5 ms·

This article is a pretty good take-down of Medium's business model and its future prospects. But even if you don't really care about Medium, it's actually a ve

by jawns 10y ago

This article is a pretty good take-down of Medium's business model and its future prospects. But even if you don't really care about Medium, it's actually a very strong piece otherwise, because it presents a fairly comprehensive list of the various business models that online publishers have tried over the years, along with data about how successful those strategies have been. I'm a former journalist who had to leave the industry not because I didn't care for journalism anymore, but because newspapers lost their business model, and the industry remains a shadow of its former self. Among the business models the article describes: - Ad-funded. When it doesn't work well: General interest news orgs, such as your daily metro newspaper. The bulk of their ad revenue continues to come from print advertising, and digital advertising has little chance of every pulling in comparable revenue. When it works well: "We cover a specific niche; we dig in a little deeper; we tend to know what we're talking about; we're independently owned and thus have no corporate investors to please." - Subscription. When it doesn't work well: Historically, people have been reluctant to pay for what they thought they could get for free. When it does work well: "Big respected names with huge resources that have hit on a specific model: offer a few free articles a month and then prompt for subscription. It has finally started working after a decade of hard times. In part thanks to the election of Donald Trump, these news organizations have seen their subscriber levels jump. ... it seems that, psychologically, people are getting used to the idea again of paying for content. It's like a switch. And once you pay for Netflix, Spotify and Amazon Prime, it seems perfectly reasonable to pay for quality news." - Guilt. When it doesn't work well: The Guardian has tried a variation of this -- "If you use it, if you like it, then why not pay for it? It's only fair." -- and the results have been terrible. When it does work well: Wikipedia's donation drives tend to pull in a ton of cash, but it's a nonprofit. - Advertorials. When it doesn't work well: In Business Insider's case, "you literally sell yourself to companies. We predict this will end in misery sooner rather than later." When it does work well: Hmm, I don't think it ever does. And then there are the various compensation models for the content producers: - Pay professional journalists a decent salary, and don't hinge their pay on page views. It's the most expensive option, but you get what you pay for: Quality, in-depth journalism. - Pay professional journalists (or unprofessional bloggers) according to their number of page views. This tends to lead to "junk journalism that a hit-based reward model encourages." - Don't pay your bloggers at all. It's the least expensive option, but again, you get what you pay for.

good_vibes 10y ago
I agree. It is a well-written article that shows the larger issue with media as a whole I believe. Social media and mass media companies are all funded by either advertising or subscriptions. As information has become ubiquitous and repetitive, it's value has gone down. It's a vicious cycle that is coupled with many people not having money to spend on 'premium news' when there is a global existential crisis and extinction event underway. I can read an entire Business Insider article without turning off AdBlocker. Why should I pay for their broken 'business model'? Their content is not worth paying for because it is usually derivative and their entire strategy is based on clickbait. How do you think media will evolve over the next few years?
rrherr 10y ago
- Advertorials. When it does work well: The Onion? https://contently.com/strategist/2016/05/23/dont-make-a-commercial-the-onions-cco-explains-why-so-much-content-marketing-sucks/ https://contently.com/strategist/2016/05/23/dont-make-a-comm...
shawnee_ 10y ago
I'm a former journalist who had to leave the industry not because I didn't care for journalism anymore, but because newspapers lost their business model, and the industry remains a shadow of its former self. Whenever people ask me how I got into the technology industry (as a non-CS person), my short answer is something like this: when I saw what the Internet was doing to print media, I knew I had to learn how to code. Which led to having to learn how to design (CSS & JS). Which led to having to learn how to create servers for hosting and zero-downtime deploy. And also needing to understand machine capabilities and OSes and network loads and... etc. Journalism was what I loved in middle and high school: darkroom photography and developing pictures from literal film in stop bath. Cropping shots with razor blades before gluing them on mockups. Soliciting local businesses for ads sold by the square inch. Writing and editing and editing and editing because hey... once that hits the press there is no edit button. The process of traditional journalism is kind of dead, yes; though I don't think the industry itself has lost its business model... more like it fractured in a way that made national and world news dissemination way more powerful than the local yokel beat. That was what initially happened, anyway: small newspapers simply could not compete, and those that could were slurped up by massive parent companies that may or may not be entirely neutral or unbiased, politically, due to their size. However, I think the tides are starting to shift and the trend is back toward localization. My initial grand design plan for Ecosteader, for example, was big and national.. like a magazine. I realized that the kind of advertising I'd need to be able to sell in this niche would actually do best locally. And indeed, this is why I keep the site live (despite the fact that I have sold only one book and received zero dollars from Adsense). I am pretty sure that going forward the next "big" disruptive thing in will be in hyper-localization ... ecological and efficient when it comes to physical goods and labor. Anyway... slight digression, but I think it's indicative of what matters WRT to what people are willing to pay for when it comes to advertising delivered alongside content. Advertising works when people are looking for specific content relevant to them and they notice a good deal or a sale or a new store opening or something interesting about a place they see IRL. This is getting too long. I will stop now.

by jawns 10y ago

good_vibes 10y ago

I agree. It is a well-written article that shows the larger issue with media as a whole I believe. Social media and mass media companies are all funded by either advertising or subscriptions. As information has become ubiquitous and repetitive, it's value has gone down. It's a vicious cycle that is coupled with many people not having money to spend on 'premium news' when there is a global existential crisis and extinction event underway. I can read an entire Business Insider article without turning off AdBlocker. Why should I pay for their broken 'business model'? Their content is not worth paying for because it is usually derivative and their entire strategy is based on clickbait. How do you think media will evolve over the next few years?

rrherr 10y ago

- Advertorials. When it does work well: The Onion? https://contently.com/strategist/2016/05/23/dont-make-a-commercial-the-onions-cco-explains-why-so-much-content-marketing-sucks/ https://contently.com/strategist/2016/05/23/dont-make-a-comm...

shawnee_ 10y ago

I'm a former journalist who had to leave the industry not because I didn't care for journalism anymore, but because newspapers lost their business model, and the industry remains a shadow of its former self. Whenever people ask me how I got into the technology industry (as a non-CS person), my short answer is something like this: when I saw what the Internet was doing to print media, I knew I had to learn how to code. Which led to having to learn how to design (CSS & JS). Which led to having to learn how to create servers for hosting and zero-downtime deploy. And also needing to understand machine capabilities and OSes and network loads and... etc. Journalism was what I loved in middle and high school: darkroom photography and developing pictures from literal film in stop bath. Cropping shots with razor blades before gluing them on mockups. Soliciting local businesses for ads sold by the square inch. Writing and editing and editing and editing because hey... once that hits the press there is no edit button. The process of traditional journalism is kind of dead, yes; though I don't think the industry itself has lost its business model... more like it fractured in a way that made national and world news dissemination way more powerful than the local yokel beat. That was what initially happened, anyway: small newspapers simply could not compete, and those that could were slurped up by massive parent companies that may or may not be entirely neutral or unbiased, politically, due to their size. However, I think the tides are starting to shift and the trend is back toward localization. My initial grand design plan for Ecosteader, for example, was big and national.. like a magazine. I realized that the kind of advertising I'd need to be able to sell in this niche would actually do best locally. And indeed, this is why I keep the site live (despite the fact that I have sold only one book and received zero dollars from Adsense). I am pretty sure that going forward the next "big" disruptive thing in will be in hyper-localization ... ecological and efficient when it comes to physical goods and labor. Anyway... slight digression, but I think it's indicative of what matters WRT to what people are willing to pay for when it comes to advertising delivered alongside content. Advertising works when people are looking for specific content relevant to them and they notice a good deal or a sale or a new store opening or something interesting about a place they see IRL. This is getting too long. I will stop now.