Frances R. • Gigaom did an interesting article on this the other day http://tiny.cc/2uhqw

Mike H. • It's very difficult to profit from syndication. There are infinite endpoints and finite ad dollars to support them.

Rick C. • Hi Frances, Hi Mike, thanks for your comments.

Frances, I liked the article you shared from Gigaom. Especially the last paragraph when it says, ‘In the end, the online media business is about attention: how to get it, how to keep it, and how to maintain it over time — and it isn’t a sprint, but a marathon.’ I feel like there’s two sides to that point: (1) the journalistic perspective of reporting interesting stories and (2) building / retaining readership so you can charge more from your advertising outlets so you can keep paying the bills. Do you agree? And, I was curious, which part of this article made you think of content syndication?

Mike, I understand where you’re coming from, but I would like to challenge your position with a slightly different perspective.

You mentioned that it’s very difficult to profit from syndication because there are an infinite amount websites, and not enough people willing to pay. I agree with you. I also believe the way businesses are monetizing content with advertisements is not only becoming old but doesn’t really ever add value to a website. Most of the time, it’s plain annoying. I’m sure there’s a better way to monetize content than continue on the road of ‘interruption advertising’. Do I think it’s going away? No, but they’ll start getting more creative as time progresses.

What if we looked at an organization (media company, publisher, whomever) that had interesting, educational and/or entertaining digital content. It could be videos, articles, reviews, anything. I’m confident that other businesses are willing to pay for that content if they could use it to their benefit on their own websites. Meaning, by using content syndication, companies who are in the business of creating content have the opportunity to sell and market their content as a product to other businesses. The value to the other businesses is exactly what the article from Frances mentioned with an added bonus. It helps the content buyers’ websites become stickier because you’re providing a higher value experience with the rich content purchased. As we all know, higher more positive online experiences lead to higher traffic. Higher traffic plus higher value content leads to increases conversion rates and higher ad revenues. Higher conversion rates also mean increased online sales and or increased lead generation (depending on what the website’s goals are). And, that added bonus I mentioned earlier is the content owner now have a recurring stream of revenue and allows them to focus on what they do best - making more attractive content.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

Rick

Frances R. • Hi Rick - thanks for the thoughtful analysis. The HuffPo article just seeemed to fit into a lot of conversations I've had recently around the idea of 'letting go' of your content online.

A lot of the big media players I've been speaking to recently are undergoing a sea-change, from protecting their content from anyone else and wanting to limit who distributes it/where it's accessed, to seeing the value in a broad distribution online.

Syndication is a key way to monetize the latter, although of course there are wider benefits in terms of advertising eyeballs and driving users to subscription as well.

Rick, do you have any examples of where syndication has really worked recently?

F

Rick C. • Thanks for the speedy response Frances.

These big media players, have they considered content syndication as a tool to monetize? Many people I talk with immediately think RSS whenever I bring up the idea of content syndication. There are more powerful syndication options these days than RSS. Some syndication engine providers today are able to push, control and track rich content experiences on external websites. Meaning you have the full benefit of distribution without letting go. Actually, you get more data on how people interact with your content so content owners know what attracts visitors and what doesn’t.

I think you might find this interesting: http://contentsyndication.tiekinetix.com/content-monetization-solution

I also point colleagues to a whitepaper the Internet Content Syndication Council created back in 2008. Nothing specifically around monetization, but if you have that in the back of your mind you can see some great opportunities. There’s a nice graph showing the degree of control and the reach of distribution with content on page 8. Here’s a link to the whitepaper: http://internetsyndication.org/reports/downloads/whitepapers/content_creation.pdf

As far as examples, I’ve seen a bunch of large IT companies use this type of syndication for their global VAR and channel marketing efforts. In short, they syndicate rich content, collateral and lead capturing forms to their partner websites as a way to keep their channel up-to-date and selling the latest and greatest products. As you can see there’s a few different ways you can use syndication these days.

Rick

Mike H. • Hi Rick,

Let me clarify. What I meant is that there is substantially more ad inventory than ads. The inventory is expanding. The ads, not so much. So there is an argument that eliminating the exclusivity of your content will ultimately devalue it. Now I don't necessarily agree, however, I was part of a company that had perhaps the most powerful syndication tech around. The places that can afford to pay or license content is very, very short. There are plenty with no traffic that will take your content and potentially rev share. More often then not, they will sell you their space and let you resell ads for them. It all comes back to ad dollars. Unless your content will demand incremental ad revenue or substantially change the value proposition of a site there are few game changer type deals to make in syndication. Not to mention syndication can be very expensive for content owners.

Those who are doing it right are publishers themselves who syndicate, like Sugar Media.

Rick C. • Hey Mike, you bring up some solid points. Keep it coming. : )

You’re saying content syndication is extremely expensive. Because of this, it drives up the price when content owners present their product to market. Because these content prices are so high, it dramatically shrinks the potential customer list. I get it. Please let me know if that's not what you meant.

There’s one piece I think we’re overlooking. Where or who are these media companies getting these content syndication technologies from? In almost all cases, I’m willing to bet these solutions are developed internally or is a result of a Frankenstein operation where someone else doctors up another technology to make it work. Both routes involve a significant amount of time, money, resources, development… the list goes on and on. I can see why someone would have a very difficult time making something like this work. In your experience, have you seen this?

If we could cut out all the above with an out-of-the-box syndication engine, I feel like media companies wouldn’t have the massive investment hurdle than they did before. Do you agree? If they don’t have that investment, then they can lower the price of their content so it can be affordable to their target customers.

To your other point around exclusivity, I agree. If you have great content, syndicating it won’t devalue it. In most cases, the end consumer doesn’t care where the content comes from - just as long as they get what they were looking for - unless they're looking for content from that specific source which I feel strengthens the argument.

Greg G. • Syndication does not have to be expensive. In fact, there is no need for syndication as we know it at all. There are better ways of selling high-quality content -- better in terms of revenue -- however, they require some risk. And this, in my opinion is the key problem here: content creators and publishers do not want to take any risk now; they prefer to get $600 per article, but up-front, than $5,000 but as a "possible total revenue," after they've let the same article or syndicated column compete on the open market.

One might also say it is easier to get attention of another publisher (buyer of the syndicated content) once in a while and for $600 at a time, than to compete over and over again.for the attention of thousands of possible readers willing to pay a dime or two to access and read the same content.

Rick C. • Hi Greg, thanks for sharing.

You feel content creators do not want to take any risks… I can definitely see that as a possibility. Maybe we can take advantage of some other members of the group and get their perspective. Are there any members of the group from media companies that can confirm Greg’s thoughts?

Greg, you also mentioned there are better ways of selling high-quality content. Could you share a few examples?

Greg G. • Well, this is my experience. Syndication, re-prints, subscription plans, even advertising as a form of content monetization are all relatively risk free: you get money first, then you print or allow to reprint.

At least, it used to be like that, in print. Now, some try the same strategy with online publishing. Huge publications might get away with it (and thus create a false impression that this is the way) But the many others?

It is not difficult to realize that unless you are in a well-defined specialty niche, the minimum traffic you should generate to start making any money online is about 2,000, 000 uniques a month. It is a large number. On our site, we have a simple calculator to help content providers estimate the possible online revenue vis-a-vis expected traffic. Fell free to use it: http://www.znakit.com/info/calculator

What are the better ways?

Well, one would be charging users for on-demand limited access priced at the micro or nano level, from $0.05 to $1,.99 per visit/download/ stream. There is a lot of bad press and misconception about micropayments, but if you think about it, it is a billion-dollar industry and it is getting bigger and bigger every year. Now with the prospect of adding mobile or NFC technologies -- which are not new; however, they have become trendy only lately-- micropayments are back!

Another is a combination of micropayments and ad-sponsorship, where the content provider sets up an access price and license for its selected content, and users click and interact with an online ads first to "earn" this otherwise paid access for free (i.e. sponsored by the advertiser). It is a true win-win and win situation for all three parties involved. More importantly, it can be done without any scale, piece by piece.

There is enough appropriate technology and structure to make both models work very well. They are smart, fast, reliable, flexible, and very secure, very private for the user. When set up properly, they can be used with any type and form of content, anywhere, regardless of how big or small your traffic is.

Greg G. • BTW. Znak it is looking for a Business Development Pro. See our post here on the job discussion board: http://linkd.in/r21da6

Yossi B. • Very interesting discussion.

I want to add another dimension and look at "Content Marketing" as a new source for content syndication.

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience - with the objective of driving profitable customer action.

Content marketing is a two stages process:
1. Creating content.

1. Distribution of content.

Distribution of content is another name for syndication, but now the content owners pay to be syndicated on publishers websites.

We developed a platform to support content distribution/syndication and I'd love to get your feedback http://publishedin.com/businesses/content/

Greg G. • Sorry, Yossi, but I have some problem grasping the idea behind Publishedin. You want content creators -- authors -- to pay for publishing their work online?

Yossi B. • Hi Greg,

Content marketers create content (For example: Case Studies, Presentations, White Papers, Online Articles, Videos, Blog Posts, Events Communication, News/PR, Promotions) to promote their business.
In order to reach their target audience they need to distribute their content besides their own website. Content marketers (that are also publishers in this case) would be happy to pay publishers relevant to their business to write about/syndicate their content, and Publishedin allows just that.

I wrote a post about content distribution: I Have All This Content, Now What?
http://blog.publishedin.com/post/10679411404/i-have-all-this-content-now-what

Greg G. • I got it! So, your solution is primarily for infomarcials.

Yossi B. • Content marketing is more appropriate as it's more about educating and engaging than selling.

From Wikipedia:
Content marketing is an umbrella term encompassing all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of content for the purpose of engaging current and potential consumer bases. Content marketing subscribes to the notion that delivering high-quality, relevant and valuable information to prospects and customers drives profitable consumer action. Content marketing has benefits in terms of retaining reader attention and improving brand loyalty.

Greg G. • But can also be misleading, as in your example.

When you wrote "now the content owners pay to be syndicated on publishers websites," it sounded as if a content author, including, say, a blogger or freelance journalist, would have to pay online publishers for including their work, which is completely opposite to what digital content creators want, in my view.

You say "content marketing" but in fact you mean marketing of a product (other than the content itself) through pieces of infomercials distributed online for a fee. If so, I believe the name for this is "product content," not proprietary creative content or news content that need to be monetized, and what I believe we were talking about here.

Same with your definition of content distribution as syndication. You mean the distribution of product content to increase sales of the featured product, don't you?

Yossi B. • I understand your confusion.

In content marketing the content owners are the marketers and not the bloggers or freelance journalists.

Content marketing doesn't have to be about the product per se. For example, a breakfast cereal company may educate their target audience about healthy eating choices and share research about the benefits of eating breakfast.

Greg G. • Yossi, the point is, Might the readers of such marketing pieces be confused or not?

Most of us (readers and consumers) got used to infomercials, press releases, product placement, and so called "as research shows" case studies by product marketers. And it is fine, as long as they are marked clearly "provided by" or "sponsored by..." and followed by the product owner's credentials.

Our (Znak it!) content is divided into proprietary, creative one, where the author represents his or her views, and it is the readers who pay (in one way or another) for accessing such content; and promotional materials, which, like in your case, can be case studies, research, press releases, testimonials, etc.; however, here the Web user expects to be paid and is being paid for reading or interacting with such promotional content. Credits obtained from marketers can then be redeemed online to access the first (propitiatory, creative) type of content -- and this is what we call content monetization, one of its many models. If we were to take money to feed our users with product content, it would be "user monetization."

Your model fits well in the overall content monetization space, but only as a source of "credits" to readers. I am afraid that when online publishers start taking money form marketers to publish their promotional materials as content, this can lead to fraud and/or bias and hurt the very product owner.

Greg G. • Well, let me just add quickly: I would be happy to "syndicate" such "content" to fund Znak it! users accounts with sponsored credits. Does your system allow for that?