Turning back time: Blogs go to newsletters?
July 24, 2008 by Colleen Coplick
Filed under Social Media
I was just skimming my Google Reader feeds when a post By Nick O’Neill on the Social Times caught my eye.
His headline read “Blogs Turning to Newsletters for Revenue?” and my immediate thought was “What!? Is it 1998 again!?”
Nick writes
An interesting trend has started over the past couple days. This weekend Jason Calacanis announced the he was no longer blogging and was instead switching to a newsletter. Initially he suggested that he was limiting the number of subscribers to 750 but soon enough that number was surpassed and there is no sign that it’s stopping. Then today Caroline McCarthy published that Glam Media would be joining the newsletter market.
Seems to me that we’re going backwards again. Wasn’t there a huge surge of newsletters as revenue streams several years ago?
Nick points to Daily Candy as a successful, revenue generating newsletter, and while that’s totally true, i know for a fact that Daily Candy’s numbers are massive and their loyalty is almost unparalleled. Can Calacanis or McCarthy pull down those kind of numbers and inspire that kind of loyalty? Maybe, but even if he can command those numbers, can he demand that kind of ad revenue? I’m going to bet probably no, so where’s the revenue stream?
Newsletters are infinitely more time consuming to put together and get out the door on a consistent basis than blogging, at least in my opinion.
I dunno, maybe I just don’t yet buy that both Calicanas and McCarty are going to stop blogging all together. I guess I’ll believe it when I see it.
I wrote about this a few days ago on my blog — Is email the new blogging?. I don’t know about McCarthy, but I think in Calacanis’ it’s not about the money — at least directly. He makes his money through other businesses. Calacanis’ newsletter is a way for him to engage and influence an audience outside of the open-to-the-world environment of the blog, so I think he’s kind of a special case. He’s after influence and engagement without all the “noise” that you get on a highly trafficked blog. I’m not sure what he plans to do with that influence yet — maybe he doesn’t know either, yet — but it’ll be interesting to watch.
I’ve read about this newsletter resurgence as well and I must say that I would be very selective about who I allow in my Inbox. It’s an invasion on some level, and quite honestly, newsletters get lost in my Inbox. It’s true. When I go to Bloglines, I go with a purpose–to read my favorite blogs. If they start seeking me out via e-mail, I can’t say that my loyalty would remain.