It had almost become true simply by repetition: last year publishers of all kinds of written and visual content scrambled to declare there’s no business model in ad-funded free content online and that readers must be charged. Alan Rusbridger’s recent Cudlipp lecture was a welcome reminder that the debate is not as simple as that.
And here’s just one example of why the idea that Google is a value-sucking leech doesn’t always ring true.
HowTo.co.uk, an independent multimedia publisher based in Oxfordshire, is doing quite nicely from its relationship with Google and has big hopes for the future – but to successfully monetise its content it’s turned the publishing cycle on its head. Previously only a publisher of printed, how-to guides, in 2009 the company experimented with putting books online for free to see how much money it could make. The results were surprisingly positive.
It then took a leaf out of Demand Media’s book and began using SEO techniques to boost page-rankings and commission content based on search trends and metrics, as well as commissioning writers to give readers exactly what they want, instead of guessing and hoping they might be interested.
It’s still relatively early days, but as Howto’s Chris McVeigh told me over coffee recently: the company made about £120,000 from Google ads last year and it aims to make between £250,000 and £300,000 this year. After that, the target is to make half a million. Not bad for digital revenue alone and only using the much-maligned Google Adsense. It’s not major money by anyone’s standards but for me it shows there is a market for relevent, timely content that serves a very specific purpose. Some more stats:
Now – since our meeting, in fact – HowTo has taken yet another que from Demand and is openly recruiting online, freelance contributors for one-off commissions. It doesn’t pay a fortune – perhaps up to £50 a month, relative to ad impressions – but writers are guaranteed that revenue infinitum.
So Google monetises content better if publishers understand where the money is and commission accordingly: HowTo and Demand consciously publish content based on what readers like and advertisers want to advertise against.
No one is suggesting – as some horrified newspaper types appear to think – that editorial judgement should be replaced by a malevolent algorithmic supercomputer in a “race to the bottom” in which quality is the real victim. But newspaper/magazine groups are multiplatform publishing companies now and should be looking at all remedies to make what they do more relevent and profitable.
Photo credit: Babblingdweeb on Flickr, via a creative commons licence.
