Digitalisation hit first on the music publishing business. Currently similar impact is happening in the magazine publishing industry. The main reason for a distruptive change is that consumer are receiving and subsequently increasingly expecting to have content for free. For example, many bloggers do write and publish content online that include faster and even more relevant info than most printed magazines. My personal interest is in how can these bloggers get paid and be brilliant. Is there an answer to this in the disruptive changes on the markets?
The internet is a double sided sword, well, is if you look at it from the traditional publishing point of view. It has never been easier to reach large numbers of readers, but these readers have never felt more entitled to be informed and entertained for free. The market for books is continually shifting beneath our feet, and nobody knows what the business of publishing will look like a decade from now. Still many authors and publishers are still pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist. Some will surely see their careers suffer as a result. One fact now seems undeniable: The future of the written word is (mostly or entirely) digital.
Still, consuming blog content is more popular than ever. For example fashion blogs gather followers like fireflies, most of the are still run by individuals, not media companies. If added the average 5€ each click through is of value to eCommerce stores, the average 10.000 readers a mid-range blogger has, in a month, could earn substantial income for him/her. There however, are no polished processes and most of income is of low-engagement banner ads and endorsements. Beside a gallup involving 17.000 social media users concluded that "brand-sponsored social media initiatives have very little impact on consumer decision making. Nor do they drive prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others in their social network".
Digital publishing is gathering some success in small printing of €1.99 stories, something similar as selling single songs rather than a full album. However, these third party objectives are gathering much less engagement than subjective blog posts where the blogger is the objective. The amount of engagement bloggers drive is about 10-20 times higher than advertising, based on the same gallup above.
The internet is a double sided sword, well, is if you look at it from the traditional publishing point of view. It has never been easier to reach large numbers of readers, but these readers have never felt more entitled to be informed and entertained for free. The market for books is continually shifting beneath our feet, and nobody knows what the business of publishing will look like a decade from now. Still many authors and publishers are still pretending that the Internet doesn’t exist. Some will surely see their careers suffer as a result. One fact now seems undeniable: The future of the written word is (mostly or entirely) digital.
I'm not a businessman, I'm the business, man! (Jay-Z)
Still, consuming blog content is more popular than ever. For example fashion blogs gather followers like fireflies, most of the are still run by individuals, not media companies. If added the average 5€ each click through is of value to eCommerce stores, the average 10.000 readers a mid-range blogger has, in a month, could earn substantial income for him/her. There however, are no polished processes and most of income is of low-engagement banner ads and endorsements. Beside a gallup involving 17.000 social media users concluded that "brand-sponsored social media initiatives have very little impact on consumer decision making. Nor do they drive prospective customers to consider trying a brand or recommending a brand to others in their social network".
Digital publishing is gathering some success in small printing of €1.99 stories, something similar as selling single songs rather than a full album. However, these third party objectives are gathering much less engagement than subjective blog posts where the blogger is the objective. The amount of engagement bloggers drive is about 10-20 times higher than advertising, based on the same gallup above.
So my argument is that rather than relying on producing magazines and hit ebooks (which thou are interesting from content point of view, but not from business point of view), magazine publishing should enable bloggers to earn revenue from issues that they are passionate about. Revenue could come from brands that wish to be included in this passionate conversation by providing content to reference, analyse or just do some shout-out. Results would be much more focused and much higher engangement, and would result in a better service for readers. Afterall, we all loath banner ads, right?
2 comments:
It is an interesting topic, the monetIzation of high quality blog content - one which I am also actively researching and pondering about.
The suggestion you made - brands could get a shout-out, give material for reference or analysis - could work, but you need to find a very forward thinking company who is willing to pay for such a thing; and at least in my niche that's a very, very small percentage of companies.
Maybe the fashion companies and bloggers are more successful in this matter, as at least in the outdoor blogging community the gear companies only slowly start to wake up to the idea of engaging with bloggers. Anayway, I will stop here, though it would be great to have a chat about this in the future sometimes :)
[Oh yeah, could I somehow convince you to install Disqus as a comment system here?!]
Hi Hendrik, Sorry for this late answer. Somehow the comment slipped my radar.
I think you are correct that the idea of content shout-out would need forward thinking companies. However it is slowly going towards that, obviously it will not replace banners over night.
Lets meet up and have a chat over mulled wine or so :D
(I'll look into Disqus and see if I can install it to blogspot).
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