The Economics Behind the Rise of the Blogs
A piece in Forbes chronicles the woes of the tech print media industry, who are getting flanked, drubbed, and ankle bitten by tech blogs even as the overall tech and Internet economy is flourishing.
Writer Brian Caulfield absolutely nails it with this one liner:
Bottom line: A successful blog can simply grab more readers, per employee, than more traditional media.
Now, “successful” doesn’t necessarily equate to quality, whether it’s print or online (or in blog form). But this gets to the heart of the basic math of publishing today: blogs are more nimble, more efficient, cheaper to run, and overall better equipped to cover the Internet and doings of the online world than print publications are. The latest potential casualty: Business 2.0 magazine.
Whereas blogs were once ridiculed for being amateurish, they’re now heralded (and in some cases scorned!) as triumphant crashers of the gates, the new barbarians that have ransacked the old media model.
Frantic Industries drills down one step deeper with another fabulous quote on the same subject:
A good blog is one guy/girl writing about one thing he/she knows better than anyone else out there.
The Forbes story illustrates this point with an anecdote about a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News who quit his professional journalism gig to found a now successful blog that pays his full-time salary, only to watch a batch of his former colleagues get laid off.
While it’s easy to think of blogs as mom-and-pop operations – and many highly profitable ones are indeed just that – they are increasingly thriving business operations in their own right. TechCrunch and Mashable and GigaOM are lean and mean online media companies that pump out dozens of stories round the clock. Blog networks are now a legitimate business enterprise as well, from Weblogs Inc. and Gawker to new comers such as b5media.
The business model is relatively simple: small teams hitting vertical spaces, and doing it faster and better than anyone else.
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July 17th, 2007 at 5:17 pm
Eric you are right on. I have noticed that print people
who aren’t blogging are pretty jealous of bloggers.
I think that blogs have one big advantage, they can provide internet links! well anyhow I have a question,
what do you mean by
small teams hitting vertical spaces?
Travis
July 17th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
Thanks Travis! Since blogging is such a flexible publishing platform, it can mean so many different things. One of the things I try to do with OMC is to set the record straight when I feel the blogosphere and bloggers are being unfairly attacked or mislabelled, etc.
Small teams and vertical spaces: What I mean is that while most blogs are solo acts, many of the most lucrative blogging operations tend to comprise small teams working on one or a number of blogs within a network.
A vertical space in this context is a niche subject area. Let’s take sports as an example. USA Today covers mostly US-based sports for a national audience. But imagine a blog came along that absolutely owned coverage or AAA minor leage baseball. There’s no way that USA Today or even the vast majority of sports-related publications would be able to compete with this.
Now, is there a lot of money in covering AAA baseball, and doing it better than anyone else online? Maybe, maybe not. But because a blogger or small team of bloggers can launch an operation on a shoestring budget, it allows many thousands of these niche areas to be explored in ways that traditional media companies cannot hope to compete.
The very very best of these bloggers make a living at doing this these days, and a select few are making bank.
July 17th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Good thinking eric. A niche is important to compete with the giant organizations. The only problem is that sometimes the niche is way to small. But I think you are right. As far as indianapolis sports, there is zero competitions as far as sports coverage. Plus all the small niche stuff is too boring. So I just cover whatever i think is relevant.
Travis
July 17th, 2007 at 6:38 pm
I think that’s the right move, Travis: find that zone where you feel you have something to offer and people looking for that level of coverage will eventually find you. It’s a long road, of course, and the key is consistently high quality content and engagement with your community. All things that I strive for here
July 18th, 2007 at 1:41 am
i wish i had a science backround,
check out
http://www.innocentive.com
July 19th, 2007 at 1:31 am
The more I read things like this the more I wonder if the people who work with I on WebUrbanist (and I) should split that blog into multiples and network between them. It covers a range of topics from online social networks and tech news to urban art and design, but I worry sometimes about the readers being confused by the jumps. What do you think? Too much of a forced niche, or something worth keeping intact?
July 19th, 2007 at 2:17 am
You should keep your community, where did you get that giant feed button, that is so cool.
Travis
July 19th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Eric, this is so damn true. It is more than true it is scary. People are reading blogs, especially the ad guys, stealing ideas, and voila the stuff appears on TV or in print ads like the next day. I just want to be paid for my ideas..that’s all so I can quit my day job.
I am amazed at how quickly buzz words that I include in my articles are heard like a shot around the world. But nailing a paycheck is probably a bit more difficult than nailing one’s expertise in an online blog.
What do ya think?
Heloise
Heloise at blogcritics.org
July 20th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Urbanist - Finding the right niche or level of coverage is a constant struggle for many bloggers. It’s really a challenge. I’m starting to find a groove (I hope!) this this site to range into areas such as television and film and politics when they touch on areas of interest for web enthusiasts. I *hope* that’s a good match of my interests and a potential audience’s!
Heloise - It’s true, earning a full time living from the writing life is extremely difficult. But so is any career in writing, I suppose. So you have to love it and, as I like to believe, more than loving it you have to *hate* not doing it. That hatred can be motivating!
July 20th, 2007 at 1:26 am
Heloise-
If you want to make money on the internet, work as slave for amazon! have you heard of mechanical turk?
I tried it for about a half hour tonight and it about made me go crazy trying to transcribe someone talking so fast with so many uh um pauses.
November 21st, 2007 at 3:27 am
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