 |
Anniversary Edition YEAR TEN BEGINS! |
 |
|
CO-FOUNDER WITH OUR TEAM SINCE DEC. 1, 1999 |
 |
 |
Learning how to think
in terms of millions
of TheColumnists.com
Last year, TheColumnists.com crossed a significant line: Our readers clicked on more than 1 million columns in a 12-month period. This year we also expect to cross the marker for a million "page views."
What this means to us is a realization that we have achieved our No. 1 goal: To make our columns available to a readership comparable to the readership we had when most of us wrote for newspapers. In fact, we are reaching, in most cases, a much larger readership than we ever had--and a global readership to boot.
This has been a grand payoff for nearly a decade of devotion to this website dreamed up by two columnists recently retired from The San Jose Mercury News and the Knight Ridder News syndicate, who were quickly joined by two retired columnists from their former Bay Area newspaper rival, The San Francisco Chronicle.
Of course, all four of us figured we might make a living doing this, if we could somehow solve the problem of how to make money from an online publication. We thought it might be nice to supplement our retirement incomes that way. Some of us have actually mined a little gold from being online, but not nearly as much as we had hoped for nor in the way we thought it would work.
Instead, we have been paid for republication of our online columns in print media or the online columns have attracted the interest of print media that offered us work writing as freelancers for their publications. In my case, the web columns led to lucrative arrangements with PBS and one of the underwriters of the PBS "Mystery!" series, which put me to work writing for their websites. My online columns also led to my current gig as the TV columnist for Kate Stine's Mystery Scene magazine in New York. Other writers in our group have done much better as freelancers, especially Gerald Nachman and Michael Johnson.
In the early days of TheColumnists.com, we hoped to attract advertisers who would underwrite the expense of running a website and provide us with profits to spread among our members. When we actually began to interest advertisers, it was after we'd been ad free for 5-6 years. As the managing editor of our enterprise, I decided the sums involved weren't enough to justify all the technical and tax issues I'd have to deal with as a result of going commercial. I also felt our readers probably preferred us to remain ad free, so, with the approval of my colleagues, I have declined the offers from advertisers.
But now that we are generating such large numbers in terms of visits to the site and page views, the advertising money looks much more appealing. For the time being, though, I'm of a mind to keep us free of advertising, so we can remain a haven for readers. We now collectively agree that TheColumnists.com has become a showcase for our work and that it generates interest in us as creative talents, so I'm now concentrating on looking other ways to make it pay for us financially without going to commercial advertising.
In the meantime, I'm moved by how different the newspaper world that we left in 1999 has become today. The Knight Ridder Syndicate, which carried my columns for 21 years, has gone out of business. The San Jose Mercury News, where several of us worked in the 1990s, is now run by a budget-cutting outfit that has laid off hundreds of people and is a shadow of its former self. The San Francisco Chronicle survives after swallowing up much of the staff of its former city rival, The San Francisco Examiner, but is not the publishing giant it once was. Some of our greatest papers--even The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times--have had to lay off large numbers of writers. The Toronto Star, a once great Canadian paper, is cutting staff to the bone.
When the original founders of this website--Murry Frymer, Gerald Nachman, John Stanley and myself--exchange views about the situation, we all acknowledge that we miss the old newspaper days, but are eternally grateful that we were able to cash out and find a new vehicle to express ourselves rather than hang around and watch the industry that we loved wither and die.
At this juncture, the beginning of our 10th year as an online publication, only two of the original founders are regular contributors to our website. John Stanley has many other outlets for his writing these days and only occasionally offers new columns here. Murry Frymer also writes elsewhere and has had some health issues to deal with lately. Gerald Nachman keeps busy writing new books--his book on Ed Sullivan comes out in 2009 and he's already working on the next book--but comes in frequently with a flurry of new columns. Like it or not, I'm usually in every edition, one way or another, while working on my next book.
Some of our very best female colleagues--Gina Gallo, Patricia J. Geister and Audrey Yeager-Moore--have not been much visible lately because of health issues. We hope to see them all back with us soon. They are beloved to us and we miss their regular output.
Since we began publishing on Dec. 1, 1999, we've had only two deaths in our family of regular columnists--Joanne Macdonnell and Ted Sielaff. Considering that most of us are in the "over 50" category, that's a pretty good record. (Insurance actuaries please note.) We sorely miss Joanne and Ted and regret they didn't live to see us shatter the million page views mark.
As the years have rolled by, I've been deeply impressed by the reach of our columns. We receive emails to Talkback from all over the world. We have one regular columnist in France (Michael Johnson), an occasional columnist in England (Robert Taylor) and two regular columnists from Canada (Jim Bawden and Lynn Perrier). Our ex-newspaper columnists cover the U.S. map from New York to Los Angeles. Each year we add a few more columnists.
For those who think it's about time for TheColumnists.com to lose its amateurish design and step up to the latest look and feel of professional websites with all their bells and whistles, my answer is you're absolutely right. But since I'm a genuine amateur and still do most of the so-called design and packaging of the site, I'd say "lots of luck" on that score. If we decide to go commercial, our design will have to be different, but then we could afford to make that sort of change.
But for right now, my attitude is: We still offer the fresh, uncut and original writing of some of the best columnists you'll find anywhere. As their principal editor, I can't say any of them need a single bell or whistle to make them better.
And now I can fall back on a new cliche to support me: "A million page-viewers can't be wrong!"
©2008 by Ron Miller. The illustration
is from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd.
E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted
Dec. 1, 2008.
TO ACCESS RON MILLER'S ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS ON THIS SITE, CLICK
HERE: MILLER ARCHIVE
You can comment
on this column online. Please address your message to either
"The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click
here and don't forget to mention Ron 's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|