How do news websites make money? Look at BuzzFeed and Dish.

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Reading] BuzzFeed and Dish are the profitable models that are subverting traditional news sites, exploring fee-based news and customizing content ads. What are their unique qualities and are their experiments successful? Please see this article.

Tencent Science and Technology (Jin Yu) Beijing time January 7 News, "Atlantic Monthly" (The Atlantic) network version recently published a signed Darrick Thompson (Derek Thompson) 's article, said recently, the daily Dish and BuzzFeed, the two online news media, coincidentally released the latest announcements, the two seemingly unrelated, and the two media to adopt a different business model, but in fact can affect the future of paid online news.

The following are the main contents of the article:

BuzzFeed, the best social news aggregation service in the Internet, recently announced that it has received 19 million of dollars in venture capital. Meanwhile, at the far end of the Internet, blog pioneer Andrew Sullivan Andrew Sullivan, leaving Newsweek's news website The Daily Beast, and launching a fee-based blog site Dish Publishing (hereinafter referred to as "Dish"), And said the site will not put any advertising, and any venture capital support, will be fully dependent on at least 19.99 dollars per year subscription revenue.

At first glance, these events seem to be unrelated to each other, but they are not.

However, BuzzFeed and Sullivan announced the time, before and after the interval of only a few hours. Although the two sites are completely different in style, their content is of the same kind. In content style, BuzzFeed's original article is this: "To help you tide over the difficulties of the 50 dogs: you will not stop looking at them" (Puppies to get you Through Your bad day:bet You can ' t stop looking In these dogs) and Dish's original article is: "The future of the welfare Continental countries: Douthat vs. Ezra" (The Future of the welfare state, Cont.: Douthat counters). Although the styles are different, the two sites are doing the right thing, both entertaining the public, providing them with information, giving people a glimpse of the future of paid news, or, more precisely, the future of paid news.

Let's start with dish. Andrew Sullivan's blog was a great success, and the blog was a surprise to traditional media such as Time Magazine, Newsweek (Newsweek) and Atlantic magazine. Sullivan's solo flight meant that it needed 1 million dollars a year to raise money. Sullivan's strategy was to give up advertising and raise it entirely through subscription revenue. The New York Times, for example, means that non-subscribers can read a certain number of articles a month for free, and when the reading limit is reached, users can get more reading by selecting subscriptions.

Andrew says Dish's core principles are:

"We want to build a place that is maintained only by the reader. Large media companies in the United States will subsidize us, without venture capital to provide us with a transitional buffer (unless I consider my savings as a VC) and, more importantly, no advertising. ”

I am not doubting Andrew's determination, but such core principles need to be driven or strengthened through economic necessity. Dish may have attracted some independent advertising, but it would require a sales and marketing team that Sullivan never took into consideration. There is also the possibility that it is Sullivan's fascinating creation that poses a challenge to advertising. Extremely independent, highly personalized and often unpredictable articles and recreational content on political culture all represent the greatest needs of fashionable advertisers. Advertisers have long spoken of large sums of money to websites and channels such as businesses, technology, consumer products and local demand, which are not Andrew's forte. But it doesn't matter if the main readers are willing to pay. And, it seems, readers are perfectly willing to pay subscriptions. Currently, Dish has 12,000 subscribers, with an average annual subscription cost of $28, which has achieved about 30% of the annual funding target for the site.

Perhaps dish can only maintain a year's operation through subscriptions. Dish seems to be able to maintain its two-year, three-or even 30-year operations only on subscription revenue. But the vast majority of the news media, from the New York Times to pop culture blogs, are unable to survive with good wishes and readers ' generosity, and there is no expectation. Advertising creates news and entertainment, from the first 19th century newspapers, to the early 20th century broadcast, and then to the late 20th century TV, until now in the early 21st century of the network and mobile, the news needs successful advertising marketing to get a breather.

As for the Buzzfeeder business model, usually people are disgusted with banners and advertising on both sides of the page, but BuzzFeed takes a completely different approach. BuzzFeed designed ads for businesses that are designed to be as interesting as their content and to share them with users. BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, Jonah Peretti, said in an interview with the Guardian that almost all of the company's revenue came from this "social" advertisement. "We work with brands to help them speak Web language," he said. I think this is the perfect time to build a golden age for advertising, like the heyday of advertising in Mad Men. ”

The network's response to Dish and BuzzFeed business models seems to be this: Andrew's approach is odd and old-fashioned, and BuzzFeed's approach is bizarre but revolutionary. Investing in an advertising-free news enterprise is a truly bizarre, revolutionary move, and the pattern of advertising that is suited to its media is a historical reappearance. Michael Schudson, a professor of journalism and history, said that it was like the first radio and television commercial, the first broadcast ad was to read the TV commercials aloud, and the first television ad was a Michael Schudersen broadcast AD. Many websites don't develop ads that are just for the Internet.

In fact, banners and window ads annoy people by disturbing readers ' views of news content rather than competing with content to attract readers ' attention. However, BuzzFeed and other companies that try to design ads for advertisers recognize this and try to fix it. Television advertising is a great success because it can resonate, interesting, eye-catching and memorable, so advertising content should be as educational and entertaining as an online original article. This is not a new concept. Think of the former New York Times benefactor Adolf Ox (Adolph Ochs), "in the final analysis, advertising should be news, if not, then advertising is worthless." ”

Dish is expanding its subscription scale, testing how many users will pay for the online news content that should be free, while BuzzFeed is stretching editorial advertising antennae to test the potential of both the reader and the business market. Dish's business experiment is crucial to its future, and BuzzFeed's business experiments determine the future of online journalism, and if the two companies ' strategy is integrated, it may determine the future of paid news.