Even before the Web was spun, I was arguing against the standard publishing model for the Internet. (Picture from Wikipedia.)
That model was built on advertising. You aggregated people based on their location, industry, or lifestyle, by covering their interests and advocating for them. You then sold billboards alongside that content and, if charging for the paper, only get back its distribution costs.
What I argued for instead, as early as the mid-1990s, was for a marketplace model. You’re still collecting readers, but your content leads them down a sales funnel, and you’re seeking commissions on those sales from your business partners based on your credibility.
One of my favorite memories is of the 1995 Christmas party of the Atlanta Press Club, where James Cox Kennedy, then the local paper’s publisher, claimed he could repurpose content online by putting different URLs in front of it, like yall.com. I laughed so hard I cried. I nearly doubled over.
By the time publishers expressed interest in the marketplace model, of course, it had become useless. This was thanks to Doubleclick, which was founded in Atlanta and later bought by Google. Google made it possible for anyone to aggregate their own audience and buy it at a run-of-network rate. The fact that you’d need 10 times more impressions to get the same impact was seen as a feature, not a bug. And the price of those ads continued falling, thanks to the Web’s unlimited inventory.
A few companies have since tried the marketplace model. Red Ventures comes to mind. They bought what was left of the CNET empire, and have tried to run it for commissions from business partners. But it doesn’t work. The vast majority of money comes from the few industries, like telephony and credit cards, that understand affiliate marketing. There’s not enough money there to pay what it takes to get honest, well-done contributions. You have also blown your credibility, which is all a publisher really owns.
I would like a propose a community model.
News content is in front of the firewall. Newsletters are supported by ads and act as outreach. Behind it you can sell podcasts, video, events, and market research. You build it on a social platform so paid members can interact with each other as well as your writers and newsmakers. You sell memberships by subscription, events through ticketing, research on commission from credible sources.
How much you charge depends on the inverse of community size. A small industry community will charge members more than an urban community. It’s in line with the old rule that newspapers gave you a lot for a quarter, magazines a bit less for a few dollars, and newsletters even less for hundreds.
This is not something I want $1 billion to build. This is something that should be done organically, slowly, with minimal initial investment. Substack is free. WordPress is free. Always use open source tools. Get together with other communities to customize them for the industry.
The collapse of everything else means the community model has a chance. I would suggest that Automattic, which owns WordPress, might put a few dollars into selling a custom tool set for the industry.
A Web community, as opposed to a publication, is a two-way street. It’s focused on the needs and interests of its audience, nothing else. It can start, as blogging did, as Substack did, with one writer.
Let a thousand communities bloom.
