Blogs Turning to Newsletters for Revenue?
Posted by Nick O'Neill on July 14th, 2008 5:29 PMAn interesting trend has started over the past couple days. This weekend Jason Calacanis announced the he was no longer blogging and was instead switching to a newsletter. Initially he suggested that he was limiting the number of subscribers to 750 but soon enough that number was surpassed and there is no sign that it’s stopping. Then today Caroline McCarthy published that Glam Media would be joining the newsletter market.
Blogs clearly have there limits when it comes to revenue and as such most blogs extend into events, as I wrote about the over the weekend. The other model is newsletters and while the majority of people stuck in the social media bubble argue that this in a bad idea due to e-mail overload, my guess is that the average person doesn’t have the same problems that many of the readers of this blog do.
Even if they do have e-mail overload, it’s clear that e-mail newsletters remain to be a viable business model. Just take a look at Daily Candy or Digital Media Wire. Both have developed substantial business models around newsletters and events. The best part of the newsletter business is that once you have subscribers they are much more locked in than a blog where you need to encourage readers to come back on a daily basis.
In the world on new media, developing a sustainable revenue model continues to prove to be challenging. Even still, numerous companies are trying to take a shot at it as the business models for traditional media outlets become shaky. All of this is a race toward what appears to be inevitable acquisition of the best developed new media companies.
Do you think newsletters will continue to be a legitimate business model or do you think the trend is toward blogs and other platforms?
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You're right about a lot of things here. Most significantly that 1) an e-mail subscriber is more sticky than a blog reader or an rss subscriber and 2) that e-mail has a better established revenue stream than blogging,
I also think that newsletters will continue to have a legitimate business model, HOWEVER, I don't think that we're going to see a mass trend towards e-mail from blogging or other RSS mediums.
The way RSS/web lets you search, chunk, microchunk, reblog, tweet, skim, scan, copy, comment, and interact offers a much richer experience for the USER. Eventually there will be a good business model for blogging - hell, maybe that model is selling t-shirts and events - but content will always gravitate to where the experience is best for the user.
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What I mean by that, using the investment advice example - when the idea is first articulated it is sent directly to the paid subscribers. The advice then goes on the "public" blog X days later. Benefit for the subscribers is timely access to the advice, and if they take a position they also benefit later when any members of the "public" also takes the advice. Author is providing full transparency into his past advice for potential subscribers, which should help with WOM marketing (assuming he/she is any good).
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