Wednesday 14 August 2013

Always another way

We have just this week introduced a new system for the web site. By new system I mean a way of getting content. Will it work? We’ll see.

Since you’re asking, this is how it works.

Most people I have spoken to believe web sites grow organically; you produce something and people like it and spread the word. You hope! The trouble is there are now so many sites that it’s hard for most to grow without assistance – quite a lot of it!

And people are now blasé and quite dismissive, if it doesn’t leap out at them then they’re gone, never to return. And I think that is the way it should be. It’s no longer enough to just produce something and hope for the best.

Organically is fine but when you consider there are millions of sites and most will never progress very far; or will go bust; or not keep up-to-date with changing mores you can say that the odds are against you being successful.

I had originally thought of running it just like any other business, such as putting together a magazine in the traditional way. That is, you hire journalists and designers and run an office and it’s a hive of activity. I have done that before, many times, and it works. After a while and particularly in today’s market, circulation drops, you lose staff through cut-backs etc. Then you close down.

We could do that with MyBestFive and run it just like a magazine. It would work but requires funding. It used to be simple 20 years ago and you could do it on a shoestring but today costs have soared so it runs into large sums of start-up money. There is no doubt in my mind that it would work, just not on a shoestring.

So how to bypass this system and do it another way. I think I mentioned in a previous blog that there is always another way.

If we employed two half-decent journalists or researchers it would set us back £60,000 or so, that’s not counting the other office and ancillary costs. You would be looking at £100,000 a year as a minimum cost. Right now that is out of the question.

However, if we used our members as the journalists and paid them about £1,000 a week, that would only cost half as much as an office and a tenth the amount of work. To see how this works have a look at our other site at www.making-contact.com.

Makes sense to me! We have started it off at £100 a week and will see what develops. Some might say we are trying to buy content and there is an argument for and against that point of view. I will develop my thoughts on that with my next blog.