The economics of ‘nano-publishing’
Posted by
Martin Stabe
on 27 March 2006 at 12:46
Tags: Blogs, Guardian
I’m at the Guardian Changing Media Summit, blogging live via what is apperently the most expensive wifi network in the world.
Next up s a session on the commercial impact of blogging. The panel will include Thomas Mahon, who blogs about his Savile Row bespoke tailoring business, Guy Philipson, chief executive of the Internet Advertising Bureau; Chris Price, founder of Shiny Media; and Guardian director of digital publishing Simon Waldman.
According to the programme, the panel will discuss whether advertising can sustain blogs’ bottom line, whether big business can get the same benefits from “micro-business advertising” as tiny operations, whether small businesses using blogs will be able to move from self-promotion to genuine marketing, and whether “nano-publishing” can take on the big established media players.
The latter point was already touched on in this morning’s session on user-generated content. Ben Hammersley, the journalist and web developer who built the Guardian’s new blog Comment is Free, pointed out that the startup costs for web sites have plummetted in the past decade.
“If you wanted to build up Guardian Unlimited from scratch today, it would cost you a fraction of what it did,” he said.
Consequentially, the return on investment for new web sites can come much more quickly than it has for the Guardian, which will make a profit on its web site for the first time this year.
But this is only true if labour costs are limited. With the tiny startup costs for a web site these days, it would be easier for a one-man operation to make a profit online than a 20-man operation, Hammersley said.
“You can give away your content for free and make your money selling t-shirts,” he suggested.
Hopefully we’ll learn more about the economics of “nano-publishing” this afternoon.
