fair amount of detail how they finance their operation.