Can wine bloggers make money through reader financial donations? Maybe…
Ever since around the time I began blogging (May 2008), a dominating part of the conversation has been whether or not online content providers can make enough money to make their endeavor worthwhile.
Early in that time period, there were hopeful prognosticators—mainly younger bloggers themselves, and a handful of would-be consultants who hoped to make money advising them about the ins and outs of social media—who believed, earnestly, that sources of income would open up to online content providers, even if it wasn’t entirely clear how that would happen.
This was a kind of magical thinking, of course, but it could be forgiven in light of the immense difficulties print journalism was then undergoing. Newspapers and magazines were facing the severest financial crunch of their lifetimes, as revenue from advertising—always a print publication’s biggest source of income—fell off the cliff. The promoters of online content argued that this was because print publishing had reached the end of its useful lifetime: peering into a cloudy future, they claimed that print would go the way of gaslight lamps, horse-drawn buggies and slide rulers. And because print was about to go extinct, they said, all that advertising money, added to by additional revenues brought in by subscriptions, would flow to online content providers.
I replied, in this blog and elsewhere, that this was unlikely to be the case. Print journalism was indeed suffering, but it wasn’t because of the rise of blogging, it was because of the Great Recession. Advertisers pulled back, not because they were casting an adoring gaze upon online publishers, but because they were struggling to stay alive: they had first to cover the basics, like salaries and rent, before they could lavish money on page ads.
Well, print is coming back, isn’t it? But what remains a conundrum for online content providers is how to make money. Consumers have proven over and over that they do not want to pay to see things online. They feel that they’re already paying enough to get online in the first place, and besides, there’s such an infinitude of websites that, if one of them gets greedy and starts charging a per-view fee, there are always a billion others that remain free.
In the world of wine, there admittedly are a few sites that get away with charging money, Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator and Vinous among them. But these are outliers—peculiarities of the wine industry, which has enough ardent consumers and trade members who are willing to pay $100 a year for access. As for the rest of the bloggers, theirs remains a labor of love, not one of potential profit.
Some bloggers as a result have turned to accepting ads on their sites. Ads don’t bring in a lot of money, but they bring in some, and if the blogger can increase his numbers, the amount of money might go up. But the same consumers who refuse to pay money for access to online content also don’t like advertisements on the sites they go to. This is the reason behind Tivo, which “eats commercials” (in their own words), and it is also the rationale behind services such as Adblock, which allows users to “surf the web without annoying ads.” This is great news for web surfers, but it’s a disaster for content creators: they finally figured out how to make a little money, and along comes this company that prevents their ads from being seen. It’s also a disaster for the companies that advertise; a honcho from the Interactive Advertising Bureau called ad-blocking sites “an unethical, immoral, mendacious coven,” extreme but, under the circumstances, understandable language.
Ad-busting companies such as Adblock certainly don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. That would not be helpful to their own bottom lines. What to do? In a really interesting development, Adblock just announced they will integrate Flattr, a Swedish company that calls itself “a social microdonations service” by which content consumers can make voluntary “donations” to websites they like. This eliminates the need of the provider to accept advertising (which most providers don’t like to do anyway), and also increases the depth and complexity of the relationship between provider and consumer. Users would set up a “PayPal-like account,” put money into it, and from those funds providers would be paid, using a special Flattr algorithm based on things like the duration of the user’s stay on the site.
Will the Adblock-Flattr model work? Flattr co-founder Peter Sunde said, on Fast Company, that the new model promises “to help artists, creators, journalists, everyone, to earn a fair living from their work. Not to be abused.” That sounds pretty good to me.
“Consumers have proven over and over that they do not want to pay to see things online. They feel that they’re already paying enough to get online in the first place, and besides, there’s such an infinitude of websites that, if one of them gets greedy and starts charging a per-view fee, there are always a billion others that remain free.”
With the 1990s advent of Web browsers and the rise of the “dot.coms,” free content became the lure for the public to go online.
The online audience of “innovators” and “early adopters” was so small that the paid media didn’t perceive a risk to its bread-and-butter paid subscription revenue or advertising revenue business models.
Paid media taught the public to expect “free” online content. And the public obliged.
“In the world of wine, there admittedly are a few sites that get away with charging money, Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator and Vinous among them. But these are outliers—peculiarities of the wine industry, which has enough ardent consumers and trade members who are willing to pay $100 a year for access.”
Wine editorial reflects our national economy’s general trend toward the formation of oligopolies across industries.
If the editorial has sufficiently high “utility” (such as reviews for newly-released, small production, hard-to-find, high-scoring “trophy” wines), then readers will gladly pay for it.
Use this link to access an article excerpting the book titled “Free: The Future of Radical Price” by Chris Anderson:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123335678420235003.html
Regarding Adblock: The NY Times did a study on how long web pages took to load on mobile platforms with ads and without them. Pretty surprising (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/technology/personaltech/ad-blockers-mobile-iphone-browsers.html). At home, if you have a DSL web connection, then you notice the increased speed with AdBlock. Blocking ads may not be “fair,” in that it gives you something for nothing, but it definitely adds convenience.
For some writers, inventors and artists, Kickstarter has been a successful place to get projects off the ground in the areas of art, journalism, publishing,food and photography. All of which could cross paths with the craft beverage industry. The only one media related example I can recall was Alder Yarrow’s book which gained over $24,000 in funds to publish.
As seen here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/209816791/the-essence-of-wine-book-project
As journalism takes to the online space and producing content is more affordable; podcasters, online publishers, and the like have taken to Patreon. (https://www.patreon.com/) A place where creators can receive recurring funding from those who patron their services. If the content is well worth consuming I don’t see why an author/creator couldn’t raise the funds to continue their passion projects.
I think the answer to your general premise is ‘maybe.’ If a wine blogger believes that their content is good enough then they should put it out there and ask people to pay for it. I made that decision five years ago and haven’t looked back. There are only a couple donation boxes I know of and it surprises me that these writers don’t value their work to the extent as someone like Charlie Olken does. The vast majority of wine bloggers write infrequently and have narrow if little audience. If a trip to WBC is the highlight of your year then I am afraid nobody will consider your work relevant.
Producing quality content that matters is extremely difficult. If you want to be considered worthy of people paying for your content you need to regularly demonstrate that it is a cut above everything else and meets a specific need they can’t find elsewhere.
“Well, print is coming back, isn’t it?”
Not according to the Pew Research Center:
http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/state-of-the-news-media-2015/
From The Wall Street Journal (August 3, 2015):
“For New York Times, a Gamble on Giveaways”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-new-york-times-a-gamble-on-giveaways-1438556347
Excerpt:
“When New York Times Co. launched its NYT Now mobile app last year, hopes were high internally that it would appeal to younger readers and ease them into the habit of paying for quality news.
“But after a few months, it was clear that the subscription service, a cheaper and slimmed-down version of the main Times app, wasn’t meeting expectations. In the end, ONLY ABOUT 20,000 PEOPLE AGREED TO PAY $8 A MONTH FOR IT, well short of the newspaper’s target of 200,000, said two people familiar with the matter. In May, 13 months after its launch, the Times made NYT Now free.
“The change signaled a shift in digital strategy at the Times toward courting young readers with free content rather than trying to turn them into subscribers right away. …
“The moves, however, leave the Times with a delicate balancing act: The paper is trying to boost its Web and mobile audience to bolster ad sales without undermining a steadily growing digital subscription business that has drawn almost one million customers and contributed 11% of the company’s revenue last year. The newspaper’s top digital executives argue that aggressively going after younger readers on platforms outside of the Times will persuade some to subscribe.
. . .
“The Times is trying to address a problem faced by all traditional publishers, including The Wall Street Journal: Younger readers now get their news from a wider variety of nontraditional sources — and it is usually free. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that six out of 10 people between the ages of 18 and 34 said they got some political news on Facebook, compared with just 17% from the Times.”
[CAPITALIZATION added for emphasis. ~~ Bob]
Dude!
It is comin’ back in the same way that vinyl is.
~~ Bob