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Wanted - An Online Publishing Business Model?

Posted by Cliff on

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."

6 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Business Plan... by MosesJones · · Score: 4, Interesting


    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
    1. Re:Business Plan... by ergo98 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sorry to be cynical here but they are running AdSense and need to raise more revenue....

      Especially given that their way of boosting Adsense revenue was to place more Adsense banners on each page (ridiculously placing three vertical banner Adsense ads side by side. This technique would be logical if they were paid by impression, but for a pay for click it's self defeating).

      The reality, however, is that the sort of generalist technology stories they write, appealing to the interested lay person, will yield next to no Adsense clicks - I mean they have a story on ice transforming chipmaking, with adsense ads selling things like silicon wafers, and ultra thin diamond blades. There is no way the general readers are going to care about the items those ads are selling, and it's in that sort of context that Adsense is just terribly ineffective (as it is on many pages). They'd be better serve by market targeted ads (e.g. the average visitor is a software developer, so cups and funny hats) rather than keyword driven ads.

      Of course the biggest problem seems to be, like others have mentioned, that their primary "publishing" is simply repackaging stuff they find elsewhere -- there are already far too many of those sites on the net. Having 200,000 visitors means nothing if they all fly-back quickly.

    2. Re:Business Plan... by Seumas · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I have to agree that this ask-slashdot question is silly.

      Either do it or don't do it and stop bitching about the money. I run a big auction site and I probably could charge fees or membership dues or something to make money, but I don't. Just because you want to make money at something - or do it for a living - doesn't mean you can or will.

      So my advice to these guys would be:

      Get a day job. Focus on your career. Do the journalism website thing in your free time as a hobby. Don't expect to make a career out of it. In fact, don't expect to make any money out of it whatsoever. Actually - plan to spend serious cash going into debt over your project without ever recovering the expense. I"ve suck at least $25,000 into my project in the last six or seven years and I don't make a dime from it. I never expect that I will. In fact, I don't even care if it's popular or not. Everyone can just go away and stop using it and find another service for all I really care.

      If you're doing it for any other reason than you like spending your time on it - give up and stop it right now. You will never enjoy what you do if your enjoyment depends on someone else putting up some cash. Because they never will.

      And while I'm at it - be wary of anyone offering to help you out. I've had people offer to buy my site and keep me on "staff" to run it from the creative/coding end of things and let them "handle the business side". Um. it's a free site. There is no business side. I question the help of anyone who thinks there is a business side to it.

      I actually did finally start accepting advertising - but only after five years of having a policy against it. And that was just because I was tired of spending a big chunk of my paycheck on it if I could maybe easily avoid it... but I would have kept paying if I had to, I guess.

  2. Re-do your website by FiReaNGeL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  3. Consultant Fee Please by linzeal · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Why are we giving advice on businesses online anyway? Shouldn't we paid for this crap?

    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
  4. 200 000? by zxSpectrum · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    http://virtuelvis.com/