Bloggers vs FreeConomics

One of the more ironic parts of the whole FreeConomics thing is that many of the people writing about, and strongly supporting the whole concept of FreeConomics, are those getting most nailed by it - ie Tech bloggers blogging for money. As the New York Times notes today:

The emergence of this class of information worker has paralleled the development of the online economy. Publishing has expanded to the Internet, and advertising has followed.

Even at established companies, the Internet has changed the nature of work, allowing people to set up virtual offices and work from anywhere at any time. That flexibility has a downside, in that workers are always a click away from the burdens of the office. For obsessive information workers, that can mean never leaving the house.

Blogging has been lucrative for some, but those on the lower rungs of the business can earn as little as $10 a post, and in some cases are paid on a sliding bonus scale that rewards success with a demand for even more work.

But is this really sustainable in a 24/7, interconnected world ? Even TechCrunch's Mike Arrington feels the pressure:

Speed can be of the essence. If a blogger is beaten by a millisecond, someone else’s post on the subject will bring in the audience, the links and the bigger share of the ad revenue.

“There’s no time ever — including when you’re sleeping — when you’re not worried about missing a story,” Mr. Arrington said.

“Wouldn’t it be great if we said no blogger or journalist could write a story between 8 p.m. Pacific time and dawn? Then we could all take a break,” he added. “But that’s never going to happen.”

It's not sustainable because they are competing with hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of bloggers who are probably as knowledgeable in the subjects written about, as good writers, and are using offset economics (ie working their spare time) to produce "free" product - thus crashing the prices. And this won't stop as long as there are enthusiasts who can do this - see here for the analysis.. It will also be exacerbated by auto-aggregators such as Techmeme that can find the content at a fraction of the cost of producing it, and thus become the portal (remember that word.. )of choice.

In the past the barriers to entry - cost of accessing media, navigating past the gatekeepers - meant that journalists were able to protect their income streams. But in a world of User Generated Content there will nearly always be the enthusiastic amateur who is up earlier, is closer to the story etc etc, and the tyranny of the Search Engine means the Long Tail is always wagging....

And funnily enough, the more targeted and low friction advertising becomes, the easier it becomes for ever-smaller blogs to monetise their attention.

The way out is to add value in other ways - knowing the people in the market, adding value to the site, having deeper analysis - sitting in garrets writing mass production commodity copy from a distance is a sure path on the road to outsourcing to India.....

So next time y'all wax lyrical about FreeConomics, its probably worth thinking about how that impacts your paycheck.....

Update - the NYT post is now on Techmeme, where it has hit a huge amount of criticism from some of the commentators. But if you look carefully, those pooh-poohing the story most are mainly those precise bloggers who have offset economics operating (money from something else), or are part of the blogging arm of existing publications (ie draw a salary). These are precisely the people crashing the market the most.......