Is Slashdot a success? The New York Times writes one of those "we can't quite figure this out" articles about Slashdot, the geek news site/blog/thing. On the one hand, the article reports that the founders don't care about making money and on the other, the site is owned by VA Software, a publicly-traded company that clearly benefits from being associated with Slashdot. In effect, Slashdot is a sponsored site, and that's simple to understand.
It's blogging. Blogging can be sponsored and it can be ad-based. In the case of Slashdot, the site also drives traffic to a store, so it is generating merchandizing revenue. There's really no mystery to it all, yet the comparison is made to the recently defunct Forbes ASAP and Upside magazines, which were really expensive to publish. If you have one, two, three or a few posters with wit creating most of your content and there are no real delivery costs, it's easy to stay in business. Those magazines had dozens of people doing the work of writing and producing each issue. Blogs don't have that kind of overhead.
These blog-pubs could also work inside publishing companies, but the companies need to change the way they launch a business. A blog can profit as an appendage to a network ad sell or as an exclusively sponsored site that emphasizes its exclusivity. Sure, anyone can see it, but only a few will get it, and they are the ones you, Ms. Sponsor, want to reach.
When I was in the trade show business, it was easy to sell a company a banner to be displayed on the wall of a room where only six hundred people were going to meet -- the right 600 people; that's a CPM way beyond anything you'd see in the Web, in print or on broadcast media. The disconnect is that on the Web the right 600 are in the room with many other folks -- the sponsor just has to forget the audience it doesn't want to reach.
Want to launch a blogging business in a big media company? Launch a lot of blogs and profit a little from each blog. It's just like you had 50 journalists working on fifty different publications, but without all the support and production overhead.
Want to sponsor this blog? Just call me. See the link in the Navigation section for "My Consultancy," where you'll find the number.
Posted by Mitch Ratcliffe at October 13, 2002 09:31 PM | TrackBack