I was reading this yesterday, about the founder of Tumblr and the concept and history of that company. Interesting stuff. Everything like that has a slightly different twist on how to do what it is that people want to do on the web.
What is that? Communicate. Share. Promote themselves or their work. The internet as the big billboard by the road or small journal passed around a table of friends. Pretty simple when you get down to it.
So why all the different products to do this? Make it easy! Make it edgy! Make it socially connected! Make it possible to do from my mobile device! Make it mostly about photos! Make it scalable (this means, as my business or activity grows, the site and what it can do can keep up with that). Etc Etc.
So anyway, I’m reading about Tumblr, which I don’t use myself but I do encounter it looking at links of others. What’s the problem each and every one of these companies run up against?
They get investment money while starting up or originally expanding their company. Everyone is wildly excited by the possible success of the company and the company is often successful in terms of adoption by users and their enthusiasm. And then someone asks, “yeah, but how is this going to make money?”
Ooops. Oh yeah, I’m sure we can do that, everyone involved says.
Thereby changing the entire thrust of what the business does.
Let me say that again.
Thereby changing the entire thrust of what the business does.
They stop trying to create fabulous products that are wonderful and everyone loves them and start tinkering with what they have to grab even pennies of profits. And how?
Often by adding advertising because that’s a tried and not-so-true model on the web (it currently works by throwing as much advertising in as many different ways on the screen and telling the advertisers that they’ll be given targeted eyeballs. It takes a lot of eyeballs and a lot of advertisements to make that work. Not a model that will work for small low-traffic websites.
Let’s be real here.
Why is this the only thing web companies see as a way to make money and thereby flourish and continue? Or at least keep investors interested and happy?
Take something like Tumblr or as an extreme example, WordPress which is what you’re looking at here. Maybe throw Blogger, now a Google-owned company into the mix. Both extremely well-done, useful, very accessible web-blogging type tools.
How about this? Free is good. A step up with desirable services – for money.
Sell your product. Then the question is not – how to mush ads into pages where people don’t want ads (but let them do that if they want!), but rather how much is the customer willing to pay for your now-fabulous product?
I like that beautiful sweater, but not $300 worth. I’d pay $100 and be ok about it. I’d jump up quick like a bunny and plop my money down if it was $50.
Given the recent successes by many to use crowd source funding like Kickstarter, maybe people are willing to plop their money down for products and services and ideas that are presented to them so they can see the value of them. It’s not always about being FREE!
I read this article and wondered why advertising is the only model thought to be viable for creating revenue for these businesses. Time for a new model so we can get past it and onto a new thing altogether. This problem has been going on since the dot.com days and it’s the same thing over and over again. C’mon really smart young folks! You can think up something new!
