Tuesday, March 30, 2004

From Bloggers to Magazine Columnists

British Blogger Lawn Greengrass of Straford Upon Avon-The Truth, writing in The Blog Herald suggests that some enterprising publisher start a blog magazine.



In Lawn's business model, the publisher would pay a selected group of bloggers as freelancers, to provide magazine content.



The question would be about a market for such a publication.



There are many weekly Carnivals that collect many of the best posts of the blogosphere for display at the moment. Lawn's concept is a larger market version of the same thing.



Since not all of the potential market is internet connected, not everyone is familiar with the bloggers and their writings. Even many internet savvy individuals, know little about the high calibre of writing and idea generation, that occurs among blog practitioners.



Perhaps such a magazine would gain a modest market. It would certainly have to aggressively sell advertising space to make any money. At first, the subscription base would almost certainly be small.



In fact, there could be many specialized publications, utilizing the knowledge of bloggers. An entire stable of magazines could be created.



What would be needed is a patient publisher, who can afford to wait for a market to develop. The publisher would also have to be patient as to possible advertising sales, which might be very slow in developing.



The upside for bloggers is the fact that they would be paid for their writing efforts. That in and of itself might make the concept very appealling for bloggers.



Whether such a blog magazine, or cluster of magazines would ever be profitable remains to be seen.



I am available as a writer for anyone who wishes to tackle the concept.

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