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In the Tail of the Long Tail
Blogging is about communicating with specific audiences. In and of itself, it is not really a commercial proposition.
Sections: Business
Topics: monetization social weblogs
In January, I wrote a note regarding the long tail, in which I said the whole notion of people writing blogs to hit it big at the scale of mass media is crap. After completing the last formal session of a recent Web 2.0 Business Bootcamp at Michigan's Ross School of Business, I think that even more (see participant blogs aggregated here). Participants created blogging projects to communicate with other, well-defined groups of people. Some of them absolutely did not want to hit it big, but all were thrilled by interaction with a previously unknown audience. In other words, the motivation seemed to be primarily social and communicative.
So, how do you make this kind of activity economically sustainable? Research shows that attempts to monetize individual content through ads and other promotion make it less credible. People wonder if they aren't being spammed, and bloggers themselves feel the pressure to conform with the advertiser's wishes. That kills the advertising revenue model. The subscription model is also probably dead since it runs counter to a small-scale blogger's desire to be heard.
The remaining revenue model is ecommerce. Believe it or not, I suspect many bloggers are missing out on affinity products. Scoble has it somewhat with his Channel 9 guy, but what he really needs is a scobleizer t-shirt. Perhaps more in line with many bloggers self-perception, the other version of this opportunity is sales of professional services and other products such as online courses. So, maybe Dave Winer is right, blogging is really just advertising for the other stuff you do. Make money using your blog to sell that.
Bud posted this on February 19, 2006
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Bud Gibson says that most blogs target very small, highly focused audiences - Long Tail audiences - and that selling to them through embedded advertising is usually a futile endeavor. What matters is the experience of communicating with other "birds of... [Read More]
Tracked on March 4, 2006 11:57 PM
Comments
What made writing letters to your grandmother economically sustainable? What made telephoning your friends economically sustainable?
People wrote letters and made phone calls - and spent a lot of time doing them - because they wanted to, not because it was economically sustainable.
The commercial versions of these, respectively, are junk mail and telephone solicititation.
Some people want to make money by blogging. Maybe they won't be as bad as what we saw in earlier generations, but they're aiming at the same target.
In the commercial world, businesses write letters and make telephone calls even though each instance of one is a net loss proposition.
The commercial future of blogging is most likely the same.
Posted by: Stephen Downes at February 19, 2006 09:03 PM
I think the thing is that blogging takes a lot of time. Further, once you start to get an audience, hosting can go way up. If you are doing things like media files, you don't have to have too big an audience before hosting cost become an issue.
Once time and costs start to add up, you need to weigh blogging's value against other activities. This has become particularly apparent when I work with small business people.
Mind you, I don't think purely social uses are out by any stretch of the imagination. I'm thinking in a commercial context here.
Posted by: Bud Gibson at February 19, 2006 09:25 PM
Interesting idea!
Posted by: Robert Scoble at February 19, 2006 09:48 PM
