Blogging Snow Job

With more snow in my front yard than any average Giuseppe in Turin - the meteorologists and my weather-loving father are going nuts - it's the perfect time to settle in, put another pot of coffee on, and noodle around with the Weblog. And so, time for a few notes and thoughts on the medium itself - yes, I know, a good percentage of you rolls your eyes and mutters "technology review ahead - nuts" but I don't care. As I've said before, this blog is an experiment in the form as well as an outlet for discussions on politics and media, and frankly, I've been neglecting the plumbing for quite some time.

So a couple of thoughts, some additions, and some subtractions.

First this: advertising does not work for the average blogger, even the above-average blogger. It only works for the big group blogs and a tiny handful of full-timers. Advertising as a means of support for bloggers is a complete, utter, and frankly, rather embarassing failure. If Fred Wilson can't earn more than charity change for his blog - well-read, updated thrice daily, and a leader in an important category - than few others can. If Steve Gilliard has to hang out a rusty tin can on his blog and beg for nickels, then blog advertising has failed. If Joe Gandelman's still on the ventriloquism circuit instead of sitting in a fine office, collecting fees for his incredible service to blog journalism, then advertising doesn't work.

Sure, it works for Google, but I suspect that is because we were all suckers in the early days of this and slapped AdSense up on our sites. Well, AdSense doesn't work for me and it's coming down. I'm also sure advertising sales has created a nice little business for Henry Copeland and his BlogAds empire - a nice idea, fairly well-executed. But you know, a bunch of liberal bloggers who also enjoyed books and media criticism banded together to form the the Liberal Prose network - but it hasn't worked for me. It doesn't seem to me like anyone is actively selling the ads. Yeah, I got a few ads from Rosie's site, a rock band pushing its downloads, and a few other causes. But the money was small, and it takes too much time and space. So it's coming down.

Frankly, it's disappointing in the purportedly "open" blogosphere to find such abject failure in advertising - to find gatekeepers, a star system, and closed networks. In short: old media. The advertising model is the same fellas, stop fooling yourself into thinking it's not. Advertising on blogs is old media, with a little tip jar begging thrown in. Since this blog exists only for the conversation it stirs and for the outlet I need to keep away from padded rooms, my "paid" advertising is coming down - at least for now.

Besides, I need the space for more experiments.

Ironically, one of them is advertising of a sort - but it's free, open, and based entirely on the individual publisher's tastes - and not on the ad reps from BlogAds or the formulas over at Google, which are a little too open, except in Communist China. It's called Word of Blog, and I got it from Fred (who treats his own blog like an experiment as well) a few months ago. I really like Word of Blog, because I control what sites and people I promote. Sometimes it's a political cause, sometimes it's a podcast, like Jason's great Down in the Flood. Sure, no money changes hands - but the interface is easy, and it feels good.

The next one also comes from Fred, and it's the"charts" produced by the wonderful music recommendation/online radio site Last.fm - which is so easy, and so good it just has to find its way into the mainstream media canon in iPodian proportions at some point. Last.fm lets you build radio stations for (fully-licensed) online listening, and keeps charts of what you've been playing on its servers, and on iTunes. I've wanted to have my own personal charts on this blog since I started it, and was frustrated by the manual Typepad lists etc. This does it. Automatically. Hope it starts some conversations. [Blog charts would be a terrific service for NetFlix and Tivo to offer as well, come to think of it].

Finally, thanks to Bruno Giussani, I discovered coComments literally the second it went public and I really like it so far. The service gives you a browser plug-in that lets you save your comments on other sites to coComments' server first, then to the blog's site itself. That's slightly cumbersome and may be automated at some point, but it you're really into the conversation - as I am - it's invaluable. Because when you give up your comments to the coComments site, you gain a tracking mechanism - this allows you to publish your comments elsewhere on your own blog, and to create RSS feeds for your comment stream. [Note to coComments team: right now, the service is slow and moderately selective - it takes a while for comments to make the RSS stream - and therefore, alert me to follow-up]. Could this "change everything?" Will we actually need blogs anymore if the "conversation" takes on its own life in feeds? Dunno. But I'm gonna try it out for a while - I urge you to click on the box from time to time and jump into the conversations I'm involved in on other blogs.

Very cool. Just like the weather.

UPDATE: I realize that this post may have cast aspersions upon the members and organizers of the Liberal Prose Network. Let me clear that up: they're some of my favorite bloggers, great people, and if Blogads.com works for them, terrific - I dearly hope the money is good so they can afford to write even more! No, my complaint is really with the Blogads system - it's just another ad sales bureau and it was clear that despite the enthusiasm of the Liberal Prose folks, there was no ad salesperson on the other side pushing this....just some wishful thinking on our part. Then there's the pathetic Amsterdam junket, an ill-considered venture in which so-called "independent" bloggers take free airfare from KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, beds in a 5-star hotel, and promise an "interview" with the Dutch Tourism Board. Lame. Bad judgment. And even the great Ezra Klein and Lindsay Beyerstein threw their reputations in for chump change. [What's next, fellas -golf at St. Andrew's?] This is like record companies providing coke and hookers to play songs, folks. It's old school, as in the bad old school. The site claims: "The mantra here is transparency." The mantra should be "bloggers for sale - cheap." This is why blog advertising hasn't worked - there's nothing new there. Blogads.com is old media. I wish them well, but I don't have the room.

Comments

[Srinivasan]

From an advertisers' point of view, the value add he gets from adsense etc is completely debatable. Although dumb, the reason is that there is no benchmark.

With new models emerging based on MDHP, adbrite etc. adsense might slow down. as an experiment, we have launched http://www.web20milliondollarhomepage.com.

squidoo has an interesting model too. point with stuff like squidoo is, who owns the content?

time will tell which of these models will survive.

[blue girl]

I'm so glad you wrote about advertising in the blogosphere. Although I don't have ads on my blog, I've noticed they make hardly any money for those who do. At least from what they write about it.

I'm in advertising and I'm constantly trying to figure out a way that ads can work. I'm at a huge disadvantage though -- I don't really understand the technology or the lingo -- you lost me up there with a couple of things you were writing about!

I, too, am "old media!"

The Amsterdam trip thing is too much. I won't say anymore -- don't want to be mean.

And -- for what it's worth (not million of dollars, that's for sure!) -- I started coming over here because of your ad over at Mannion's blog awhile back. fyi. I thought it was a good placement -- you two have a similar style.

[Tom W.]

Funnily enough I also work in advertising in a way - at least for the largest holding company (say no more - I keep biz seperate).

I did the ads on Mannion, Gilliard, and others simply because I couldn't bring myself to hit their "tip jars" and also wanted to show support publicly. They deserve better...

[Kat]

This is very low brow, but matches you're title:

http://kathleencallon.blogspot.com/2005/12/happy-holidays.html

It's 70 and sunny here today, but I still remember New England winters. (Brrrrrrrr.)

[Tony Lawrence]

I'm in New England too, but it sure is nice and sunny today and we really can't complain about this winter so far..

Anyway, while I agree with you in principle, some of us really do make worthwhile money from advertising and there are ways that most blogs can improve their chances (see for example my http://aplawrence.com/Misc/blogadvertising.html ).

I think part of the problem is that people get high expectations from reading about people making $$$$$$ - what they don't know is that most of those folks are sploggers and most of the rest are working their butts off with multiple blogs and worn out fingers from all the typing they do. There's a few, a very few, who were in the right place at the right time and make good cash with little effort, but that's the web equivalent of winning the lottery.

[Claire]

Hi Tom--
Thanks for pointing out some of those newer things (amenities?) out there for the blogosphere. I just started a New Media studies master's program, and while I'm not sure where I'm going with it or towards what end, I'm really interested in the new innovations out there. Blogs interest me for the conversations as well, so I think I'll have to check out coComments. There is a lot for me to think about in this post. Thanks.

Claire

[Digger]

Let me sum up this post in a few sentences.

"Wah wah wah I can't figure out online advertising and have made no money, so it must not work."

"Wah wah wah BlogAds didn't make me a dime, so it must not work."

"Wah wah wah BlogAds didn't pick my illustrious self to attend a trip to Amsterdam in hopes of them spurring some interest in online advertising and blogs, so I must bash everyone else for taking up the offer."

Now I may sound like an ass above, but come on, just because something doesn't work for you or your "product" doesn't mean the whole multi-billion dollar online advertising business is a big farce.

Go have a read of a case study on one of the advertisers who bought a BlogAd on my site. He made money off the BlogAd AND that was just on my site, he runs the ad on lots of other sites as well. And yes I run a political website on the other side of the aisle a little from you, but advertising has worked for me and is growing every month.

Maybe you're not large enough yet, in that case get out there and promote yourself! Spread the word. Join carnivals. Guest blog somewhere. Get your name out there. No one is going to buy an ad on a low traffic site (say under 2000 hits a day) for 20 bucks if they're only going to see maybe 20 click throughs (a buck a click!)

OK enough ranting.

[Tom W.]

Diggster, no crying from this blogger - I've made very clear this is an outlet for me personally, it's about the writing and the conversation, and the ads are just experiments in the form. I only post a couple of times a week at most. But I know others who take it seriously, who do everything you advise above, who are real stars - and still hang out the tip jars.

No, to me the farce is the inherent promise - that this is something "different" - that it's "new advertising" of some magic sort, when it's really just the same old deal. Which, as I said, is just fine.

[Digger]

I absolutely understand you and wanting to run it as an outlet for your thoughts and beliefs. I wasn't implying that you -- or anyone -- has to run ads or anything like that. I do feel your conclusions are a little wrong on it being "the same old thing".

The thing about online advertising is that it is open to "the little guy". For instance the fellow I mentioned above in the case study, where else is he going to put up simple ads for little money and make instant sales? He'd be hard pressed to do even remotely as well in print advertising -- and TV is way out of his budget I'm sure.

The biggest difference is that his ads are targeted to a specific niche market, potential customers are a click away from buying the item and his overhead is extremely low. The time he has to spend is almost zero. Other forms of advertising aren't as targeted and are more of a "shotgun approach". To think that it is "the same old thing" is just way off the mark.

While it may not be the holy grail and golden prize it's made out to be, it has a greater potential, because there are more small businesses with limited advertising money than there are big massive companies with huge ad budgets. Whole new businesses can be started around these types of advertising creating more jobs that didn't exist before because they would have been cost prohibitive.

I'll agree on one thing, something like advertising a car on a blog, I don't think it would work. Who's going to click through and buy a car? Well maybe some rich guy. But things like advertising a TV show special or sales of unique items that fit a target market, sure!

Political blogs haven't been exploited to their full potential yet and I'll admit they don't generate a lot of income. There's a lot of things that could be advertised on them that aren't though. From organizing conferences to fund raising to items that appeal to those of the same beliefs. It doesn't matter whether you're left, right or center.

[henrycopeland]

Agg. Sorry to hear we didn't work for you. Vis a vis Blogads being closed and old media, we don't have the human resources (or algorithms or 100,000 servers) to deal with anyone who blogs, so our invites and networks are a poor man's attempt to keep things at a human/manageable scale. Vis Amsterdam: I'm not sure if I misread you, but I should clarify-- bloggers will be interviewed either by other bloggers or by Blogads.com. We'll see how it works.

[Tom W.]

Henry, Blogads does a terrific job and has really grown impressively from a standing start - well done! Just that for me, the lone blogger who's not hopeful of a living, or even a side job from the effort, it's not worth the space. Really, I hope the model gets even better: I really despise tip jars on the sites of committed, intense bloggers with real followings - indeed, rather than use them, I actually paid for some Blogads on a few sites in December. A much better way to suppory my faves.

The Amsterdam thing - perfectly cool from your p.o.v. - not cool (to me) for journo-bloggers doing political coverage. They should just take the cash.