Upcoming shows I have tickets to
July 31: Stephen Fry
August 8: Kevin Smith
August 27: Joss Whedon
Also, money permitting, I’ve got press credentials for BlogWorldExpo in Vegas in October, so that will be my first big trip this year.
So I’ve finally bitten the bullet and started writing an ebook some 3 or 4 years after I first thought it would be a good idea.
The topic will be blog traffic, and everything I know about obtaining it.
But I have a small favor to ask: I’m looking for questions to go in the book. While a lot of the book will talk about technique and strategy, I want real questions from real people to break things up.
If you have any question about generating blog traffic, be it with a particular technique or anything you might think is relevant, ask away in the comments.
If I select your question for the book, your name and site will be featured with the question! (obviously you should include your actual name and offer your URL with the blog comment in the correct fields etc đ )
Well, presuming you have a site and want it. If you don’t want your name in the book, let me know.
Also, if I have your email you’ll get an answer to the question as well, although will be in the next few weeks vs say the next day or two.
I have ZERO idea how many people will be exposed to the book (obviously I’m hoping millions đ ) but I’m confident that we should be able to get to maybe a few thousand minimum.
Thanks
Duncan.
PS: if you’re interested in selling it, affiliate details will be ready hopefully in the next 2 weeks, stay tuned.
Michael Steele under pressure to resign after saying US cannot win in Afghanistan, a ‘war of Obama’s choosing’
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From the exit post on New Matilda:
Looking to the experience of media start-ups in the US and the UK, we have realised that the days of the single-revenue media outlet are over. Nowadays, small outlets are finding new ways to fund their work through what Texas Tribune founder John Thornton calls “revenue promiscuity”: “you have to get it everywhere and often”.
They are trading on the quality of their journalism and their trusted brands to build relationships with other media outlets to which they provide niche content. And they rely on a broad and growing base of philanthropists, funding bodies, foundations and individuals who see that as the media industry cuts costs, the survival of public interest journalism requires them to put their money where their mouth is.
Well, it’s a triple backflip summersault from an editor that claimed that there was no future in online media.
But it is spoilt a bit by stuff like this
These outlets are doing important work to fill the gaps left by a shrinking media industry, often with little money and few staff
Actually, the media industry is thriving. The HERITAGE media is shrinking, new media is thriving. And that’s half the problem with how New Matilda was run, and was certainly a problem at Crikey when king luddite Jonathan Green ran the shop: neither considers themselves to be part of new media.
This also doesn’t help
When we re-launch, our primary aim will not be to drive hits back to our own site â the model that advertisers dictate is king â but to inject new, quality journalism and analysis into the Australian media environment. In this way we hope to inspire enough of you out there to deem us worthy of your financial support.
She doesn’t seem to understand that traffic isn’t just about ads: if you don’t have enough readers, you’re not going to get enough financial support from ANY source.
Saw these ads on Problogger Jobs today (and yes, I read Problogger Jobs once every week or two: competitive intelligence đ )
Seeking Australian mum bloggers to write about what they love to write about
Freelance SEO-aware online copywriters, Sydney
Head content angler (suit editor, sub-editor), Sydney
All the jobs are for blog(s) coming out of McCann Worldgroup, a Sydney based “advertising, marketing and communications agency.”
It naturally tweaked my radar: what’s a marketing firm doing creating blogs.
This paragraph in particular caused the radar blip (emphasis is mine):
“Weâre currently on the lookout for Australian mums (with kids under 10) who can write their socks off. Weâre working with a variety of large companies on building great content-rich websites, many of which will focus on mums. ”
Now this isn’t a publishing company, this is a advertising, marketing and communications agency, a company that would normally place ads on other sites, not create sites, at least the sort they are proposing here.
So I turned to Twitter, and in particular to Laurel Papworth for a radar check. The thought was “am I reading too much into this?”
A little later Mark Pollard, the Strategy Director and McCann Sydney responds.
I responded in terms of the description of the site: note McCann states that they are “working with a variety of large companies on building great content-rich websites.” That line suggests that the sites are being made for the companies, not the sites being made for the inventory to sell to (one would presume) advertisers.
But apparently this doesn’t raise any alarm with Pollard, which in itself is interesting. I originally asked Laurel what she thought of it because I was looking to see both sides (and Laurel has a fine radar for these things), but the other side seems to be lost on Pollard.
Ah yes, putting “real names” to blog posts negates any relationship between the content they are writing, and the advertisers the site(s) have been set up for.
Sounds a little bit epic fail to me.
I could well be wrong, and if Pollard would like to share the editorial guidelines with me that show that there will be a clear separation between editorial and advertisers, I’ll cop that my radar is wrong.
Thing is: so far it doesn’t read that way.
Perhaps it’s not astroturfing, but we know what happened in the United States when the line between advertising and content blurred, don’t we.
Argue away in the comments, and try to convince me otherwise: as I last said to Pollard on Twitter:
And I mean that sincerely. But getting defensive in replies on what is a genuine interest in the ethical issues that could come into play here doesn’t endear confidence.
I’m not completely justifying what the Israel Government did. But likewise, the anti-Israeli media coverage is just beyond amazing. Where is the coverage of the above video on News.com.au or the Fairfax sites?
The truth is always some where in the middle. I suspect it is here, but you wouldn’t know it from the Australian press
Just doing my monthly rec for The Inquisitr in costs, and discover that our full hosting bill (including host, third party storage and CDN) should come in at about US$220 this month.
That’s with 331gb through Amazon Cloudfront (I also use S3 for storage, a different service, doesn’t cost much at all for storage so not counted here), 33gb through Limelight Networks (I mention both names because they are both considered worlds best) and 120gb of bandwith through Rackspace (again considered to be a top tier host.)
People want to argue about the economics of journalism in the case of New Matilda: fine. But you know I’m right when I say New Matilda blaming increased hosting costs as one of their reasons for shutting either indicates a falsehood, or what I suspect is the case: they were doing it wrong.
I’m far, far from an expert in hosting: our last bill before leaving MediaTemple last year was something over US$1k for example (on one third of the traffic), and keeping the bloody thing up was an ongoing nightmare. But I’ve found that you can always cut hosting costs if you look around and do your homework properly, and I’d note most importantly: you don’t have to sacrifice quality either. In fact, we’ve got far better quality hosting then we ever have had. We’ve had few to no problems with our current setup, and the use of CDN’s has increased site loading times significantly.
My guess is New Matilda didn’t have a CDN and were probably using a local host who was charging them an arm and a leg.
Edit: just changed the reference to S3. I use both Cloudfront and S3. The bill comes from Cloudfront. S3 was like $3 this month.
Another birthday passed May 5 for The Inquisitr, and we did the month in style with new traffic highs.
The challenge ahead is to get the uniques up now; we’ve finally got the page views per visit up to where is should be, but its the extra uniques that drive the ad revenue.
Not bad numbers for a site mocked by a senior ABC employee as “insignificant” or another Australian publication as “having 50 readers.” đ
I popped my head up and gave my 2 cents worth this morning on The Inquisitr on the demise of New Matilda, and not surprisingly shots came in đ
I mean this in all sincerity: I’m sad to see the demise of one of the best independent commentary sites in Australia. I wasn’t a daily reader as such, but I’ve read enough of it over the years to know that we were all better off for it existing.
But you’ll have to forgive me when I get pissed off when sites blame advertising and unproven “new media models” for a failure to cover costs.
First: you own your fail. There’s no disgrace in failing. 90% of all small businesses fail. Some things work, some don’t. But you don’t blame the market because you couldn’t run the business at profit, or at least cover costs for six years. You go to the market and sell your product/ service, and if that doesn’t work, you change your model. The market doesn’t change to fit you.
I’m particularly riled at excuses such as “The big media players are struggling to find a workable online business model that allows them to pay their writers and maintain high standards â and so are we.”
There’s nothing hard about covering your costs and living within your means. There’s nothing hard about knowing if you’re doing the same thing for 3 or 6 years, and it isn’t working, you change the model or you get out before burning more money.
And seriously, an independent Australian media outlet quoting the lies of Rupert Murdoch on new media models? The same lies spread by the likes of former Crikey editor Jonathan Green who claims in speeches that there’s no money in new media?
There’s plenty of money to be had in new media, in all shapes and sizes. Only this week, True/Slant sold to Forbes in the United States; I pick that example in particular because True/Slant had a similar high quality focus to New Matilda, and had been operating for only 13 months. The likes of the Huffington Post are profitable, and there are many sites in the United States at various points throughout the quality scale making money, some of them serious money.
There are, I should add, more than a few Australian sites making money as well, although given the constant new media is bad meme from the mainstream media, you’d never know about it.
And here’s the little secret: there’s more money in quality advertising in Australia at the moment than the United States, at least from the people I’ve been talking to.
I’m not suggesting that it’s easy in Australia; scale is bloody hard because of the population. But likewise we wouldn’t have seen the likes of News, Fairfax and ABC rush into this online commentary space last year if all they all thought it would lose them serious money.
Here’s how I would have fixed New Matilda
1. Introduce an AAP feed so there’s more general news on the site. You have to scale, and the broader news would have subsidized the commentary stuff. I’m not suggesting turning the site into News.com.au, but there’s plenty of room there for complimentary AAP content.
2. Pay writers less, or put them on performance related pay: I know that’s harsh to the writers, and I know most are deserving of top dollar, but likewise New Matilda isn’t a charity, but seemed to be operating as one.
3. Broadscale user contributions: New Matilda has always had guest posts, but nothing of serious scale such as The Punch, National Times etc. Take the Huffington Post model, and open the door to more. The best stuff goes on the front page, the other stuff is there on site somewhere. If you had a little spare cash, incentivise it a bit with any of a number of models.
4. Better advertising: if you can’t get top dollar for ads, run network ads. New Matilda is showing multiple iTunes affiliate ads at the moment. I’m not saying ads have to be trashy, but likewise you don’t get to keep a stiff upper lip on ad sales when you’re bleeding money either.
Actually, I hope someone buys New Matilda and turns it into an Australian Huffington Post. I like the brand, I like the content, but it needs to be scaled, and scaled quickly, and the only way to do that is to increase the readership base.
This country needs a Huffington Post, and I’d be following that model now if I had the money to do so (we’ve been profitable for a long time, but my yacht in Greece was sadly canceled by the GFC đ ). Someone should, it’s a great business opportunity waiting to happen.
