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."
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?
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
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.
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
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
"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.
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/
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.
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/
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.
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.
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
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.