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Just some notes on how content is treated on the Internet that newspapers and bloggers will find useful. 

The Default Attitude towards Content on the Internet

1. Content is considered free to read, and free to re-use on other sites.  
2. Content is considered cheap/free to produce.
3. Even when people consider content has some costs they assume advertising pays for it.
4. Any news item will be copied/replicated instantly, half the time (if you’re lucky) with a link back to the original source. If you’re not the original source you’ll not usually be linked to.
5. There’s an overwhelming amount of content so its not valued much at all. Exceptions are discussed later.
6. Any content on a sharing site like youtube loses its value very, very quickly.

 The Importance of Links

1. Links get treated as votes and search engines rank based on these (and other factors). 
2. Links bring new visitors from the sites that link to you.
3. Links also flow trust i.e. a link from a user trusted site increases that user’s trust in your site.   

Content creators have a huge dilemma – Links are the main and cheapest way to grow. And yet, to get links you have to give away content –  

1. Paid content hardly ever gets links.
2. The higher the quality of content the more links you’ll probably get.
3. The more content you produce the more links you’ll probably get (provided quality is maintained).
4. There is a randomness factor in quality – see Jakob Nielsen’s post (the second chart).  

Basically, you have to be giving away content or providing some utility to get links.

Content Strategies - Paid, Niche, Advertising Supported, Expertise, Freemium, Content as the Loss Leader. 

We’re ruling out the case of people who are creating content without expecting to get ANY reward for it.

In the case of people who are trying to benefit from content they create, the content strategies include -

1. Advertising Supported – This does not really work. Especially not if you’re actually producing quality content. Think about it -
   

   Even huge companies that have millions of people producing content for them for free i.e. YouTube and FaceBook are having problems hitting profitability.
   It might be worth re-considering pinning your hopes on advertising.

2. Paid – Close to Ideal.  
3. Niche – This is where you cater to a particular niche. This is one of the smartest content strategies – even more so than paid. Will discuss this later.
4. Expertise – You become one of the authorities in a field.
5. Freemium – A Free Version and a ‘Premium’ Paid version. This is actually what most newspapers are migrating towards.  
6. Content as the Loss Leader – This is the case where you’re giving away content to sell something else i.e. consulting, products, etc.  

Do note that search engines and aggregators take a certain portion of your content’s value (Jakob Nielsen thinks its 98%, me 25%). For newspapers and free content and content that does not cater to traffic of good intent it probably is higher than 50%.

Because good, new content is difficult to discover, search engines and aggregators have a ton of power. Its in their interest to promote the concept that content is not really that valuable.

You’ll see similar trends in facebook apps and iphone apps where the platform and the discovery element are treated as more important than the actual content.

Niche Content

This deserves an entire post. However, will note down a few important points -

1. Niche content is extremely valuable.
2. You become the gate-keeper for the niche.
3. The more niche you go, the less strong competition you have.
4. The more niche you go, the more valuable the customers.
5. Niches are most useful when they are emerging niches.
6. People are usually starving for niche content.

 The Types of Content that Work

1. Breaking a story as it’ll get you a ton of links. Covering a news story 2nd, in comparison, has extremely low value.
2. Niche Content – content that caters to a niche has a ton of value.
3. Expertise Content – Like niche, expertise content is very highly valued. It’s worth nothing that the difference between #1 and #2 is usually a factor of 10. So if you go for the ‘expertise’ strategy make sure you’re the clear #1.
4. Intelligence and Content that helps people make decisions. 
5. High quality content – articles that are well thought out, well researched.
6. Contentious Content - Anything that gets people riled up. It’s a risky strategy – however, when it works it gets a ton of attention.

There are a lot more types of content that work decently. However, the top 5 listed above are some of the very best. 

Closing Thoughts on Content

As things currently stand, Content is Still King.  

1. We are over-run by content. Yet, there is very little high quality content, even less expertise content, and even less niche expertise content.  
2. Content consumers and Content middle-men are constantly pushing to devalue content. However, they are completely dependent on content.
3. Even search engines like Google are rushing to acquire content sources like YouTube and out of print books.

The Internet is full of the siren songs of ‘altruistic donations of content’ and ‘giving away content for something you might get tomorrow’.

Don’t listen.

You can be sure that any content you create and share online, provided it’s good quality content, is making money for someone.

Why should it be anyone other than you making the money?

Filed under: publishing, thoughts Tagged: | future of publishing, paid content