So Jason Calacanis, founder of Silicon Alley Reporter, has launched his blog trade publishing group, Weblogs, Inc. He's put up a blurb on the site, Wired News has done a story with a predictably sceptical quote from me, and Jeff Jarvis weighs in. Below, my list of the five things wrong with the Weblogs, Inc. approach.
The Calacanis idea: create a platform for "B2B" niche sites, charge those sites for common services such as production and ad sales, and share net revenues 50-50 with the writers.
Now B2B weblog publishing makes a good deal of sense. Glenn Fleishman's wifinetnews.com has established itself as the central hub of the wireless internet industry. Jim Romenesko serves the journalism trade. I'm not particularly interested in trade publishing myself, but that's simply because it bores me, and I'd been hoping that the acroynym B2B would fall out of the language. But there's no reason why trade publishing shouldn't move gradually to the web, and to low-cost web publishing models pioneered by weblogs. If Verticalnet's niche B2B sites failed after the crash, it was more to do with over-ambition and excessive cost than any inherent problems with online trade pubs.
Nevertheless, I think Calacanis is making a few mistakes, and will have to alter course if he's to be successful. Disclosure: although I have zero interest in "B2B" publishing, I am close to people who are also planning ventures which would compete with the Calacanis company.
[1.] A standard publishing platform sounds like a good idea, but the best writers won't want to bury themselves beneath a weblogsinc.com subdomain, and a standard design. Web publishers have to remember that writers take satisfaction, not in the paltry recompense for web writing, but in the boost it can give to their personal brands, and the freelance income that comes from a strong web profile. About.com has several hundred "guides" who publish within its bounds; a very few, such as the pregnancy guide, have broken out to become occasional TV commentators. But most remain anonymous. The less the psychological satisfaction of the writer, the more a publisher has to provide in financial compensation.
[2.] Revenue share sounds all well and good. But, as iSyndicate discovered when it offered writers a 50-50 split of syndication revenue, it's hard to manage expectations, particularly if the proposition is hyped, a temptation Jason Calacanis finds hard to resist. A writer thinks he or she can give up the day job, tries for a freelance web writing career on the promise of a revenue split, and there's hell to pay when they get their first check -- for $6.23, once shared operating costs have been deducted.
[3.] Aside from the difficulty in managing expectations, there's another flaw with revenue shares: it aligns the writer's incentives with variables they can't control. The writers pay a price if the shared ad sales rep does a bad job. About.com experimented with revenue share for writers, and has reverted back to a monthly stipend, plus a bonus for pageviews and pageview growth. That's a better tested model.
[4.] Web media is hard enough, without having to build the software too. I simply don't understand why Calacanis has developed his own weblog publishing system, rather than use Moveable Type. MT, which we use for our consumer sites such as Gawker and Gizmodo, is extremely powerful, and does 90% of what one would want in a pro blog site. Calacanis says his publishing software is "2X" as good. I'll believe that when I see it. MT has a community of users whose feedback is constantly improving the service, and a community of developers making plug-ins. MT is too far ahead. Why compete in software too?
[5.] There may be such a thing as too nichey. In the absence of marketing budgets, pro blogs rely on word-of-mouth and inbound links to attract an audience. A publisher should focus enough to attract passionate readers, but the niche needs a critical mass of audience in order to generate buzz. Overheard, on West 4th St: "Hey, you've just got to check out gridcomputing.weblogsinc.com." I don't think so. Toward a Weblogging Empire [Wired News] Blogbiz: Bubble boy or baron? [Jeff Jarvis]
