This is pure indulgence, so I do apologise in advance for such abuse of your attention. Since I’ve already harped on about my life story, I’m going to extend my personal introspection.
In about 10 weeks, this blog will be a two year old. It’s time to grow up a bit.
It started off as a hobby and an outlet for boredom and frustration. Now, indirectly, it’s my living; my “marketing department” for my brain services.
But how do you build a business model around a blog such as this? At the moment I do consulting and strategic advice. It does well enough, but I’d like to do better. The cost of sale is too high to make the business scale well.
Yet there’s a catch to blogging as a means of promoting yourself as a consultant. I have to keep back all my best ideas and arguments behind the consulting pay-wall. They then don’t get as wide an audience as they deserve (in my humble estimation). And they don’t benefit by being beaten about in the blogosphere. Word documents don’t autonomously improve overnight whilst sat on my laptop hard drive.
I was kind of sad that Nokia recently closed down their sponsored public wireless think-site, The Feature [don’t click, it’s gone 404]. OK, they didn’t market it well and get the brand goodwill they deserved from it. But the site was filled with good ideas. I don’t know if the contributors were getting paid. It certainly points away from trying to get sponsorship to write useful stuff that a broad audience will enjoy. I’m under no illusions that anyone is going to pay me just to write.
It would be interesting to find some allies in the big strategic consulting firms, such as McKinsey or Booz Allen. Having been on the receiving end of their work, I’m sure mine is every bit as good — if not better, when it comes to “stupid network” stuff. There are some good boutique advice shops like Analysys, too. I think I could help them deliver better advice. But I lack inroads to any of these; thoughts anyone?
I guess I could pursue an academic job where you can just think, talk and write, but I find that world rather closed. I’ve no aspirations to follow an academic career path. And the pay doesn’t match my tastes for the good life!
I’m getting tempted to break up all my (publicly reproducible) consulting work and start posting it up here. But to do that I’d need some quid pro quo. One route is to take the Google dollar. Slashdot today points to someone offering good advice on how to make a very comfortable living off AdSense. At my current traffic volumes, it’s probably more than coffee money, but nowhere near a viable living. I’d have to get a lot more into the down and dirty of product reviews and company profiles to generate better ad fodder, and increase pageviews. I’m not sure if that’s what I or you want.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my essays and ideas. I think it’s a unique site, and one of only half a dozen in the subject area. I’d now like your feedback on what you like and don’t like; what you’d like to see more of; and any thoughts you have as to how I can put more time and energy into it without having to worry about how the next Caribbean holiday will be paid for! Feel free to post comments, or if you’d like to protect my ego or send something confidential, just email me at feedback@telepocalypse.net.
Posted by Martin Geddes at 12:41 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
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Hi
This is a dilemma shared by many of us bloggers/boutique consultants.
One way I've been considering for my new blog, is vertical advertising alliances, if that doesn't sound too consultantese.
In other words, get a bunch of quality, independent bloggers together in a loose consortium, specialising in one particular sector (say, the mobile phone business to start with). Then sell advertising on the collective blogs.
This should generate a respectable income for the bloggers. But it should also be popular with ad agencies and clients as they only need to speak to one "buying point". Currently, advertisers simply don't have the resource or expertise to negotiate with hundreds of bloggers to construct a campaign, meaning all the money gets stuck with the big sites.
There's no reason why bloggers couldn't make a fair amount of money if they have decent traffic - many rival traditional "trade" publications in readership, but don't have anything like the same overhead to contend with.
By the way, I share your sadness at the demise of The Feature. The ex-editor, Carlo Longino, has now joined me at www.mobhappy.com and we're also trying to keep the tradition alive. For info, yes the writers were paid, mostly.
Cheers
Russell
Posted by: at July 18, 2005 08:59 AM2 things to consider:
- If you uss your blog as a demonstration of your knowledge/knowhow, but keep the good bits to yourself, how well are you representing yourself? The incentive to hire you should be the ability to steer your thinking process, and to combine the knowledge/knowhow you expose here to your customer's particular needs/setting/organisation.
- Some bloggers consider the feedback they get from their readership to be the reward they get for the time they sink into it. I consider the clearer picture I get for myself to be that reward, but it's really something you'll have to eavluate for yourself.
Martin,
Have you approached your current clients with a proposal something like this (phrasing it how you might approach them):
"My work in covering the industry has currently been split between many great clients, would you join with many of them in helping support my efforts to engage with a larger Internet audience to discuss, refine, and enhance my thinking on these important issues. You will still get my customized consulting engagements and have access to my work based on your confidential elements, but your support will enable a deeper conversation with a larger group of thinkers"
(i.e. re-engage with past clients to see if they would support your blog, couching it as part of how your value to them can be deepened and enriched. In exchange continue to offer them your consulting services, perhaps most focused on "unique to them" elements with their support of your blog serving as the cost of getting access to your broad industry thinking. You might also grant paying clients special rights - for example reproduction rights so they can bring your work "in house" and/or an "ad-free" version of your site where they can view the writing without adwords or other ads?)
It is a challenge that all consultants face. Pre-web many faced this challenge via what they did/didn't publish in industry journals or in a newsletter (print years ago, more recently email mailing lists).
Given the caliber of your writing and analysis which you have shared on this blog already, I look forward to seeing what you have been holding back.
If nothing else this exercise could be an excuse to reconnect with past clients, share with them your current work and thinking, and nudge them about what else you can do (i.e. for you besides the monetary support they hopefully will make the value of the blog could come from the specific engagement with current clients who may get to see what else you could help them with after they read about your thinking and/or work for others in the industry)
Hope this helps and good luck!
Shannon
Posted by: at July 18, 2005 04:12 PMMartin,
I first came across your blog through a Google search cross referencing Goldratt and Telecoms which tells you my key interests. You led me to the "stupid network" so I owe you a least a coffee, not sure I can stretch to a Caribbean holiday. Shall we settle on a couple of beers some time?
Please keep blogging and take the Google dollar if it means we can read more of your work! I would happily wade through ads to get to the current content.
Pete