Man Is The Media.
Any Bloggers Out There Using Print As A Revenue Source? No? There Ought To Be
January 12th, 2009 by Martin
Thinking a bit more on the topic of my previous post, about RSS-to-PDF conversion services, I would like to propose a way for these services to make actual money. Like I already said, I hardly think anyone will pay to get their feeds as PDF attachments over email, as many free RSS-to-email services are available already.
But, as most bloggers and blog-readers know, there has been a feud going on between journalists and bloggers since the birth of blogging itself. I won’t go in to that here, but just mention that the origin of this dispute is related to the transition of news – and the production of news – going from ink to link (a fancy way of saying from print media to online media). Nonetheless, the production of a blog vs. the production of a newspaper, is almost identical, except for layout, print and distribution. Sure you have bad bloggers who would never be hired by any newspaper. But guess what, we also see bad journalists out there!
Now, we all know (or should know) that newspapers are betting a lot on (localized) websites to make up for lost print revenue. But how many bloggers are betting on print to increase their reach, exposure, and even ad revenue? My guess is a big round zero.
But as we saw in my last post, these simple tools (FeedJournal and Tabbloid) actually do a pretty well job converting never-ending feeds into something that looks like newspapers in a PDF. There’s still plenty of room for improvement, but, like I already said, I found this to be a much more valuable use than merely replacing my feeds with email attachments.
Introducing the ultimate Blog-to-PDF service
Here’s how it should work: The service would read a blog’s feed, and import the whole thing (text, links, images) into a simple online wizard. The blogger could rank the various posts according to relevance (which would translate into page numbers in print). Other options include selecting date ranges, include/exclude posts, tags and authors (if there were multiple authors) and choose from a few template page layouts and colors. Finally he smacks a logo on the front cover, and his content is now a pretty unique digital newspaper.
In just a few minutes, the blogger now has a compiled product, a digital publication comparable to most newspapers out there. I’m not suggesting the blogger goes ahead and prints and distributes this. That would be silly and bad for the environment. Instead he should use online publishing services to showcase his content to new audiences and give new readers a chance to read a digest of his blog in a readerfriendly and familiar format. He could even use print-on-demand services to distribute print copies for anyone who wants a physical copy. An ad-service could be hooked up to deliver ads to support the whole thing, or he could charge a few bucks per issue. Once the blogger has setup everything as he wants, the newspaper could come out with any frequency he chooses, and readers could become regular subscribers on any terms he has chosen.
Now, while I know this idea might be a bit out there and hardcore bloggers probably won’t bother reading this far – or can’t see the screen at this point from laughing so hard. But a product like I imagine above shows you how closely related blogging and journalism is, and such a service could almost bridge the gap effectively.
It’s all about the content, and good content will always work in a variety of formats and venues. Imagine all those bloggers out there who for years on end have spilled their guts in billions of posts. Some of that writing is definitely worth revisiting, and I for one would like to pay for a service that easily allows me to convert my blog into a beautiful and customized publication with the best of my writing.
Wouldn’t you?
