David Coursey, in “Paving the Way for Premium Content,” his 6/11/09 Tech Inciter, PCWorld blog post, leads off with “Paid content is the best hope of saving “the media” as we know it.” I disagree with him on that score because the media as we know it is disappearing faster than an ice cream cone in August and I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. The rest of his article is deadly accurate.
The content aggregators don’t want to hear it, but David’s first point is free and low cost content supported by ad revenue is “absolutely broken.” I’d call it a train wreck in the making. Forget profits, content aggregators like Helium are struggling just to stay alive. Maybe their ad supported model made sense a couple years ago, but they’ve put their train on the wrong track and it’s probably too late to switch.
The quality of content that can be supported by ad revenue simply isnt’ there and the signal to noise ratio of ads to real content drowns out even that content. Coursey says that for premium content to take hold, the free stuff needs to go away. I think it will. When the ad revenue model fails and the content aggregators crash through the wall into the street, free content will disappear for lack of patrons.
Coursey’s second point, that quality costs money, that somebody has to pay for it if they want it puts today’s writers in a much better position. The train wreck is a wide open opportunity for writers who understand what’s going on in the publishing industry. Gordon Crovitz of The Wall Street Journal has seen the writing on the wall and will be offering the WSJ version of a paid subscription in the fall. (see my Newsstand of the Future post for details)
When publishers controlled the presses and distribution, they called the shots. They decided who would write their content and what people would read. The Internet democratizes both. The writers who create content and the readers who want that content are in control now. Self-publishing used to be a “snicker behind the hands” avenue for losers. No more.
Every writer with a computer and an Internet connection has the tools he or she needs to publish. Every reader with a computer and an Internet connection has access to everything. As Chris Anderson puts it in The Long Tail, there are two imperatives to a thriving Long Tail business: “1) Make everything available, and 2) Help me find it.”
All we need to do then as writers is create premium content and help readers find it. They’ll pay for it.
And I am proof. I wrote. I published it. And they buy it. Why?
It is good content. It meets my audience’s need. It meets the needs of audiences who didn’t know they needed it. And it is easy to find, thanks to friends like you, John!
Ann Marie
http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/VirginiasDream/items/Taming_The_Terrible_Twos__Parents_Survival_Guide
Interesting article. Were did you got all the information from…
Research and personal experience. Check out the article and interview mentioned in my post. You might want to read The Long Tail by Chris Anderson. I’ve read it twice and it’s illuminating to say the least.
Until I resigned in April, I was one of Helium’s Senior Stewards. I was an integral part of Helium’s steward program from the beginning in late 2007 so I have a more intimate view of how things really work.
I somewhat disagree.
Yes, ad supported content is not going anywhere as far as I can see with a few non-traditional exceptions. But free content? Have you ever thought that there are other reasons to create a high-quality content rather than being paid for it? After all, it does not necessary take money, in the end it always takes somebody (writer’s) time. Money is just an intermediary here.
The article you refer to says “Paid content is the best hope of saving “the media” as we know it.” Well, I suspect that “the media” as we know it may be dead, whether anybody has a hope or not.
You can check my old article on the future of video industry: http://elyeconomy.blogspot.com/2005/07/free-download-of-communism-on-future.html (I don’t continue this blog anymore and plan to repurpose the content, but the article is still there).
I believe that the publishing industry does the same mistake: they believe, their business is providing the content. It never was that. And now, when their business model is changing, they are stuck because they even don’t know what it was before. To get from point A to point B they need to know where the point A is, they don’t. Or, more precisely, they misplace it.
Ely,
Have you read “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson? Great book that hits on many of the points you make in your article.
The content aggregators don’t create anything. They collect and distribute the work of others. The writers are paid a pittance. Good writers won’t contribute to online publishers. There’s no point. The aggregators depend on ad revenue to make money and that model isn’t working any more.
I think the content aggregators are parasites. Writers don’t need them any more but they don’t know it yet. Sites like Helium.com continue to attract “writers” but not the good writers and the content they offer shows it.
I’d rather give my writing away on my blog than spend time writing for the benefit of the internet publishers.
The Long Tail will ensure that all writers have a voice. The market (paid or not) will decide.
Thanks for your comments. I agree with much of what you said.
John
Yes, I’ve read “The Long Tail”, I believe, a few months ago. But I am not sure it brings that much hope to writers, it’s rather a hope for aggregators. Not like Helium, of course (that truly looks very much as you define them), but rather like Amazon or search engines.
It means for them that as long as the cost of maintaining a single book/item is low enough, they can take the items selling or needed once per year and still make good money if they have tons of them.
For a writer the problem still exists. The bar to become a “published” writer is much lower, of course, but making any reasonable money from a book or by writing articles is still a huge challenge. Middle list novelists were rejected by publishes for exactly this reason, inability to make sufficient money out of it. Now the problem simply shifted to the authors directly.
That said, there are still ways to earn a living by writing, but they have nothing to do with either aggregators or a long tail.