For the love of money -- or just for the love?

All this blogging has gotten me thinking...

What's my goal in this anyway? To share personal stories as an adoptive mom? To encourage the sharing of stories within the broader adoption community (families touched by adoption, adult adoptees, etc.) To entertain? To publish and feel the love? Or -- to make a butt-load of money?

I emailed Ben to ask him about the economics of blogging and here's the reality:

Assume a $.50 CPM for impressions to your blog. Then, ask yourself how many monthly impressions would it take to generate the minimum income you hope for. Let's say, for starters, you'd like to aim for $48K per year or $4K per month. For the purposes of rough ballpark calculation, assume advertisers realize a CTR of ~2%.

Here's how to think about it (with thanks and credit to Ben):

At $.50 per 1000 impressions, you'd have to sell 8M impressions per month to clear $4K per month. ($4K / $.50 = 8000 CPM's or 8M impressions)

But with a CTR of 2%, advertisers are hoping those 8M impressions a month will yield (8M x .02 =)160K visitors to their sites each month. That means you, as the publisher, need to prove you can generate minimum regular traffic of 160K users each month -- if you want to attract that kind of commitment from advertisers.

In other words, if you're not serious about this blogging stuff, don't quit your day job.

Lisa

I have been blogging regularly ...but someplace else

In my "returning to my food blog" frenzy, I almost forgot about this one but Iam here now.Caught up on all the previous posts and wanted to congratulate Lisa on her wonderful new blog"Pack of three".Lisa,I bet you, it will become addictive very soon. I started writing my blog 4 yrs back,almost abandoned it and Iam back again.Very addictive, I tell you:)

I have been writing regularly at Meenal's Kitchen. Catch me sharing my recipes and stories here.Even have a post on our weekly Core Concept team meetings, where we all strategised on our project and ate some Pineapple Upside Down cake:)Read more about it here

Until next time :)

On Newspapers, Blogs, and.. the Fifth Estate?

I've been reading Sanjay's ("Wretched Scribe's") posts and listening to NPR commentary with great interest about the demise of the newspaper industry. I've also been spending a lot of time online trying to understand the blogging universe (come visit me at Pack of Three... I'm having a blast blogging!), and how one builds traffic for a site (any site), and how money is made.

It's puzzling to me how a site like dooce can bring in $50K a month, while the newspaper industry struggles to figure out a way to leverage the online world and realize profitability. A part of me can't help but wonder if the world of newsmen and journalists are too entrenched in yesterday's model of doing business and propagating news. But then I think, there are a lot of really smart people thinking about this problem -- so maybe its not that simple, and there's more going on.

I do think that the Web, and particular "Web 2.0" -- with all its options for communication and interactivity -- is driving profound, fundamental, structural changes in the way we get information about our world. The Web has opened the floodgates and, while there's certainly a lot of junk out there, there are also huge numbers of people -- who aren't professionally trained journalists -- who have access to valuable inside information who can now share it (blogs are just one way) and share it more broadly than ever before. In doing so, these everyday people help enlighten and educate the rest of us -- while keeping other nefarious types honest. One great example: "Dell Hell" which we discussed in class.

So while I certainly have huge sympathy for the people (particularly journalists) who are caught in the midst of these painful contractions and dislocations, I have to confess I'm not as fearful or concerned as Sanjay when he warns, "There is no guarantee that the press will remain a vital force in our democracy or that there will be a Fourth Estate that is bold enough with deep enough pockets to take on big Government, big Business or big Anything."

My sense is that there's a whole broader public that's vested and now, more empowered than ever before, to be actively involved in keeping "big Government" or "big Business" or "big Anything" honest.

I realize that may be a fairly controversial position or statement. But I'm not alone. David Domke who heads up the UW Department of Communications (fascinating guy!) is not only excited, but hugely optimistic about what the Web, and Web 2.0 in particular, has done and will do for the future of democracy. (Can you hear our anthem playing in the background yet?)

Anyway, my 2 cents. Thanks for reading!

Another newspaper prints its last edition

Doubtless you've heard by now that The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will publish its last edition tomorrow.

Anyone who values in-depth reporting will be mourning the loss of that newspaper -- and the 150+ reporters, copy editors, photographers, graphic designers, editors and other staff who will be losing their jobs and likely unable to secure a new one in journalism for the foreseeable future.

Here's a video of the announcement in the newsroom:



Yes, many will be rooting for seattlepi.com to carry on the tradition of the oldest newspaper in the state (actually older than statehood).

I hope that many also will be rooting for the survival of the last newspaper in Seattle, the Times. The economic forces that any newspaper faces today are gargantuan. The New York Times recently carried an important story with an incredible map that shows the carnage across the country.

There is no guarantee that the press will remain a vital force in our democracy or that there will be a Fourth Estate that is bold enough with deep enough pockets to take on big Government, big Business or big Anything.

Right now this important duty is left to the free markets -- and we know the free markets can occasionally fail. We all have opinions on this, and the New York Times has an interesting aggregation of opinions about the future of news.

What's your opinion about all this?
Where do you get your news?

The next time you click on a story or headline online, try tracing back to the source. If you think it's radio or television, you can bet that most of their stories are driven by newspaper reporters. It's not a judgment; it's simple math. Newspapers field bigger staffs and have the capacity and longevity for doing the work.

I thought I would share with the group a remarkable video of the end of another underdog paper in another two newspaper town, Denver.


Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.



I don't have any answers yet to this economic freefall facing newspapers. For now, I just wish everyone could adopt their local newspaper.

Show your support in whatever way you feel comfortable. Show your support for the Fourth Estate as those of us who care about public-interest journalism try to find a sustainable business model for the 21st century.

The new blog in town

Well I finally screwed up my courage and found time this week to dip my toe in the water. So, its official: I now have a blog of my own. In the process of thinking it through, setting it up, and exploring Blogger.com, I learned a lot about layouts, gadgets (cool!), comments, keywords and links. If you're so inclined, please come visit me at Pack of Three and share your thoughts (as well as links to your site!)

Hope everyone's week is going well!
Lisa

Jon Stewart on Twitter

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Jon Stewart joined in on the commentary on the Twitter phenomenon. For a lighter note in the midst of these grim economic times, please enjoy:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=219519&title=twitter-frenzy

With best wishes to everyone,
Lisa

How many times will the HDTV transition be postponed??

The media has been full of hand-wringing and concern that a significant number of Americans are not ready for the planned HDTV transition due in the near future. As a result, the Senate has postponed the date until June – so what happens when June rolls around and the same people who are not ready now are still watching their old-school TVs? Are we going to have the same debate and postponement again?

Research shows that in fact more than 82% of households are ready now – 97% area aware of the upcoming transition and know what they have to do. So pull the plug already…

American Unemployment Highest in 25 Years

The US unemployment rate soared above 8% in February, as reported in today’s New York Times. More Americans are out of work today than any period since 1983, adding weigh to the fears of pundits and individuals alike that the current recession could extend well in 2009 – the outlook for 2010 remains unclear.

I’ve seen the current financial meltdown hit close to home recently; Microsoft, my employer, is still making money but the company is growing at a much slower rate than before and we have reduced confidence in the future. As a direct result of these results Microsoft removed 1,400 jobs from its payroll in January with another 3,600 to follow over the next 18 months.

However, this adversity is bringing out a sense of determination in those who have lost their jobs. In the Puget Sound area several groups have formed dedicated to helping the newly-unemployed Microsoft workers get back into business –and in doing so, new job opportunities are forming for other recent victims. As President Obama said yesterday, “this country has never responded to a crisis by sitting on the sidelines and hoping for the best” – that spirit is alive and well in Redmond.

It's nobody's fault

I didn't want to leave the impression in my last blog post that I am blaming any site or company for what's happening to newspapers. The newspaper companies have done plenty to dig their own graves.

The main point I wanted to make was that the crisis facing newspapers is largely off people's radars because it doesn't seem relevant to our lives. But it is. My hope is that my blog post will encourage you to learn more about this and talk about it with your friends.

Here are some links if you're interested in learning more:
http://graphicdesignr.net/papercuts/
http://www.poynter.org
http://stateofthenewsmedia.org

As Einstein is reputed to have said, in the midst of great problems lies opportunity. We have a business problem (not a readership problem), and perhaps we can figure out a new business model together.

Here's the cartoon if that link doesn't work!

Me and my soon-to-be-unemployed friends in newspapers

You know me as Sanjay Bhatt, a student in this class. I'm also a journalist, and as you see with the impending shutdown of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the specter of bankruptcy at The Seattle Times, there is a very real possibility I will join the millions of Americans who are lining up for unemployment benefits and flocking to job fairs.

The New York Times published a story on its site today about the economy shedding more than 650,000 jobs last month. Here's a few paragraphs:

Another 651,000 jobs disappeared from the American economy in February, the government reported Friday, as the unemployment rate soared to 8.1 percent — its highest level since 1983.

The latest grim scorecard of contraction in the American workplace largely destroyed what hopes remained for an economic recovery in the first half of this year, and added to a growing sense that 2009 is probably a lost cause.

Most economists now assume that the American fortunes will not improve before near the end of the year, as the Obama administration’s $787 billion emergency spending program begins to wash through the economy.

While I certainly count myself among those who feel blessed to have a job for now, I am also aware that once newspapers shut down, they don't come back. Unlike a factory that can resume making widgets once demand picks up again, the business model that supports serious journalism in America is broken and isn't coming back.

Online, serious journalism is in danger. Yes, you went to the NYTimes.com site to skim a few graphs and post them on a blog (like I just did), but the NYTimes.com's cost to produce that story on its website included salaries (reporter, editor, copy editor, graphic designer, maybe a lawyer's time if it's a potentially libelous story), infrastructure (rent, utilities, web server) and other costs that us bloggers don't bear.

Here's the problem: Aggregators like Google and the Huffington Post, which carries snippets of the story, monetize that reporting. So the NYTimes.com gets to carry all the expense and only a fraction of the revenue, while the bloggers get to carry much of the revenue and virtually none of the expense.

We'll just have to wait and see what happens in places like San Francisco, Denver and other cities where newspapers are going out of business to see what all those bloggers are going to write about.

Or JUST SEE THIS CARTOON for a vision of the future without serious journalism.

http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2009/03/03/tomo/

How about a nickel for my thoughts?

Reflections on the class

Last month the class began focusing on some of the tools and technologies that make up the ‘Advanced Interactive Marketing’ field, and we began discussing how we could use these tools in our ‘real lives’. We were joined by Joe Barnes from the Girl Scouts of the USA who led the Friday afternoon discussions on blogging.

Joe is a great speaker to listen to, very conversational in tone and engaging in delivery. Joe used one of the most successful ‘Mommy Blogs’ to illustrate many of his points – www.dooce.com. I liked the use of this blog to illustrate how a personal blog with a conversational style and a defined target market has turned from a one-person hobby into a full-time two-person business. As I consider how to improve our interactive marketing for the Microsoft Malware Protection Center (MMPC) I will bear this site in mind; computer security can be a very dry subject.

The MMPC currently has a blog where we post technical information about malware, spyware and other potentially unwanted software. One area I’d like to investigate with the MMPC is how we can move from just posting relatively long, technical posts to include some posts with a more conversational tone. I believe this will help put a human face on the MMPC and enable us to begin a more open dialogue with our readers.

Given the potentially sensitive nature of the MMPC’s postings I was also interested in the Saturday afternoon presentation on the legal challenges and concerns around blogging and online marketing in general. With a global audience I am constantly engaging PR and legal affairs to review our blog content – how will this work if I am trying to move towards more rapid, conversational posts? We’ll see…

Finally, I am looking forward to the March class when we will investigate tactical items such as search engine optimization and online analytics – with all the great content that the MMPC has to offer my main challenge is making sure that the people who would benefit from reading this content can find it!

Amazon Blogs: Honest Salesmen

Although the team responsible for tracking activities on Amazon blogs sits on the same floor as my team does, I have no idea about their world. So this post is about Amazon blogs written from a purely customer's perspective (without any employee biases... okay, very little).

The blog that I'm referring to is called Amazon Daily. It contains daily posts on a variety of topics ranging from new books, upcoming albums, new trends in spring wear to hottest electronic items. When I first heard about the idea, my instant reaction was that it would be like a website that shows deals (push-based marketing). However, on visiting this site, all my fears were put to rest. The blog posts are not salesman like at all. It is as if I were reading blogs on a niche website. Although the different posts lack coherency (because Amazon serves all kinds of products), each blog post seemed to come from an individual who is very passionate about the item he/she is talking about. The coherency problem is solved by having a nice categorization of topics on the side bar.

The blogs are strewn with links to Amazon product pages. Clearly, this is to promote traffic to Amazon. And there is no dishonesty in this. The blog itself is hosted on Amazon.com. However, what's interesting is that the blogs contain links to outside Amazon too. For exampe, it contains links to videos on YouTube. Thus, I would say that the blogs that get written are not just to ensure high incoming Amazon traffic. It is perhaps to generate interest in the blog itself. By making the content as rich as possible, Amazon tries to build passion among users in the various products Amazon offers, even if it means that traffic gets directed away from the site. This customer-centric approach to blogs resonates very well with the mission statement of Amazon.com of becoming "the earth's most customer centric company".

Rise of "The Video"

A picture is worth a thousand words. According to this interesting blog post, a video is worth a thousand googles - a very precise way to demonstrate the rise of videos as an information transfer medium.

Videos have turned out to be effective in disbursing information because of lots of reasons:

1. Compared to a written description, a video clip can convey much more information in a much shorter period of time.
2. Internet is full of people who are lazy and don't like to read (like me). Even those who love to read don't mind watching videos. The size of audience, therefore, is just amazingly big.
3. The amount of talent or skill needed to convey something in video is much lower than it is in written description.
   

Any kind of communication involves 3 parties: the sender, the receiver and the medium. Videos make the medium more impactful while lowering the threshold it needs to be a good sender and/or receiver.

The next question to ask is : are there particular kinds of communication that are more suited to video than others ? I think our last class on blogs brought up at least one such kind. Any kind of communication that comes from an organization is more effective when done in video. We saw a video by Boeing where they advertised their Dreamliner so effectively. We saw a video by Turbo-Tax where they attempted to change their brand image by associating a hip-hop song with their video. To generalize, I feel that any form of communication where the sender is "broadcasting" information is suited to videos. I am part of a musical band called "Pratidhwani". We used YouTube to release a teaser video of our show that we presented on Feb 21st. Although we didn't track online ticket purchases, this was the first time we sold out before the actual show day. Here's the video if you're interested (our music was much better than what you'll hear in the video).

I want to conclude this post by saying that there are certain forms of communication that are not well suited to videos. Personal blogs or blogs on abstract subjects like psychology are better discussed in words. Videos have this signal-to-noise ratio problem. When the message one is trying to convey is simple, videos are effective. However, for abstract ideas dealing with people's feelings, written blogs are much more effective. Text also allows more active participation, which is important where complex ideas are involved. For example, I couldn't have submitted this post as a video blog :-)

The Importance of Being Honest

I am not a very avid reader. I shy away from reading long articles. However, more recently, I have found myself reading blogs. For some reason, the amount of attention I give to a blog entry is not well correlated with the size of the entry. Moreover, blogs are infectious; once I have read the most recent entry, I need to know what the person was thinking some months earlier. Why are blogs so involving?

I have also seen the popularity of blogs increase over the last few years. Amazon has a whole team devoted to analyzing what blogs are succeeding and how much traffic certain blogs are bringing to the website. Until this class, I’d never really questioned why this was happening. Why are blogs attracting so much attention, when they comprise of nothing more than just long pages of text?

Honesty in a blog is perhaps the best answer I could get. True real life accounts and feelings are much more compelling than made-up stories. They have a higher chance of resonating with people who are interested in the topic being discussed. When people write blogs, they don’t just give out information. They start building a sketch of their own individual self and how that self relates to the topic that they are discussing. As you follow more and more articles from that individual, you build a better picture of the kind of person who is writing that blog. Coherence between that person’s beliefs and his writings starts developing. This coherence is hard to get established if people are not honest about what they are writing. The success of blogs lies in the fact that people have been successful at creating aspects of the personalities on the internet. The truthfulness of these personalities creates strong niches which in turn reinforces the honesty. These strong niches are what businesses target to sell their products or services. So in some sense, internet has managed to productize honesty in the form of blogs.