monetization

  • Main
  • RSS 2.0

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:

Topics:

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 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1)