Get Back To Blogging Basics, B5Media CEO Advises
Big media. Once anathema to the blogging culture, traditional media, derided as “mainstream media” is now seen as a potential savior of blogs big and small during the current economic crisis. Otherwise, bloggers will be destroyed, one network CEO advises.
“Blog networks today are, fundamentally, media businesses,” Jeremy Wright, CEO of the Canadian-based b5media, told Blog Herald. As a media company, blog networks must attract larger audiences, keep them involved and expand revenue potential beyond Google’s Adsense.
Wright said in order to survive, blog networks need to be earning more than $20,000 per month.
“For that type of blog network that doesn’t have revenue, scale [and] growth, the current environment is going to be devastating,” the b5media head told Thord Daniel Hedengren.
Like Gawker Media CEO Nick Denton, Wright is a fan of looking for revenue other than advertising and outsourcing. A number of blog networks, such as TechCrunch and Giga Omni Media, have found conferences as a dependable source of revenue.
Possibly the hardest-hit will be the medium-sized blog network that doesn’t have a lot of costs it can cut and not enough revenue to bank against the economic downturn.
Those networks “will truly struggle (and most will either close or sell to larger networks like us),” Wright said. In July, Wright attempted to buy-out bloggers of the defunct Know More Media.
A Return to Blogging’s Roots?
Could there be a positive outcome of the economic crisis for blogging? Wright believes there is a silver lining.
“It’s my sincere hope that the worst thing that happens to blogging out of this is that we all (and I put myself firmly in this group as well) get back to blogging for the love of blogging - not just to make money,” he said.
However, for those bloggers that are interested in earning money, Wright foresees a move away from pay-per-click ads which pay cents and more lucrative affiliate offers. We may also see Pay-Per-Post efforts gain more followers.
Although b5media is centering more of its blogging efforts around vertical hubs (Bizzia.com for business blogging, Splendicity.com for beauty sites and Starked.com for entertainment content), Wright said he would have made the switch sooner, if given the chance.
When I look at the numbers, Google turned its back on AdSense. I took down most of my AdSense down last night. The trouble with AdSense now, they don’t value publishers as much as they should, they will regret it. AdSense was only useful as long as it could get us high bids, but since they got so greedy, we don’t need them. We’ll make more now without the middleman. Goodbye Google.