Out With A Bang

Mr Matt Waring and I have yet to come up with a catchy name; but we’re pondering doing our own conference thing come the New Year.

But it’ll have something to do with elephants. As in the big one in the room. The one no-one really likes to mention.

I suspect, like most good ideas in the history of www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and www.addiply.com inspiration will only come via a spot of lubrication.

But, anyway, the point is that we are beginning to think that it is high time we started to address said elephant in room and, grabbing the bull by both horns, ask one of the more fundamental questions of our times: ‘This web thing… how does it actually make anyone any money?’

Three and a bit years into all things www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and I have a few ideas; definite answers are rather harder to come by.

Which is why I’ve now instituted Paul Weller’s ‘Changing Man’ as our theme tune; having been stuck in endless traffic jams of late – either en route to do a panel session at #alikeminds in Exeter or on to HelloDigital at Birmingham the week after – there is one, particular verse that has become etched in my mind as summing up the state of this digital nation of ours…

‘The more I see, the more I know;

‘The more I know, the less I understand;

‘I’m a changing man; built on shifting sands…’

In the three and a bit years since I first started to build a new digital home for myself on the shifting sands of the web, there’s much I’ve come to know. And there’s bits that I’ve come to understand. How both marry together into a sustainable whole is – even now – another matter.

What do I know?

That part of the answer will be in sourcing revenue from relevant advertising that both appeals to and is of service to that particular web community.

That local advertisers like simple, straight-forward tenancy deals.

Give them a price per week or per month and they ‘get’ that.

They have neither the time, the knowledge, the cash or the inclination to tweak their ad words to fit someone else’s SEO.

That there is an under-lying assumption at local/niche level that journalists are owed a full-time living.

That’s a big one.

Why do we assume that the future of news on the web will allow anyone to command a full-time living?

I can get www.myfootballwriter.com/norwichcity and www.myfootballwriter.com/ipswichtown to just about work on the basis that – right now – it is ’staffed’ by two part-time reporters; boys who have a ‘portfolio’ living; that churning out a ‘good read’ once a day in Tom’s case – once before and after every Town game in Dave’s case – is just a part of their working lives.

Right now – without having the revenue opportunities that a fully-fledged MFW network would bring in terms of top-down advertising and content syndication possibilities – I can’t offer them anything more.

They are but part-time curators of their respective sites; we remain endebted to #ncfc for delivering us fresh and rolling content from what was once our audience to keep MFW ticking over.

That I now understand.

That there is no guarantee whatsoever that any of us are going to be granted a full-time living once the sand beneath our feet stops shifting.

But what I also know and understand is that with the right tools at our disposal we can start to the way someone might dig out a part-time living on the web.

Or – and this remains our first rung on the ladder – how someone could start to move beyond that oft-quoted position of ‘not-for-profit’ and get to ‘not-for-loss’.

And I make no apologies for returning to www.TheLichfieldBlog.co.uk but, for me, they are as close as anyone to seeing how a part-time living might work.

Here’s a news story…

http://thelichfieldblog.co.uk/2009/10/30/lichfield-mp-quizzes-government-over-canal-restoration/

… and there’s £60 a month.

And there’s those two boys offering their community a service when it comes to advertising.

For a tenner a month – Lichfield Garrick – you can now place your ad in front of our 11,500-odd readers.

Or else, Lichfield Garrick you can chance your arm with you-know-who in the hope that some mutual SEO magic will get this… http://www.lichfieldgarrick.com/About-the-Garrick/Unforgettable-Film-Season/ – on this www.thelichfieldblog.co.uk via a black box in California.

And, yes, £60 is peanuts. But it’s a start. And how can £60 become £120 become £240, etc, etc…? By HM Government recognising that the people of Lichfield will have specific social, economic and medical needs that HM Government needs to target via appropriate ‘messaging’.

That’s when it starts to work. Or rather that’s when it starts to part-time work. And that’s the bit that I do now understand.

That the web owes no-one a full-time living. Least of all a journalist. �