As it happens, I’ve been teaching a course at Solent University about online strategy, which is also very much focused on understanding the business models of the web and how journalism students can exploit them.

We’ve covered a whole range of the usual monetisation options – from banner ads to paywalls. But one of the most interesting research topics has been internet marketing.

I love internet marketers. And I think internet marketing has a ton of stuff to teach journalism. Here’s why:

Internet marketers have clear goals

• Make money
• Build a database of customers
• Use targeted blogs, microsites and email newsletters to reach them

Immediately you can see where this starts to diverge from journalism. Journalism has a tendency to say “we know what we want to do, we know what’s good for you, that’s what we’re going to give you”. And then get all upset and cross when people don’t rush to buy their product.

Focus on the audience

Internet marketers don’t do this. They focus immediately and unstintingly on figuring out what needs an audience has and meeting them. And then figuring out the best way to encourage that audience to buy whatever it is they’re offering. It’s a completely different approach that journalism could learn a lot from.

I know, I know. It’s not journalism. These people are just trying to sell stuff. It’s not the same at all.

But actually, there are important parallels.

Internet marketers are selling information

That is, actually, what journalists do. It’s not such a leap to start thinking in terms of making that information valuable to readers.

There are plenty of other useful lessons:

• There’s a total focus on SEO
• Content matters and is valuable
• They find out what the reader really values
• They offer the reader something they will want to pay for
• They use every effort to find readers and make them want to read

I’m particularly struck by the second point. Sure, there’s a lot of spam bloggery and rubbish available in the murky world of e-marketing. But basically this is a world of information products – articles and e-b00ks.

Content matters

From the appropriately titled YouCanWriteArticles.com sales site comes this lesson:

You already know that writing articles is the single most effective way of building an online business. How do I know that you know? Because everyone says so. All the big name gurus, all the small-time forum junkies, all the bloggers, all the SEO experts, even the people in the know at the search engines. They all agree that articles are the big secret to online success.

There’s one group missing from this list, of course. Journalists are conspicuous by their absence. Because I suspect most journalists don’t, in their heart of hearts, actually believe this. Otherwise why are they talking about getting the government to subsidise their work?

This is a world where the people involved are looking into every aspect of communication to figure out how to make money.

I’ve signed up to a few email newsletters to see how they work and what’s on offer. One is Kickstart by Martin Avis, which has quite a few interesting links and pointers to this strange new world. [NB: I'm not actually making any money from this, don't fret that your pure, journalistic heart will be sullied by reading this. Although I really should be.]

As far as I can tell, Martin Avis really does make his living from internet marketing, so it’s interesting to see what he does. And what he does is use an email list to generate sales leads for information products – both his own, and other people’s (getting an affiliate cut in the process).

His content, bless his heart, is a bit rubbish – he mixes reviews of some of the latest products with inspirational quotes and anecdotes from his life in Sidcup. But you know, that could be deliberate – part of his “I’m not slick, I’m a really normal bloke” brand image.

Internet marketers are multimedia to the core

Interestingly, however, he, and the others, are exploring all the things that journalism should – multimedia, for instance.

Avis has started a series of ten-minute audio interviews with other emarketing gurus on his blog – using his iPhone and the iProRecorder app. Other marketers are running online TV channels to sell their products and strategies, or selling video instruction courses.

As for social media – I thought journalists were are all over Twitter like a rash, but emarketers have them beaten, using paid-for services such as the appallingly named Twitollower to generate followers and traffic to their other sites.

Internet marketers integrate their communications

Most importantly, internet marketers are integrating their different communications platforms. They make their blogs talk to Twitter, use Twitter to generate email leads and channel all their traffic to tailored, SEO-heavy sales material. They use audio, video, images and good old text in whatever combination they think will work best to meet their goals.

And while these goals are pretty much “making money”, the best of them also have an ethos of value that shouldn’t be ignored.

What works is to provide real, useful, naturally-written information. What works is to put the reader first and your profits second.

Which wouldn’t go amiss in the editorial office of a national newspaper.

Five key questions

Let’s finish by looking at five key marketing questions that should actually be five key journalism questions.

1. Are there people out there who want to know what you know?
2. Are there lots of them?
3. Are they hungry for your information or just casually 
interested?
4. Will what you have to say satisfy one of the basic human needs
 that drive us all: money, health, love, security, self-esteem,
 entertainment?
5. Are they already proven to be prepared to spend money on 
information products?

If the answer’s no, you’re not doing your job – whether as a marketer or as a journalist.

Is content king?

After all the technical stuff, the key value for your site is its content. But is content king? Here’s Paul Bradshaw on the importance of the network online: http://www.journalism.co.uk/5/articles/536802.php

Key points – people use the web as:

1. a communications channel
2. a tool
3. a destination

Many media companies fail to understand this. Forging partnerships and constantly linking is very important online. Your content does not exist in a vacuum.

How to pick your niche blog topic

Paul Bradshaw summarises a thorough and valuable article on SEOBook.com about planning and marketing your niche blog or web site.

Lots of valuable tips in here – but the key lesson is that anyone can do it. Which makes it really easy to enter the market and doubly hard to succeed.

Remember: Content is a means to an end (traffic, money, fame, respect etc etc). Figure out your goals.

Content should be unique

It’s a big no-no to duplicate content across different web sites – even if it’s your own content. Google doesn’t like this:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html

Multimedia/interactive content

There are many kinds of content we can use to add value/distinctiveness to a site. Words and pictures are important, but should not limit you.

Video

The nation’s favourite. It’s the obvious multimedia addition. But some many sites just embed other people’s video. Create your own and stand out.

Pros:

• Very popular online (and probably more so once mobile devices come to dominate)
• Easy to host and embed (the web is geared up for it)
• Technology is easily available and affordable
• Basic skills are not hard to master

Cons:

• Need to have strong video storytelling skills/good editorial eye
• Need to be where something visually exciting is happening with a video camera (may not be such a problem as phones come equipped with decent video capability)

Creativity is crucial here. Think laterally and grab the visitor’s attention.

Good examples:

• Photoshop cookery

• Commoncraft instructional animations

No embedded video here – as the site now charges you real money to carry one of its videos on your web site. Clever monetisation of normally free content.

Podcasts

Essentially video without the pictures.

Pros:

• Very easy to create (easier than video)

Cons:

• Less easy to host – fewer choices than video (use something like Soundcloud)
• Less easy to do well (you still need to know what you are doing creatively)
• People aren’t that interested in it

Tips:

• Add visuals to spark up the content (Use something like Soundslides – but it’s not free)
• One example is the Geekly Weekly podcast, which used slideshow-type visuals to accompany the audio

Audio slideshows

Once you get into slideshow visuals, try an audio slideshow. This is a more structured and scripted

See: http://www.freelanceunbound.com/2010/01/17/newsrewired-session-–-multimedia-journalism/

Pros:

• Cheaper and easier than video – with less messing around.
• Can better focus on the story.

Cons:

• Needs careful planning – not as instant as video

You can do something similar using SlideShare – create webinars using Powerpoint presentations and add audio.

Interactive graphics

Here are some excellent examples of how to present complex data and information in a way that’s easy to understand and encourages audience engagement:

From the Financial Times illustrating CEO pay in the oil industry.

How the Guardian illustrated Twitter activity during the World Cup 2010:

• Key point: Don’t rely on your own IT department to do multimedia data graphics – create your own within editorial. Look at the resources you already have .

There’s a beginner’s guide to Flash for journalists at Flashjournalism.com.

Pros:

• Very good way of presenting complex data and information.
• Lets visitors play with the data and find out what they want.

Cons:

• Needs access to Flash programming skills
• You need to be able to visualise what the data can do in the first place

Go to chartporn.org for lots of inspiration and examples of how to present visual data.

See also: http://www.10000words.net/2010/03/15-interactive-maps-from-new-york-times.html

Interactive timelines

Great open-source widget

http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/

Advertising

Aside from consumer sales, and more important, the traditional way of funding the media has been through advertising. This also works on the web – but digital publishing does change the relationship of journalism and advertising.

Some manifestations:

Banner ads

Pros:

• Highly trackable – get paid on performance (clickthrough, registration, purchase)

Cons:

• Losing effectiveness – no one is clicking through
• Rates are much lower than for print advertising
  [example of CPM advertising (cost per thousand page impressions) rate sheet - https://advertisers.federatedmedia.net/explore/view/readwrite]

Google Adsense

Targeted ads via Google – served up to readers via code pasted into your web page.

http://www.google.com/adsense

• Need to register using a Google account
• Not automatically accepted – Google checks your site is not spam (ie has original content, updated recently)
• Takes up to a week to process
• Customisable according to your content
• Can link it to Google Analytics

Affiliate marketing

http://skimlinks.com/

Alternative online business models

The web also opens up other ways of making money.

Revenue-sharing

As digital publishing costs plummet, the major cost of publishing becomes paying for content. One solution is not to pay content producers at all, or rock-bottom rates. Another is to share revenue.

Here are a couple of sites doing this.

L33tsauce

http://eatsleeppublish.com/neglect-and-l33tsauce/

• Aimed at computer gamers.
• Promises a 50% revenue share – a good deal.
• Start-up with no guaranteed audience or revenue

Suite 101

http://www.Suite101.com/

• Wide general interest site
• 20 million+ audience (claimed)
• Tiny share of ad revenue

Free as a business model:

“Free is more complicated than you think”

Video from the 2008 O’Reilly Tools of Change publishing conference in New York.

A lot of internet business models rely on giving stuff away. How does that work?

• Cross-subsidy: longstanding publishing model – advertising pays for free newspapers
• Technology allows wider cross-subsidy
• Digital costs are falling dramatically.
• Huge potential audiences for digital services pushes marginal costs towards zero (ie each extra mp3 file costs almost nothing to copy and distribute)
• Idea of a market moves from two-party system (buyer and seller) to ecosystem – many players

Here’s a link to a list of lots of ways a “free” model makes money:
http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Make_Money_Around_Free_Content

Pros:

• Free content is advertising for your products or company

Cons:

• Can set the market rate for your work at zero

Wired magazine article: Free!
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free

Book: Free: the future of a radical price

http://www.freelanceunbound.com/2009/07/16/why-free-is-not-just-about-the-money/

Niche markets

Being able to reach a huge global audience at no cost means you can make a living by getting a small amount of money each from lots of people.

See: The Long Tail – http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Long-Tail-Endless-Creating-Unlimited/dp/1844138518/

Credibility and brand building

Media activity and content can be used to gain prestige and credibility which can help earn money in other ways:

http://www.freelanceunbound.com/2009/12/07/j-students-create-your-own-e-magazine-calling-card/

Hobby journalism

Finally – it may be that some media content creation moves into the hobby zone:

http://eatsleeppublish.com/how-many-journlaists-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-light-bulb/

List-building and ebooks

What can journalism learn from the world of internet marketing?

eMarketers have clear goals:

• Make money
• Build a database of customers
• Use targeted blogs, microsites and email newsletters

Look out for examples of this in places like the WarriorForum. Some good tips are in the discussion threads.

Emarketing newsletters

A key tool. What they sell:

• eBooks: http://www.youcanwritearticles.com // http://www.plrsecrets.com
• Software/code scripts (mainly about SEO): http://www.keywordlsispy.com
• Automated blogs: http://urlnex.us/blogflipz
  (A possible example – http://pindebit.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-search-real-time-search-results.htm)

Affiliate marketing

Make money selling – well – anything.

• Links: http://wplinkbroker.com

Key lessons:

• Total focus on SEO
• Content matters and is valuable
• Find out what the reader really values
• Offer the reader something they will want to pay for
• Use every effort to find readers and make them want to read

Online business case studies

SoGlos – local Gloucestershire listings and information site

Do:

• Make your content great
• Work with SEO
• Know your market and products
• Focus on sales strategy – it doesn’t just happen
• Forge partnerships – but get paid in cash

Don’t

• Stray from your core model
• Let people steal your content
• Spend all your time on Twitter/Facebook
• Rely on UGC – (predicts the resurgence of professionalism in media)
• Stay still: keep innovating

The biggest shock for traditional media during the past decade has been the development and wide availability of tools to allow internet users to create and publish their own content.

Suggested reading – two opposing views:
Clay Shirky – Here Comes Everybody (he loves the crowd)
http://mymindonbooks.com/?page_id=562

Andrew Keen -  The Cult of the Amateur (he despises the crowd)
http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/

Technology:
DV cameras, digital compact cameras, multimedia mobile phones and smartphones, wireless broadband

What content are we talking about?

Video - YouTube and many other video sharing sites

Photos – Flickr and other photo-sharing sites. Royalty-free photo libraries (iStock, StockXchange etc)

Blogging – WordPress, Blogger

Microblogging – Twitter, Tumblr etc

Social networking – Facebook, Bebo, MySpace

Reviews -  Amazon

Why is this a threat?

• Undermines information “gatekeeper” status of journalists and the media
• Accelerates media fragmentation
• Gives people something else to do than consume traditional media (something like a fifth of the web’s content is now UGC)
• Undercuts professional payment structures
• Questions the notion of “professionalism” (See news:rewired debate)

Why is this an opportunity?

• Provides access to a sea of information
• Lowers the cost of content acquisition for publishers

What are the challenges?

• Need to work out how to manage and filter it
• How can you make money from it?
• How can you ensure quality/accuracy etc?

Implications for media content
Video – immediacy versus broadcast quality (2004 Asian Tsunami)
Channel 4 documentary Tsunami Caught on Camera could not have been made without UGC

Click here to view the embedded video.

UGC as a resource for journalism
Crowdsourcing project to bring ordinary people into the investigative process – http://helpmeinvestigate.com/
Twitter – #IranianElection – http://mashable.com/2009/06/14/new-media-iran/
Sky News Fallen Heroes project – public tributes to servicemen killed in Afghanistan.

Key lesson – go to where people are – it’s difficult to crowdsource from scratch

Big win for journalism would be universal access to Facebook

Media still hasn’t worked out the relationship between journalism and its readers
UGC is often seen as a resource, not a relationship

• Some points from the news:rewired debate on crowdsourcing.

Bloggers vs “professional” journalists
Held to different standards – the ideal of professional journalism is often held up against the reality of blogging
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/could-a-blogger-have-gott_n_420440.html

A warning about Flickr

The recent copyright row over a Flickr stream shown on the Independent web site is very interesting – shows that traditional media does not understand the new media landscape and its rules. Copyright still applies. Terms of use still apply.

• Online self-branding – building a web presence with a digital portfolio
• Writing and production for the web
• OSAM – Week 1: Media and democracy
• OSAM – Week 2: Building an audience
• OSAM – Week 3: User-generated content
• OSAM – Week 4: Social Media
• OSAM – Week 5: Monetisation #1
• OSAM – Week 6: Directed study
• OSAM – Week 9: Monetisation #2
• OSAM – Week 10: Content strategies
• OSAM – Week 11: Mobile, search and the rest
• OSAM – Week 12: The future of the industry

This is the Solent Journalism Online Strategies and Management home page. All the weekly round-up pages are listed below, and will be added to as the unit progresses.

Please visit the Online Strategies and Management myCourse page for all admin documents, including assessment criteria.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Watch The Virtual Revolution on BBC2 – there’s a lot of very relevant material here, available in a low-pain, low-effort way.

Schedule: Saturdays on BBC2 at 8.30pm / Mondays on BBC2 at 11.20pm.

Here’s a list of useful links you should check out for general information and background:

The Online Journalism Blog
Published by Paul Bradshaw – it’s the UK’s prime online forum for debates and information about digital media and online content.

OJR: The Online Journalism Review
Similar site, but with a US perspective. Interesting material here, too.

Problogger
Very American, very evangelistic about commercialising blogging. Lots of interesting tips here if you trawl through it.

News:rewired
This one-day conference on January 14 covered a lot of ground in the whole “what the hell is happening to media” area. This link takes you to the round up page, which is a good jumping off point to explore the topics and presentations. I have written a fair amount about it too, which is also linked to from this.

But not before I’ve managed to fix my laptop – which has now died. The problem? The Apple G4 laptop power connector.

There’s a common misconception that Apple designers are gods among men. That their design is groundbreaking, faultless, sublime.

Not so, my friends. Not so.

In fact, the design of the power connector for the G4 Titanium PowerBook is rubbish. It has a serious flaw – the power lead connection into the body of the laptop is flaky and very vulnerable to damage.

There’s quite a bit on the web about this. One Apple PowerBook owner writes:

If you have a PowerBook, you may be familiar with the symptoms: as soon as you look at the connector, your system is running on battery, not wall power. You fiddle with the connector, push on it, apply force in various directions, and eventually it reconnects. The problem is progressive, too: the first time, all it usually takes is turning the connector, but within 6 months you’re doing the “my laptop power connector cut off” dance – pushing on it, swearing, and generally making anyone who sees you wonder if you’ve lost your mind.

The problem is compounded by the fact that it’s very easy to catch the power lead with some extremity or other – generally ripping it out of the socket. The result is a power connector that gets progressively distorted and bent, and that won’t sit snugly in the socket any more.

(And whose cord gets damaged, as my super-sophisticated repair indicates.)

I managed to go one further, however. Recently when I ripped out the power lead for the umpteenth time, the tip of the small jack plug inside the connector actually sheered off and stuck inside the socket (again – others online have had this same problem).

The lead still made a connection when I pushed it back in. But it was only a matter of time. Now the handy indicator light doesn’t show at all and the laptop won’t charge. And, given that my battery lasts about 15 minutes now, that means it’s officially dead in the water. I have a cool, £1,600 paperweight on my desk.

This is rubbish design. And, to their credit, the designers at Apple have clearly realised this. The revamped iBook power connector is fantastic – it’s magnetic, so if you knock the lead away, it does no damage to the laptop at all. As Christian Kit Paul says on Kit.Blog: “This is how all plug-and-socket connections should work”.

In desperation, because it’s Friday and to be away from the interweebs – and from you – for a whole 48 hours would be indescribable torture, I’ve just ordered myself a Samsung N140 netbook for emergency despatch by Amazon. (It would actually have been nice to have had this at news:rewired so I could have liveblogged myself into insanity, but there you go.)

[UPDATE: Now using the N140. My god Windows sucks.]

But even so, I won’t give up on my PowerBook. For my next weekend electronics project (in fact, my first weekend electronics project), I plan to take that sucker apart and solder in a new connector – a proper one  – that won’t break or distort, no matter what I do to it.

The instructions are all here, on Jason’s Screaminglight.com site (along with a very shrill disclaimer).

Looks like a piece of cake. I mean, advanced computer circuitry – how hard can it be to take apart and reassemble?

Wish me luck…

[NB: here's a link to another power connector repair guide. If you need it.]

(Journalism.co.uk has prepared its own catch-up guide, which is doubtless better. They organised it, after all. Send your blog links to Judith Townend in case they want to keep it updated.)

What the bloggers said:

• Iain Hepburn thinks the event spread itself too thinly and some of the panels missed the mark – he also takes the event to task a bit for overrunning, which forced the pace at times.
  Strongest content: Kevin Marsh‘s keynote speech (transcript/notes here), the Local Digital Media panel and David Dunkley Gyimah‘s videojournalism presentation.
• Sarah Booker adds a general round-up and promises session-specific posts.
• Adam Tinworth is excellent on the five stages of grief journalists are experiencing as the industry implodes.
• Jon Jacob from the BBC College of Journalism is a bit self-indulgent but is right when he argues we should forget about labels and trying to predict the future.
• Jon Slattery brings a newsman’s coverage to the event. His general roundup of the event is here.
• Julio Romo‘s Two Four Seven blog has a substantial round-up looking at the implications from a PR professional’s view and featuring some useful extra links.

Keynote: 10:30 – 10:45

Click here to view the embedded video.

George Brock believes he should be a professor of chaos history, and likens the search for solutions to the challenges of digital media as “throwing spaghetti at a wall”.

What the bloggers said:

• Adam Tinworth summarises George Brock’s keynote here.
• Nigel Barlow has a nice summary of the session here.
• Patrick Smith takes on the idea that journalism students can boost local reporting.
• Alex Gamela has an overview of George Brock’s keynote here.
• David Higgerson wonders whether the media’s obsession with Twitter is overplayed – a nice analysis.

I liked Brock’s point that technology is not always the disruptive social force we sometimes credit it as being. Although western media picked up on the Twitter campaign by Iranian dissidents last year, actually the regime is more threatened by opponents stamping slogans on banknotes.

So many banknotes now carry opposition messages that the government wants to recall them all. But that would destroy the economy. Very clever – very low tech.

Presentation: 10:45 – 11.10

Click here to view the embedded video.

What the bloggers said:

• Jon Slattery’s story on Kevin Marsh’s talk is here.
• News:rewired has an audio interview with Kevin Marsh here covering many of the same issues.
• Reuters’ Mark Jones interviewed Kevin Marsh after his presentation on whether using social media makes you a better journalist.
• Oliver Luft at Press Gazette explores Marsh’s views on the transformative nature of blogging.
• Mediating Conflict also briefly picks up on the importance of blogging as a transformative force.
• David Higgerson uses Marsh’s comments on blogging as the springboard for a discussion of the blogging medium.

[Continued on next page]

Key question: Does crowdsourcing = crowd following?

Make sure you’re doing what journalists normally do – go to where people talk and eavesdrop.

Ruth Barnett, multimedia producer at Sky News, outlined some of the issues Sky has had to handle dealing with crowdsourced material.

#Iranian election Twitter coverage:

• As soon as something becomes a trending topic the material becomes less reliable and less useful
• First 24 hours has peak value
• As the conversation becomes wider, it becomes more diluted

Sky also uses crowdsourcing-type tools to allow collaborative professional journalism – dubbed teamsourcing.

Problems with crowdsourced material

• Can exclude the poor and marginal groups
  How universal is access to content creation and crowdsourcing tools? There’s an in-built bias in technology and platforms that means some stories won’t be told
• Legal problems
  Make sure you know where your material is coming from – different territories have different rules (on the use of telephoto-lens cameras, for example, or libel)
• Is the source genuine?
  Make sure you can verify its authenticity. Content mediation services such as NewsCred can be a guide to the authenticity of crowdsourced material.

Kate Day, head of communities at Telegraph.co.uk, noted that you can shape the demographic of an online community.

• The community: MyTelegraph users tend to be 45-65 – the same demographic as the newspaper
• The reason: MyTelegraph was heavily promoted in the offline newspaper – attracting a user-base of readers who are interested in talking to like-minded people
• The result: a community of bloggers and commenters that is older than the normal online readership of Telegraph.co.uk.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s cheaper and easier than video – and there’s less messing around. Can better focus on the story.

Tips for success

• Focus on story and character
• Pre-interview your subject by phone – work out your story in advance so you can plan photos and sound
• Does the story have great audio potential? Think of effects – background noise (traffic, water) and music
• What about photos? Spend time thinking of effective and atmospheric shots
• Let pictures breathe – give the audience enough time to register  and explore them on screen

Tools of the trade

• Decent audio recorder
• Digital SLR camera
• Editing software (he uses Soundslides)

The New York Times has created an evocative series of audio slideshow portraits of the city in its One in 8 million feature.

SoGlos deputy editor James Fryer offered the five dos and don’ts of starting up online.

His prediction: quality, professional journalism is key to success and will see a resurgence in the next decade. User-generated content is not enough to attract advertisers and readers.

Plans for 2010 include: a site redesign, a move into iPhone Apps and the development of a franchise model for others to launch similar regional sites. SoGlos has a target of more than 100,000 readers

Sift Media CEO Ben Heald noted that success online required changes to traditional journalism.

• Write to engage rather than write to inform – the aim should be to start a conversation rather than have the last word.
• Journalists create very raw content – aim is speed.
  Web production team polishes to web publishable quality.
• Advertising model – Sift’s sites deliver “high quality business leads” for advertisers.
  – a specialist audience for conferences
  – customer leads for new products
  Sift site content has to help meet these needs.
• News is actually very valuable – as long as it’s on Google.
  Sift needs to maintain a high number of visitors for lead generation. It lost too much traffic when delisted by Google News. Many sites benefit from churning out low-level news – topping and tailing press releases for example. Sift Media had to learn to play this Google News game.
• Paywalls don’t work – they cut traffic too much (see above).