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."
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 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.
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
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
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/
He just did advertise on slashdot! For free.
He is greatly mistaken by the amount of traffic that he belives he has. Compare the alexa data at trmag with the alexa data for tech-recipes.com.
Tech-recipes.com takes all their "profits" and sends t-shirts to its users. Nobody there is making a living off the site... I don't know how you expect to either.
Sorry. Traffic is the answer.
(Don't whine that alexa traffic isn't accurate. It isn't. However, the same people that will install alexa toolbar as the same people that will click on ads. It's good measure...)
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.