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Nov

7

For Wide Open 2.0


From the Online Journalism Review, “Buying in, not selling out”:

When you sell an ad on your website, you aren’t selling an advertiser favorable coverage or a selection of stories tailored to make them look better than they are. (Unless you’re a shill who’s into doing those things.) You’re simply selling the advertiser a designated number of pixels on your webpage, upon which they can post something that they want your readers to see.

You don’t need to promise an advertiser positive coverage to close a sale. But you do need to know your readership: your traffic, their demographics and their buying patterns, so those potential advertisers can see how exposure to your readers will help them make more sales. (If you’re not comfortable building your own reader surveys, using tools such as SurveyMonkey, try a ready-made survey from the Blog Reader Project.)

“Advertising does not necessarily change what you do,” said Xeni Jardin, BoingBoing.net contributor (and OJR editorial advisory board member) at the panel. “We have advertising from Sony Blu Ray and still have a robust discussion of DRM issues.”

Jardin makes a great point. Even if you feel too conflicted, personally, to write about advertisers, your internal conflict won’t keep your readers from writing about them. Your strong community leadership can help cultivate a forum where no one buys favor and everyone feels the opportunity to comment.

Strong community leadership. You mean, like…say…four independent bloggers who worked their asses off to debate and make something work so that they’d cultivated a forum where no one buys favor and everyone feels the opportunity to comment?

I must be living in Backwardsland, I guess.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 8:56 pm November 7th, 2007 in Blogging, Media, Wide Open 

Comments

5 Responses to “For Wide Open 2.0”

  1. 1 Keith on November 8th, 2007 3:22 pm

    No, no, no, BIZZARO LAND!

    It was some kind of Marvel comics place where everything was the opposite of what it should be. There was a Bizzaro Superman (kind of an anti-superman, like Saturday Night Live’s Uberman, the Nazi Superman, etc).

    I think everyone whose been touched by this incident should meet for group therapy. Preferable one with a long, long wooden bench behind which drinks are mixed.

  2. 2 MY COMMENTS… on November 9th, 2007 9:47 am

    [...] For Wide Open 2.0 digg_url=”http://havecoffeewillwrite.com/?p=5420″; digg_skin = [...]

  3. 3 Jeff Hess on November 9th, 2007 9:47 am

    Shalom Keith,

    Bizarro World, a cubical planet, was part of the D.C. Comics Superman storyline.

    B’shalom,

    Jeff

  4. 4 MarkfrmWMD on November 9th, 2007 10:30 am

    Shalom Jeff, (if I may use the phrase)

    You are correct. BizzaroWorld, was indeed a cubical planet in the silver age dc comics storyline. Later, after the revamp of superman in the 1980s and 1990s, this idea was written out of the mythos. Later, when bizarro reappeared, he tried to create Bizzaro Metropolis when he thought he was superman. I believe this happened circa late 1990s, shortly before or after the wedding of Lois and Clark Kent.

    OK, that was way too geeky, but at least it was noncontroversial and not likely to spark a knockdown dragout.

    b’shalom,
    Mark from WMD

  5. 5 Jill Miller Zimon on November 15th, 2007 11:02 pm

    The Barking Spider. When the orange-red 1960/70s style fireplace is going, over some air hockey.

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