Over a series of Posts I hope to explore the various methods of generating revenue from online content – looking at the various issues, and pitfalls along the way.

The Project

My idea is a website that offers short, exclusive video interviews with bands – often bands that would not get mainstream coverage elsewhere (e.g. radio and television) but have a small, but cult, following.

The Money Making Options

• Paywall
• Standard Banner Ads
• Ad-content (more on this in future posts)

Paywalls

First, then – the big talking point of the moment, Paywalls.

I would not even consider a paywall model, were I providing standard, general interest news that could be read anywhere. Why would people want to pay for my content, if they could read it for free on a rival site? The beauty of the internet is the sheer volume of material out there, and the means by which to get at it. Websites, RSS feeds, email, social networks – they are all serious competition now for the news outlet.

The Times is attempting to do exactly this with their paywall. Initial figures are not healthy (losing 2 thirds of their online readership). Of course, that means a third of their readers are happy to pay £2 a week for online news – and those figures may eventually work in their favour, who knows. This is The Times, however, they had more readers to play with in the first place. A small local paper that attempted a paywall would be looking at 33% of not-very-much – an impossible situation.

There have been more successful attempts at a Paywall, all of them offering something unique to the reader (the old ad-men phrase of the USP) be it useful information (in the example of the FT or Wall Street Journal), or “celeb-toriety” (right wing commentator RushLimbaugh in the USA). In fact, many of us already accept paywalls as a way of life – Sky TV subscriptions anyone? Again – offering something that you cannot get for free elsewhere.

The question really is not, WILL people pay for “exclusive” content, but how much?

The Content

• The content I am offering is exclusive video interviews with bands.
• These will be video interviews, which are quick to digest, interesting to watch and entertaining.
• The bands I am interviewing are small enough not to get mainstream media coverage (radio or TV) hence the content has a unique value
• The bands have a cult following within their field and there is a genuine interest in their activities
• Content will tend to gathered in batches (ie at festivals) so there is an opportunity to promote interest between similar bands

The Audience

• This audience are not a business audience – they are music fans (teenagers, early 20′s) who consume their magazines, news etc online via social networks, websites and apps.
• They will be happy shopping online, and in theory, would be comfortable using Paypal to sign up to a site
• However, would they see the value of this content? And how much would they be willing to pay for it?

Maintaining the Exclusivity

Image via Wikipedia

I would go to great lengths to maintain the exclusivity of this content – attending small niche festivals where no other media is interviewing, locking the content as private on video website Viddler,  and embedding it behind a subscription page on my own site.

The downside of this is that the content itself cannot be shared, passed on or promoted – only the link to the page – for which you would need to have paid to access.

A new client currently has a profile, which they actively use, and a Group. However, I wonder if this is the most effective way of marketing their company, besides which, having 2 searchable profiles (group and page) is confusing to the searching user and hard work to maintain.

I am proposing they focus instead on a Fan page.  However, with more than 2500 members of the group, moving away from it is a big decision. Or is it?

I have started investigating the pro’s and con’s of a Page, against a Group, and I am still convinced that, for a business with ongoing activity, a Page is the better option.

• A Page is Open: once a person “likes” the page, updates will then appear in their News Stream. The only way for Group members to find out what you are doing is for you to invite them to an event or message them. Many people are now event and message weary on Facebook.
• Cross Promotion: a persons activities within  a Group are not posted onto their wall – so other people are not exposed to the group or it’s activities. A fan page, however, is open and Likes, Comments etc, appear on that persons wall. This leads to free promotion to their friends.
• Easier to join – like buttons on sites etc automatically add people
• Clear message – Groups can turn into a free for-all with random people posting random things on the wall. The Group messages are then lost in a sea of irrelevant chat. A Fan page allows the reader to pick JUST the page owner, or page owner and others. The message is more focussed.
• Remote posting/monitoring – You cannot post to a group remotely (from a 3rd party programme like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, only a Page) For round the clock management and monitoring, a Fan Page is easier to monitor, along with Twitter and other accounts, from one location.
• Analytics: Fan Pages come with detailed analytics of members, interactions, quality of posts etc so you can monitor how your page is doing. Groups do not have this luxury.

How to make the jump:

1. First thing is to HIDE the profile – we still need it as a base for the new fan page – but we don’t want more people to join it.
2. Launch a fan page, Anyone now searching for the product will find the Fan Page NOT the profile – this is what we want.
3. Promote the fan page on the Group and  the profile page encouraging people to LIKE
4. Place a button on every page of the website/other social networks, which people can simply click to “like”
5. Phase out activity on the group but continue to advertise the Fan page
6. Close the group.

It may seem like a risky move but the effort currently going into promoting through the group, which people are not reading, interacting with or mentioning on their own site, seems wasteful.

Here’s how I sourced the data for my Datamud project, a look at the statistics behind the big UK music music festivals.

1. SEARCH

Official Site

The last thing you want to do is call up a press officer asking for some stats, when they are there, for all to see, on the website. Dig around in any areas labelled information, statistics, FOI and Press Area. Often companies will post useful statistics if they are often requested,but they won’t necessarily make those statistics easy to find.

The Glastonbury Festival Educational Resources area is rich with information. A series of PDF’s contain details about every element of the event – from crowd management, security, stalls, sanitation etc. As the UK’s largest festival is is often the subject of assignments and reports. This was useful as I looked for recycling information to back up the organisers claims that they are a green event.

Google

Google is a wonderful tool – it not only searches websites, but also blogs, news postings, pictures and videos. It’s well worth checking the NEWS section as someone else may have already done similar research and posted the stats online.

Unfortunately a search can return thousands of pages, so you need to be smart when submitting your search. Inverted commas around a phrase will search for those words as written, but combined with simple searches it can be a useful tool.

e.g. “were arrested” 2010

Don’t forget to check the later pages of the search too – sometimes you will find some juicy stuff buried on the less Google juicy sites.

Governing Bodies

Often Google won’t be able to pick up deep linked pages, or documents embedded or linked in pages so it’s always worth looking at official agencies and Governing bodies websites too.
Councils and the Government are now much better at archiving their agendas and minutes and whilst the search facilities are still pretty archaic and frustrating, it’s a start.

None of the various police forces websites had the crime stats that I needed, although they do often have documents that may be of use e.g. Leicestershire Police

Search / Scraping Sites

Although I did not use this during this assignment, in retrospect using a site like Scraperwiki to access data from an official site would have saved me a lot of time. I could have used it to draw together all the line ups, for example, instead of a long winded cut-and-paste process, and plenty of cleaning up.

Nowadays there are also sites that have done a lot of the work for you, by monitoring official sites and databases and turning the data into an easy to handle format.

First stop should be What Do They Know – a site geared up around FOI requests (more on this in a moment) but also you should definitely visit TheyWorkForYou (I set up an alert in regards to the Glastonbury festival, which would tell me whenever it was mentioned. My hope was that the crime levels, or crowd management would be raised at some point and reference to information given.)

Interest Sites

I mentioned Google News search above, but it’s also worth looking for sites that deal with the specific subject area. They may have useful resources but may not appear on page 1 of a Google Search.

When I was compiling lists of the bands playing the various festivals, often the official sites were clunky or the names were shown on a JPG of the official event poster. However festival news/interest sites, such as EFestivals, present the information in a more useful way

2. ASK PRESS OFFICE

For archive or very up to date statistics, often a call to the press office is necessary.

I wanted to find out more about historical weather forecasts so a visit to the MetOffice website informed me that they had a library of data that could be accessed. Within one quick email conversation I was furnished with a link to a host of archive weather data with records often going back to the 1700′sIn CSV format, these were simple to manipulate and visualise.

Press Offices are used to to dealing with requests for information, its their job, as well as being happy to help you meet deadlines.

3. FOI

FOI requests are for those tricky bits of data othat an organisation is less reluctant to send out (for time, size, sensitivity etc issues). I set ONE FOI request, for crime stats to a police force, foolishly thinking this would be quicker than contacting the press office directly. It was not.

Use these if you do not need the information urgently (it can take up to a month from start to finish)

Interesting article on FOI Requests from Channel 4

4. CROWDSOURCE

Of course carrying out ryour own research is one way of gathering data, but this project relied on the theory that “many hands make light work”.

I wanted to find out how much it would cost to see the various mainstage bands, if you were to see them on their own headline tours. I could have spent DAYS trawling the internet ticketing sites (both UK and international) collecting the data. Instead I started a public Google Docs spreadsheet. Through the social networks I encouraged people to enter the prices of tickets they had recently bought. The database was soon a third full, and a chance message from an old friend (the man behind Ents24) completed the rest by gaining access to their database.

Google Docs is a fantastic way of collaborating and getting large jobs completed.

5. I GOT MY CALCULATOR OUT

This can be hard work if you are dealing with a lot of data, but for me it was feasible

I wanted to assess the nationalities of the various bands, and compare the overall nationalties of the different lineups. This involved a lot of searches on Myspace and Wikipedia (still both very useful resources for the facts about bands) and using visualisation Software Tableau.

In retrospect I should have doubled this database up with the ticket prices one, and asked people to fill in the nationalities of the bands as well. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

* Polls work. People love them. Asking people for their opinion on something gets them excited.

Image via CrunchBase

A recent poll asking simply “Which band are you most looking forward to seeing” not only attracted a lot of visits, but also a lot of click-throughs to the ticket selling page. (I’d put links for all the shows below the link to the poll).

* Talk / reply / comment – responding to people’s comments is a sure fire way to drum up interest in what you are doing. Even a simple acknowledgement of their response it better than nothing

* Horses for Courses: Different bands draw traffic from different social networks. All blog links are placed on Facebook, Twitter and Myspace (which never delivers). The header is also fed onto the venues ticketing website.

Facebook and Twitter do pull in readers, but it entirely depends on the band. Almost 100% of the traffic to a Carl Barat story came from Twitter, whereas the bands Exit Calm and Band of Horses pulled in traffic from Facebook. Older bands seem to generate the majority of traffic from the ticketing website onto the blog, not vice versa.

I always tag the bands in the post  – LIKE them on facebook, befriend them on Twitter – then use an @ to link to their page.

* Buzzwords are great – think, what will people be searching for on a particular day? Events that are going on, celebrities? Without unnecessary shoehorning, a post about the World Cup  or Glastonbury festival can be very effective.

* Double tag: working for a venue, it is quite easy to “double tag” a post – i.e. talk about 2 different bands in one post. A review of last nights show, doubled with a review of this evenings works well.

* Multiple tag: a new format of post I am experimenting with is the “news roundup”. By following all the bands due to play the venue over the next few months, I put together a “Road to Wolves” post with smal tidbits, links etc about those bands. One post in, and it has proved popular.

WHAT NOT TO DO

* false promises: it seem to be clever to write the headline “Meet s0-and-so’s support band” – for an introductory piece about the smaller bands on the bill. With a lot of visits I pressumed people were generally interested in finding out more about the support band. Unfortunately a high bounce rate and a glance at the search words (Meet so-and so”) proved that people wanted to know how to meet the headliners. The post was offering something it could not deliver.

This is an investigation into some of the facts and figures of the UK music festivals.

The site will be updated over the next few days, so stay tuned and, of cours,e any feedback, much appreciated.

http://www.datamudwordpress.com

I’m thinking crime stats, value for money, weather forecasts etc.

I’d love to know what kind of stats would be useful to you, as a festival-goer, either when deciding which festival to go to, or preparing for your trip!

Any ideas welcome – and I will keep you up to date with my progress!

I have found a massive anti-campaign towards “ghost” or “proxy”  blogging, i.e. writing a blog under someone else’s name.  This is often seen as deception and goes against the transparent ethic of blogging.  However it seems to be big business with more companies realizing they need to be online but don’t have the skills or the time to do it.

What about corporate blogging on behalf of a company? Is this equally deceptive?

There is another issue: editorial integrity.

If you are being paid to blog you are simply a copywriter, right? You are not being paid to criticise the company or the brand – you must toe the line.

Are any companies embracing transparency to the point where they are happy to see their own company blog attack them?

I’d love your thoughts. Thank you.

Authority 2.0 (Birmingham City University, 28 April, 2010) was a fascinating event, organised by the MA Social Media students to investigate how the UK’s police forces should be using social media, AND to discuss some of the very real problems today’s photographers face at the hands of officers in this age of terrorist suspicion.

For me the panel discussion, 2 photographers (@KarenStrunks and Christian Payne (aka @Documentally) and 2 representatives from West Midlands Police (CI Mark Payne Force CID and Inspector Ian Grundy, Counter Terrorism Unit), was the highlight of the day by sparking a series of interesting debates about freedom of access, how the police handle the public and training of their officers.

The discussion started with a, quite frankly, horrifying video recorded by an anonymous photographer as he was subject to some very unecessary harrassment, first by a Community Support Officer, and then by a police officer, as he tried to take pictures in the street. Accused of being “suspicious” and being ordered to give his details, there was mention of “terrorism” and an eventual arrest, which ended in release 8 hours later.

If this is as commonplace as it seems, then I am right behind photographers in their fight for acceptance among the police force – and, give them their due, the officers present at the event were just as keen to see a closer relationship. Unfortunately though, these senior members of the force are as likely to have to deal with a suspicous photographer on the beat, as they are parking in Livery Stret Car Park in Birmingham and NOT getting a ticket (in joke, sorry).

Instead, the message that people with cameras in the street are NOT necessarily scoping out a terrorist target, needs to be filtered down to the officers on the street, the Community Support teams and the private security firms – all of whom have been accused of bothering snappers in the past.

Karen Strunks also highlighted that current poster campaigns asking the public to be vigilant and report anything suspicious has turned everyone into a wannabe Jack Bauer eager to challenge even the most innocent of activities.

But surely terrorists ARE walking the streets armed with SLR’s sussing out the best angle for attack? In reality, probably not.

West Midlands Police admit they now use Google Earth and Street View to check out a property before a raid, instead of sending officers or the helicopter – it’s easier, and a hell of a lot cheaper. So why would your common-or-garden terrorist be any different?

It seem, however, that officers on the streets are sadly behind the times, and sometimes out of touch with modern developments. And is it any wonder? Many forces refuse to allow even their communications department onto Twitter, and bobbies on the beat do not have access to the internet whilst they are out and about (although West Midlands Police are looking into Android phones to solve this problem). Particular mention, however, to CI Mark Payne who DOES have an official Twitter account, which he uses for both professional, and personal tweets.

The discussion also revealed some more interesting developments being investigated by the force, including a website where the public can upload pictures to help them solve crimes.

However, it seems we’re still a way off yet from the “police online” levels reached by the force in Beijing who, as we heard during an earlier presentation. They have designed a cartoon officer who moves across your computer screen with a friendly warning should you venture into forbidden web territory – and judging by China’s current attitude towards content – the poor guy must be exhausted.

So in this social networking world we find we have more contacts than ever before. The number of names in a PR’s Facebook and Twitter account now outnumber their rolodexes or filofaxes 10-1, and it’s easier to contact them all to get the message out there.

Spend any time at online-friendly events, Tweetups, social media cafe’s and the like, and soon you will have friend requests and follows coming out of your ears.

Back in the day, a journalist would boast of a mighty contacts book stuffed full of MP’s and councillors, music stars and agents – and having an “in” with these people was worth something, but do contacts have the same worth today?

A regular criticism of social networks is the erosion of the word “friendship”: I call him a friend, yet I may not speak to “that bloke I met in Manchester 2 years ago” ever again. Does 1000 friends on Facebook equal the personal mobile phone numbers of half the Cabinet? Of course it doesn’t. It’s simply a numbers game – the more the merrier.

I am seeing more and more examples of people, employed by companies and being expected to use their personal social network accounts to promote the product. Are companies employing people because of the size of their friends list? Should we be expected to USE our friends, for our employer?

I admit I am guilty of using my personal social networks to promote my DJing work, but I feel this is acceptable to a point as it is “ME” doing it .. but recently I was asked to promote an 3rd party event through my own accounts. I balked slightly, reluctant to thrust this event onto my friends, relatives and acquaintances, and limited it to my “music” network instead.

By the very nature that some people will use their friends as social (and business) currency, does it prove the point that contacts ain’t what they used to be?