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A case study of Engadget.com at the NUJ's conference on making journalism pay.
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How to make blogs payConrad Quilty-Harper
Me
• Weblogs, Inc. (Engadget.com, Joystiq.com, TUAW.com)
Me
• Mahalo.com Inc (MahaloDaily.com)
Me
• Catch21 Productions
Me
• City University Investigative Journalism MA
• TheMediaBlog.co.uk
Case study
Engadget
• “Gadget blog”
• Founded 2004. Key players Peter Rojas, Jason Calacanis, Brian Alvey
• Peter:15 blog posts a day
• At start: effectively one man coverage of CES
• Low pay, no office. BUT: had stock.
Engadget
• 18 months after launch, Weblogs, Inc. and Engadget.com sold to AOL for ~$25 million
Engadget today
• 50 blog posts/weekday
• More than 50,000 blog posts total
• 100(s?) of millions of page views/month
• Official blog partner of CES
• Adweek Readers’ Choice for Blog of the Decade
Engadget today
Engadget @ CES
• 2005, Peter Rojas
• 2006, Peter and a small team including the CEO, Jason Calacanis
20072008
2009 2010
Engadget @ CES
Me @ Engadget
• June 2005 - December 2007
• ~1,750 blog posts, ~250,000 words
• Blogs, features, interviews, liveblogging, photos, video, “whatever works”
• 2x CES, US iPhone launch, UK iPhone press conference
Engadget
• Owns a niche: best blog covering consumer technology and gadgets
Engadget
• Why does it own this niche?
• Does more technology coverage, better and faster than anyone else
Engadget
• Search engine friendly
• Descriptive titles, body of posts have lots of keywords, effective backlinking, tagging
• Bespoke CMS- Blogsmith, great scale. Grew with the site. TMZ.
• Respecting the community (Reader meet-ups, AskEngadget, The Engadget Show, product giveaways, strong ethical policy).
Engadget
• Always profitable
• $500,000 venture capital from Mark Cuban
• Other writers started on nothing, or $2 a post. I started on $6/post, left on $15.
What works?
• Scale
• Niche content
• Quantity + Quality (in that order)
• SEO
• Grow with your revenue
What works?
• +30% traffic/month, or YOU DIE.
• Niche needs to be big so you can scale.
• Need to cover that niche broadly and better than anyone else.
• Make sure your broad, quality content is highly searchable.
• Make sure your costs are always lower than your revenue.
Money/Advertising
• Adsense
• Banner ads
• Promotions
• Sponsorship of gift guides, events, conference coverage
• See: http://advertising.gawker.com/
Engadget
• “It's not that we're doing this all for you. No, sir or madam -- we're doing this because we are you. “ -Joseph Flately, Engadget.com
• BUT: strong editorial ethics.
Ethics
• Buy your own gear (apart from AOL issue laptops/monitors)
• Give away or return any products given by companies
• Pay for all travel/accommodation
• NYTimes ethics
Engadget
• Liveblogging conferences key to Engadget’s growth and success
Engadget
Summary
• Early mover
• Better than competitors
• Loooooooow cost, high profit
• Aol: incompetence, not interference
• Open content (free iPhone app, full content RSS)
• Other: 20 hour days @CES (fun for me, but worth noting)
What’s the trick?
• Low cost
Engadget
• Similar technique/model works for:
• Weblogs, Inc.
• Gawker Network
• TechCrunch
• BoingBoing, Mashable (Federated Media)