The Web is a phenomenal tool for aggregating audiences around specific topics. The limits of geography and time don't apply. People can assemble around any issue or interest, no matter how popular or obscure. And the audience does this on its terms. It will gather, transform, and dissipate whenever and however it choses. You can't fight this, but you can work with it.
You should certainly build content and community through your own Web properties, but you must also expand beyond the walled garden. This model requires dissemination of content across RSS feeds, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other relevant social networks and platforms. The audience is distributed. Your content should be, too.
It's a gamble, no doubt. There's a significant level of discomfort that has to be acknowledged, but having lived through experiments and long discussions on the merits (or lack thereof) of micropayments, pay walls, banner advertising, and sponsorships, I've concluded the only way to build a business around digital content is to deliver valuable material -- stuff that entertains, informs, broadens perspectives, or inspires conversation -- and then use the relationship you've developed with your audience to convert a small percentage of your passive users into active consumers.
For this to work, you have to earn your audience and nurture it every day.
Pros of this model
- You're harnessing the energy of the Web's natural distribution.
- You're meeting your audience in the hubs where its already congregating.
- Content = marketing. No need to hire marketers when content is spreading your message.
Cons of this model
- Embracing distribution means relinquishing control.
- The content-container-advertising system is blown apart by the Web. You can't sell advertising against container-free content, so CPM, CPC and site sponsorships are, at best, secondary revenue streams.
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