Monday 3rd August 2009 by Lawrence Clarke

Publishers exist because authors and journalists cannot afford to manufacture, distribute and sell their creations. The publisher will bear the costs in exchange for taking the lion-share of the rewards. It’s not surprising that any book publisher stands or falls by backing ‘best sellers’ or any controlled-circulation magazine publisher needs to mail out to a significant proportion of the target audience as defined by its advertising clients.

What online social media demonstrates is that those with the creative urge can publish to a worldwide audience for free – no manufacturing, distribution or sales costs. Done well, authors and journalists can reach a highly responsive audience with no need for an intermediary and make a living from it (see 'To blog or not to blog'). 

Here at Sift our online publishing division SiftMedia demonstrates that it is highly profitable to harness the online creative energies of both the citizen- and professional journalist. 

Improving on a 19th century model

At a recent breakfast seminar attended by around 100 publishers across the publishing spectrum I discussed with Steve Roth, SiftMedia’s Managing Editor, his approach to making money online. (You can download a copy of 100 Ways to win through in online publishing that was handed out at the seminar.) In essence, Steve confirmed that the online experience is all about quality and the commercial benefits that flow from it.

‘Page views’ or ‘click-throughs’ measure quantity. Just like direct mail campaigns where a response rate of two per cent is considered highly successful, the same percentage of people clicking through from a banner ad would be considered equally successful. In other words, as a methodology, this online way of reaching an audience is no better than its counterpart in the print world that originated in the late 19th century.

The key to publishing profitably online is to recognise the power of the collective wisdom of your audience and to harness that at the niche level – the level that ultimately we are all most attracted to, albeit in far smaller numbers than those potentially on the receiving end of a banner ad.

Recognising the power of focussed conversations

At SiftMedia Steve is managing editor of nine titles supporting a professional audience of over 250,000. To engage with this audience there are broad titles such as AccountingWeb or highly niche titles such as the cloud computing site BusinessCloud9. In both environments there are focussed groups discussing issues and topics that relate specifically to the offerings of specialist clients who are happy to pay to be part of a sub-community where the numbers are few but the match with the client is high. The Excel discussion in AcccountingWeb is a classic example.

In the same vein Sift has recently formed a joint-venture with Market Platform Dynamics in the US to serve the relatively small group of professionals involved in financial services regulation and currently challenged by the collapse of the world’s financial markets. The site FinReg21 is a mix of exclusive news and analysis with informed conversations and blogs managed by our SiftGroups content and community managers. This is proving to be exactly the right environment for major corporates in the financial sector to be seen to be sponsoring, as well as contributing to, the debate.

Benefit from our collective wisdom

Unlike any other social media agency and consultancy, SiftGroups works hand-in-hand with SiftMedia to experiment and improve on our understanding of how best to succeed in online publishing. In other words we are learning by doing. If you’re interested in how that works why not listen in to my conversation with Steve at the recent breakfast seminar?

 

Picture: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9422878@N08/3191602341/