He is charged with helping clients identify emerging technologies and trends that can be applied in marketing communications programs. Rubel also explores these topics on his site, a monthly Forbes.com column and in a bi-weekly AdAge column. He can be found on Twitter and Facebook as well.
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Earlier this week I appeared on Canadian TV (specifically BNN.ca) where I discussed blogging vs. lifestreaming with Lainey Lui of Laineygossip.com and eTalk. During the interview I maintained that it's difficult today to build a profitable blog since many of the big niches are taken. Lainey disagreed. What's your view?
Like business books, magazines, Web sites generally, etc, I don't think there's any lower ability to "break in" to the blogging field now than there ever was, so it's certainly no more difficult than it ever was as long as you're on top of your game.
I suspect you could have a wager with an established blogger (like Darren Rowse, say) that would say he couldn't start a blog in a popular field and make a profit within 6 months - because I rather suspect someone like him could without significant difficulty.
Also, do we really need a niche?
The idea of niche seems too correlated to a market orientation and that can be an error. Starting a blog can be a means of establishing channels of communication with one or more key publics and that can bring fourth a great number of intangible values.
In my humble view, building a profitable blog is more difficult now than before only if you are targeting a mainstream niche.
Most people trying to build a profitable blog are unfortunately in the business of making money online and that makes for a bad, smelly mix. Serving a niche of a few hundred or thousand via a niche blog, can certainly be profitable and very profitable to this very day.
The wrong idea everyone starts with is thinking that a profitable blog is built by having a large site, with thousands of visitors and a line-up of advertisers waiting to get a spot on your pages.
That is the old way. Sustainable online businesses are more easily built around valuable know-how and expertise that can be monetized in many different ways: events, courses, books and ebooks, services, tools, online consulting, in-depth reports.
A blog per se can't be a monetizable resource beyond its advertising potential. But a blog is only what you want to be and that remains open for everyone to be interpreted differently.
In general, as far as I have seen, those who say that blogs can't be made profitable are those who have never made one.
I think it would be nice to see an open face-to-face challenge between two or more vocal people in these two opposite territories.
A blog I started in 2005 brings in beer money in ads, but has led me to highly profitable consulting contracts, started the industry that Brad Linder (above) now thrives in, and even got me the dream job I now have. This type of blogging payoff is still wide open.
What happens to your content when posterous goes away? Isn't what you'd do if posterous disappeared what you ought to be doing anyway?
I've owned my domain for coming up on 10 years. Years ago, seeing the pace of innovation in content delivery and consumption habits, I decided to host my own content and push it out through the ebb and flow of channels. There was no sense trying to keep up with change but rather keep up with where the audiences have collectively decided is the new public square. That way when those channels come and go, the content doesn't.
I recently started following you on Twitter... a place you say is dying :)
1. For people attempting to break into a niche that have similar, or even slightly better content than the current "owner" of the niche, life will be tough.
2. For people breaking into a niche that have something that blows the doors off what the current "owner" is providing, there is certainly room to make a lot of money.
3. # 2 is very hard to do.
As Dan commented above - the barriers to entry are high - but only for people with average ideas and content. For the lucky few who can nail #2, there are NO barriers to entry. That's the beauty of the Internet.
