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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."

2 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 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.