Online Publishers: Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
One of the main themes of discussion here at the Web 3.0 Conference in New York City is how Web content is being digested. With the shift from destination sites to syndication through multiple channels, the publishers that create all this content face a real challenge. They have typically relied on page views: the more page views, the more advertising revenue.
But relying on page views is no longer an option. The lion's share of revenue that publishers generate comes from advertisers, and advertisers are now demanding to see more actionable ROI on their advertising dollars. Publishers are feeling the crunch.
This is a guest post by Steve Poland, who is currently focused on his stealth startup InSeconds.
ReadWriteWeb's own Bernard Lunn moderated a panel here that addressed a couple of the challenges that most publishers struggle with these days. Below are some of the salient points that emerged from the discussion.
How to Reduce the Cost of Creating High-Quality Content
- Embrace better tools to make processes more efficient. It is a fact that too many publishers are clamoring for an ever-decreasing share of the advertising pie (revenue). Publishers need to be leaders in innovation. Two-thirds of the industry is waiting for someone to lead the way; most of these followers will fall by the wayside, and the others will work from the platforms that the leaders become.
- Get readers to write content. Look for the top commenters in your reading community. Some of them would likely contribute posts to your site. Reach out to them.
- Write content that readers want. Website logs show which topics and posts draw the most interest from readers. Use this information to understand what content your readers want.
- How do you profit from content that has depth but takes time to research and write? Bernard emphasized that publishers make money by selling ads, and this money is typically tied to page views. A publisher can run a quick post like, "Lindsay Lohan's Twitter Meltdown," which may take mere minutes to write and generates 200,000 page views, whereas an in-depth post on something technical, which could take several days and several interviews to write, may generate only 20,000 page views. So should you bother writing those quick posts that are inevitably regurgitated by a ton of other publishers? Content with longevity eventually earns more money (like films, it generates revenue for years). Refocus your content so that it has staying power or can be archived somewhere for future licensing.
How to Increase Revenue
- Maximize your brand elsewhere. Andraz Tori, CTO of Zemanta, noted that not all media is monetizable. He believes that the consolidation of content and the creation of content via crowd-sourcing (e.g. Wikipedia) will ultimately drive the price of content to nothing. (Although some publishers will be able to charge for content, the way that D&B can still charge $10,000+ for profile reports on private companies). By spending time on in-depth content creation, you build your brand, allowing you to extend that brand to conferences, report sales, etc.
- Advertisers want engagement. Julie Nielsen of appssavvy said that so much inventory is available for advertisers to buy from, they don't even know where to look. Advertisers want actionable results; they want to track their ROI, and a click is not revenue to them. Publishers need to sell to advertisers that are relevant to their audience and then educate advertisers to purchase differently, partly by offering advertisers data (beyond mere clicks) that tells a deeper story about their brand engagement.
The panel obviously didn't have all the answers, but it started a good discussion that we hope to continue here. What ideas do you have, and what opportunities do you see in this shift in publishing?
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Hi,
great article, great summary. I'd also add there was general sentiment of hope at the conference.
I'd like to point out that I said that price of _general_ content will go toward zero. Meaning content for which there is general interest and can be produced by masses (for example not high budget movies and not very specialized publications).
Open source was first incarnation of crowdsourcing idea, Wikipedia made the concept mainstream, microstock photo providers did it and now they are followed by Open Street Map and there's more to come. Existing 'data curation' businesses are going to be disrupted one by one.
BTW: Isn't it fantastic we're in an age where we can actually publicly comment on things being reported about us?
bye
Andraz Tori
What the web can be?
friends don't u feel web-world can go till 100.0 ??
anyway we r coming to join 3.0 conference !!!
Write content that readers want.
This is the most difficult part.
You can base your online work on recent trends, and I think that Twitter really helps this.
For example, with the launch of Wolfram Alpha I saw that many people on twitter were talking about it so I wrote a blog post about Mozilla ubiquity integration with Wolfram (see here http://tr.im/lYg3): I knew that it was "content that readers wanted" but,besides, it was a specific content, not a simple news.
It is very easy to profit from technical content that takes days to produce. I will give an example.
Cartoon Smart is one single guy with a mac, kicking the heck out of deep pocketed competitors like Lynda.com and VTC with very clever tutorials. Takes him weeks to create content, and they are good. How does he profit? He sells the download, and customers are happy to pay.
There is a lot of competent, talented people out there just doing the same. Small and large.
And the structure is flourishing, Several good Self Publish sites out there, Lulu.com, Create Space, Wordpress plugins making simple, easy to publish anything on line for virtually nothing.
It will always, for ever, be possible to sell quality content. Just don't rely only on the click revenue.
so hard out there now....
Thank you for this wonderful post.
Writing is great.
It's the ultimate question isn't it: how to generate adequate revenues from online content.
I wholeheartedly agree with some of the points raised in the article, in particular the need for content creators to maximise their brand.
Content - in the form of blogs, whitepapers etc... - works well for professional service providers as the freely available information leads to sales of services. They build a brand based on demonstrable expertise which in turn leads to them becomin a trusted resource for services.
Media companies should follow this route and create new paid for products (like the $10,000 reports mentioned above) or premium subscription models - leveraging their brand reputation and expertise. Depending on the nature of the business this could be anything from company profiles offered by business news sites to branded remixes sold through music magazine sites.
The news elements are becoming a commodity, the value-added and unique content doesn't have to be.
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