2105:
Instead of advertising, content businesses, if they are to be successful at all online, will need to recover the cost of content creation increasingly from readers. (This is why the entire publishing world is about to hold its collective breath as The New York Times rolls out its metered pay plan.) And for the cost to be recovered from readers, the readers will have to be able to find the content. (Most publishers don’t begin with a brand like The New York Times.)
What does this have to do with the decline of SEO? A great deal, I think. SEO has been, more than anything, about growing pageviews and unique visitors — any pageviews, and any unique visitors, the more the merrier. It is a force, therefore, for lowest-common-denominator publishing. And after a decade of SEO, a lot of lowest common denominator is what we have.
But a focus on readers rather than advertisers as the heart of business model will, inevitably, create a more segmented dynamic, as the strongest appeals to readers tend to be in niches, and as, to venture an impolite reminder, some readers are a great deal more valuable than others.
I’m not sure I agree but this merits a re-read.
This is the Rosetta Stone of new media. I agree with all of the arguments against the advertising/SEO model, but I also have severe reservations about the reader-supported model, primarily that I don’t think it will work on a scale that will keep companies like the NYTimes afloat. Also, some techno-hippie part of me still believes the “information wants to be free” adage.
The other day I found myself thinking, “Maybe there just isn’t a successful content business model anymore.” Maybe Google is right and it will have to be subsidized by other tech sectors.
can’t remember the last time i paid for a newspaper. must have been during the 20th century.
(Source: journo-geekery)
