New media revenue models

At today's Women in Periodical Publishing annual Women's Leadership Conference, many of the sessions focused on the future of media and how to make money off the media (i.e. how to stay alive, adapt and thrive). Since the speakers were so kind to share what they have learned from their research and experience, I compiled a list.

In no particular order, here are some of the ways (emerging as well as traditional) to make money off of new media in consumer markets:
- advertising - not just banner ads, but used with e-mail, text, video and through third party or localized deals
- sponsorships - special deals where sponsors get extra promotion through events (online and off), articles, ads, buttons, etc.
- micropayments - tips, mini subscriptions, small donations or other crowdfunded models
- virtual goods - creation of virtual products that mimic real life products, sold for small amounts to the consumer for use in virtual environments
- print-on-demand systems - provide a physical publication that's printed individually for the reader
- mobile applications - iPhone, Android, other - licensed app use to view content via mobile devices
- contests - provide a product or service to winners with sponsors or some sort of fee
- content licensing - paid syndication or other licensing agreements for creative content (posts, articles, photos, video)
- subscriptions or memberships - paid use of content either on the web and/or on tablet devices, such as iPad or Kindle (*note this has been more successful in the Kindle market than it has on web browsers)

Of course the panelists noted that some of these models are typically more successful than others, but it does depend on the content and the audience. For those who have research or more detailed information on which kinds of business models tend to be most successful in their own experiences, I look forward to your comments.

Advice on Being a Solopreneur

I just sat in on a panel this morning at the annual Women's Leadership Conference produced by Women in Periodical Publishing. Having previously been a speaker on how to be a consultant, I wanted to see how this panel would differ since it was all about being a solo practitioner as a journalist, i.e. freelancer, called 'solopreneur' on the panel.

Here are the tidbits shared by the four panelists that I wanted to pass along:
- Most work really does come through referrals or people met directly in person
- Setting personal boundaries is important (like work hours, sleep time, family time, etc.) to keeping sanity and balance
- Make a business plan; make a marketing plan and revisit both often
- Set a rate and aim to stick to it (even when paid by the word as writers, compute how long that roughly takes to write)
- Pro bono work or opportunities that cost money sometimes are still worth it because they can pay back in other ways (networking, perks, education, exposure, etc.)
- "Sometimes you make art, sometimes you make soup" meaning that sometimes you need to work for pay or write not at your best to get jobs done, but sometimes you will make excellent compositions, and it's important to accept that as reality
- Always start with vision first, set strategy second, and employ tactics third

Speakers: Heather Boerner, writer & editor; Grace Hawthorne, co-founder ReadyMade and consulting associate professor, Stanford Design Institute; Lane Wallace, founder & editor, No Map. No Guide. No Limits.

Help Me Get to the Olympics - Vote!

Friends & faithful readers, I need your help!

I'll make it easy for you...

Go here: http://bit.ly/VoteSarah
Register once with e-mail. Vote for me every day through November 29th.

Tweet this:
I voted for Sarah in the #blogathlete @Office contest. Please help send her to the Olympics! http://bit.ly/VoteSarah #VoteSarah

Blast it anywhere else you can think of:
Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Plaxo, Ryze, Orkut, etc... oh yeah and that e-mail thing.

Be thanked:
THANK YOU!

...

Here's the full scoop:
I'm really excited to be one of 5 semi-finalists in a very cool contest to win a trip to the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada in February, but I need your help to win - starting today!

Microsoft Office is sponsoring one woman blogger to attend, and on top of that, the winner gets a trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in January and a free laptop. I made it to the top five by submitting my blog about figure skating at BlogHer, the women bloggers' network, but I need help getting into the finals with public voting.

Voting started today and goes through November 29th. It requires a simple registration, then you can vote once a day every day through the 29th.

Click here to VOTE!

It just takes a few steps: Click on the tiny highlighted login text at the top of the page above the list of voters, and it will take you to a screen where you can enter your e-mail address and a password. Then after you're logged in, it will take you to back to the voting screen where you'll see my name at the bottom. Click on the "Vote for me!" button below my name and you're done. Until tomorrow. ;)

The top three vote-getters go to the final round where the judges then choose the winner.  My goal is to get so many votes that I blow the others out of the water, so the judges have a clear decision in the final round.

Each person only gets 13 votes - one per day. If you would like to be on my daily reminders list, please drop me a line after you register and vote. Everyone on the daily list will receive Olympic fun facts and I promise I'll stop emailing the list on the 30th. Otherwise, I'll email you every so often with reminders as the contest progresses.

One last favor: if you're willing, please tell any of your friends who you think might take a few minutes to sign up and vote for me as well.

Direct link again to register and vote: https://www.officewintergames.com/Vote.aspx

Thank you so very much for your help!

Recap of a busy week - politics, new media, gov 2.0 and more

Last week was a whirlwind on the local level... after Newsom dropped out of the CA governors' race, I wrote a piece about it that had a pretty good reception at The Huffington Post but was maimed by trolls at SFGate. Having seen this happen before for other writers, I reluctantly decided to remove all comments. I reviewed the problem with other blogger friends who confirmed it's a common problem for newspapers-turned-online publications.

I put up a detailed response at SFGate explaining the problem to readers and the community there and received a lot of letters via e-mail in support. The SFGate staff also were responsive as well, looking into what they can do with the system that will help solve their comment moderation problem. (IMO it shouldn't be that hard technically - they're using Moveable Type - it's more a matter of budgeting the staff time and having a smart plan in place.)

After spending way more time on that last week, I was able to shift gears back to tech, I finished an article about Twitter Lists for Digital Landing. I've been researching Twitter Lists since they first launched, and one of my lists of the Women in Politics & Tech group (WIPT) was put on the Change.org list of Ten Feminist Twitter Lists.

Saturday, I headed to CA Data Camp where I caught up with local government, non-profit and media people who are passionate about open government. We talked about data specifics, data transfer, local applications, data and media and the related national scope. I'll be putting up at least one post at the Personal Democracy Forum about that. Here's a great summary at Spot.Us. Meanwhile, I was invited this week to be on two more conference program committees. More on that when they're official.

Meanwhile, as we were finishing up with the data apps in SF, the House voted on their final version of the healthcare reform bill. It was interesting to follow that on Twitter while in a room full of government software developers. Finally, I was surprised this morning to be on a list of Top 20 Women Political Bloggers (I think the list is a subset of liberal bloggers who are also moms).

This week, I'm working on an article about Google Wave and editing a book on confidential information. I'm also working on a couple new gov 2.0 related projects that I hope to write more about soon.

I can't even keep track any more.

I'm involved in a lot of really incredible projects and have been over the past few years so much that I don't even have a running list, it all moves so quickly. But every once in a while I like to log some of it here for the few people (mostly friends & colleagues) who peruse my blog from time to time.

Recently, I joined the San Francisco Chronicle online “City Brights” local luminaries at SFGate.com and I'm really enjoying writing there. I wish I could duplicate myself and write there every day, but it's not in the cards quite yet. For Netroots Nation, I co-organized three panels. I've also been continuing to write for The Huffington Post, Digital Landing, BlogHer, MOMocrats, the Personal Democracy Forum (& techPresident).

I'm doing less right now for WomenCount due to the economic climate, but I'm still very involved. Through our radio show, I interviewed Marie Wilson, founder of The White House Project, and Christine Pelosi, California Democratic Party leader and daughter of Nancy Pelosi. Vivanista profiled me in their “Quintessential Careers” column in June. And as of September, the CRAVE SF Guide is out, a book featuring great women-owned businesses in the Bay Area including SFBayStyle, one of my projects.

As policy has been an ongoing theme, I've had the opportunity this year to be involved with 3 pretty major pieces of legislation nationally and at the state level. And although I only provided input on small pieces of each bill, I feel that I was able to help on some level. (Of course none of it has passed yet; let's wait and see.) Nationally, I reviewed cybersecurity legislation through the U.S. ACM Public Policy committee, I helped finalize Congresswoman Speier's bill to create a new presidential commission on women via WomenCount, and I worked through the Jr. Leagues of California State Public Affairs Committee that will help educate new mothers and their families on postpartum depression and related problems.

CFP 2010 will be in my neighborhood this year, so I'm looking forward to participating on the program committee however I can. It should be a great conference. In a few days, I head to the Web 2.0 Summit. I just recently helped tech review edit the Gov 2.0 compilation book being published by O'Reilly which I thoroughly enjoyed. I have another couple of potential book projects in the works as well. No official news yet there.

I've had a few new media clients through PublicEdge, and some new speaking engagements. I have been doing a lot of trainings to women's organizations on how to use new media for social good. I've also been working on a few iPhone apps helping with strategy in terms of new media as well. And I have some exciting meetings planned in Washington, D.C. that I hope to be able to write about soon as well.

Meanwhile, I continue to study and read and learn about technology and government, politics, policy, security, and all of the other areas that interest me. I never seem to have enough time to read all of the articles and books I'd like to read, but I try to stay on top of the most important issues.

I'm sure there's something else I've forgotten, but again, it's a lot to keep track of pretty much all the time. Cheers!

Top Twitter Tools List

In working on my article for Digital Landing on how to make the most of Twitter, I researched dozens of great applications. Since I couldn't write about them all in my article there, I decided to post the list of what I looked at here, so anyone can have a look. Of course there are more that are not on this list, but I have other resource lists where those can be found at the top.

Is there something great I'm missing on the list? Add it in the comments or email me at sairy(at)sairy(dot)com - or just tweet to @sairy.

Overall Twitter resources:

Twitter Fan Wiki - Everything you ever wanted to know about Twitter

Alltop Twitter Page - great blogs all about Twitter and related apps

@Twitter_Tips - great fed of all kinds of Twitter tools

@TweetingTools - more good tips on Twitter, with random quotes to boot

Twitter search and display:

Twitter Search - official Twitter search

Twitterfall - view tweets via subject as they "fall" like a waterfall down the screen

Multi-account and multi-user applications:

Tweetdeck - desktop & mobile apps (Mac, Windows, Linux) that allows for groupings and advanced features; top favorite of all apps

PeopleBrowsr - highly configurable, full featured web-based series of apps for Twitter use - includes search and configurable groupings apps

Tweetie - multi-account viewer for the Mac

Cotweet - multi-user twitter, ideal for businesses; the standard-bearer in business Twitter use

Twhirl - multi-account viewer for Windows & Mac (based on Adobe Air)

Tweetvisor - browser-based Twitter that allows for viewing tweets, @replies and DMs all at one on a quick interface

Nambu - robust viewer for the Mac

HootSuite - sleek, web-based multi-account Twitter interface; also comes with a Hootlet toolbar mini-app that works with Firefox, Safari and IE

Twibble - desktop app for Mac, Linux and Windows, supports multiple accounts

Seesmic Desktop - well reputed desktop app for Mac or Windows (based on Adobe Air)

Seesmic Web App - very clean UI for single-account Twitter view

For the iPhone:

Tweetie - easy-to-use, full-featured multi-account application

Twitterific - multi-account Twitter, but minus a few features

Tweetdeck - multiple accounts, syncs, works with yfrog and Twitpic, URL shorteners; configurable

Nambu - fairly sophisticated app for single-Twitter use, integrated with FriendFeed, pic.im and tr.im

Twitterfon - basic, clear interface

Seesmic - iPhone app coming soon

Birdfeed - clean app with local caching and timestamps

For the Blackberry:

Twitterberry - most popular Twitter updating software for Blackberry

Twibble - mobile version of desktop app integrated with Twitpic

UberTwitter - full featured app; integrated with Google Talk

For Windows Mobile:

TinyTwitter - basic app for using Twitter (note: entire site optimized for mobile devices, not traditional browsers)

ceTwit - full featured client that works with Twitpic and Ping.fm

Quakk - open source Twitter app

Twitter Feed Tools:

Twitterfeed - efficiently feeds blogs to twitter, allowing for added text configuration and timing

FriendFeed - view multiple twitter & other social media feeds

Posterous - posts to blogs and twitter feeds on a wide range of platforms; recommended by Guy Kawasaki

Lazyfeed - allows for blog feeds (like a feed reader) as well as input to personal feeds; similar to FriendFeed but a more professional UI

Stats & Analysis:

Twitter Grader - gives grades based on a 100% scale, based on number of followers, power of followers, number of updates, update recency, engagement level and follower/following ratio

Twitterank - ranking algorithm built by a Google programmer, rates percentages of accounts

Twitalyzer & Twitalyzer Pro - analyzes overall influence, retweets, references to and mentions of the account, with Pro features showing top influencers in your network

Twitterholic.com - tracks followers, friends and updates over time

Socialtoo - allows for surveys & stats but have to pay for Twitter stats

Twitter Analyzer - has nice graphs of usage by keyword, hashtags, etc.

TweetStats - graphs tweets per hour, month, etc.

Tweet Counter - sends reminders when users are close to major milestones like 100, 1000, etc.

twInfluence - provides sleek graphs of usage by interface, @replies, RT's, by month, days of the week, and time of day

Follower Management:

Twerp Scan - "anti-fool contact management" system; can manage by followers or those being followed and is quick to add/subtract - much more efficient than follower management in Twitter

Mr. Tweet - recommendation engine

WeFollow - adds users to searchable threads

SocialNewsWatch List of Top 237 Twitter Users Who Will Follow You Back - what it says it is, based on number of followers

Tweet Friends - compares 2 twitter feeds for common friends added over past 24 hours (or so)

Browser Plug-Ins:

Twitter Friend Bios - plugin for Firefox browser

Shareaholic - drop-down plugin for viewing multiple social networking feeds

Twitbin - sidebar plugin for Firefox

Marketing & Advertising Tools:

EasyTweets - cost depends on number of feeds, accounts, and continuous searches; posts automatically to Twitter

Twittad - affinity network that connects twitter feeds with advertisers; works on mobile devices

TweetROI - tweet about whatever you want (from their list of advertisers) and get paid for it

Magpie - embedded ads into user timelines

Izea - boasting 25,000 advertisers and 250,000 bloggers, they produce "sponsored conversations"

Payment Engines:

twitpay - allows for Twitter payments via PayPal; for all kinds of purposes via RT2Buy system

tipjoy - makes it easy to pay other Twitter users or to let them pay you with a simple 'p $x @user' command

Twitter Backgrounds:

PrettyTweet - creates twitter backgrounds

Images & Videos via Twitter:

yfrog - enables image & video sharing

Twitpic - sends photos to Twitter, view photos posted by others

pic.im - photo URLs and stats, usable with Twitter

Assistive Tools:

Twitwoop - allows you to record tweets by voice

Wassup?

A lot's been happening lately for me - elsewhere... so here's a bit of a summary for those who are curious. Also, I keep recent news of what I've been doing professionally updated typically at my professional website, SarahGranger.com.

My new media consulting (via PublicEdge) is going well. I'm working primarily with WomenCount as their director of new media. It's been wonderful working with elected women and women candidates on the blog, the radio show, and via Twitter. I've also been helping some online publications, start-ups, nonprofit and other political organizations.

In March and April, I received two awards. March's was a collective writing award given to an issue of Bay Area Parent where I wrote an article about gifted children (what it's like to have one, and what it's like to be one). In April, I received a new media award from the California Democratic Party, which was entirely unexpected but felt nice to be recognized for my political new media work.

I've been speaking at a ton of conferences lately. In February, I spoke at Fem 2.0. In March, I was at South by Southwest Interactive. In April, I provided a couple of trainings on social media and then I spoke at the Nonprofit Technology Conference on 3 panels. I also spoke at the Netroots Nation New Media Summit and at the 140TC conference. All three of those were in the Bay Area. I organized 2 other panels for the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in June. Then in August, I'll be speaking on 3 more panels at Netroots Nation. I'm looking forward to a break from conferences for a while after all of that.

Recently, I was featured in Vivanista's "Quintessential Careers" column for my work with SFBayStyle, and I was interviewed for an Entrepreneur magazine piece about social media as well.

My Afternoon at the White House

Me behind the podium in the White House press briefing room today.

I arrived late to the press briefing, but luckily the Press Secretary was behind schedule as well. After I settled next to the wall (where apparently CNN would catch me on TV anyway), I tweeted the press briefing. Then I spoke with press staffers about some stories I'm working on, talked with some other reporters including Katie Couric, who was there with other major anchors to interview President Obama. After that, on my request, someone from CNN took my picture and convinced me to stand behind the podium for the shot. It was a fun afternoon.

Join Me at South by Southwest Interactive

March 13-17, Austin will be buzzing with web and new media professionals and enthusiasts for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive conference, part of the entire SXSW festival which includes music and film and spans over a week of events.

I found out a couple of days ago that I will be leading a Core Conversation that I proposed a few months ago. It's entitled "Whitehouse.gov 2.0: Upgrading to Open Source Government." What that means is I'll be primarily operating in the role of facilitator for a discussion about how the new national administration can provide more open dialogue through new media and use of the Internet.

Here's how I described the session in my proposal: "The 2004 and 2008 campaigns' use of collaborative tools, blogs and social networking have shown citizen activism and online communities can wield powerful influence. In 2009, our challenge becomes how to harness these tools in order to reopen the policy-making process."

I hope to produce a report of the recommendations that come out of the discussion to submit to the new administration and I'm looking forward to getting as many people involved with this as possible. Please join me at SXSW in Austin!

(Cross posted from the FutureCampaigns blog.)

Listen to Digital Politics Thursday

Thursday, September 25th, I'll be on Karen Jagoda's "Digital Politics" radio show at SignOnRadio. The topic of the show is women voters and I will be on with Mindy Finn who ran e-strategy for Mitt Romney '08 and worked on Bush '04 as well as for the RNC.

The show begins at 12:00pm Pacific and those who are interested can listen live from the site via RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, or iTunes. Call-in number is 866-818-6384 for questions. The show will be podcast and available for listening after it's aired as well. Check back to the site for more details.

Off the Bus Growth Noted in NYTimes Caucus Blog

Katharine Seelye put up a nice post today about The Huffington Post "Off The Bus" project where I'm a National Correspondent (weekly columnist). I had no idea they had so many people involved in the project; no wonder they always seem so busy. The content is good and changes regularly. I'm excited to be a part of such an interesting group of people.

The Internet is Helping Us in Natural Disasters, But Not Enough

I just published a new post on the Silicon Valley Moms Blog about what's now being called the "Summit Fire" in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Watsonville. As a kid who grew-up in tornado country, I was completely clueless about wildfires until yesterday. Now I've been studying everything available online to track the blaze because it's just a few miles from my sister's dream home, her animals, and one of the most beautiful pieces of property I've ever seen in my life. I don't know if I'm at liberty to describe it, but even if I did, still, it's one of those places where you have to see it to believe it.

In any case, what I learned over the past 24 hours is that although we have 2700 firefighters on the scene to battle these fires, we only get semi-accurate updates about once a day about where the fires really are. People are in their homes waiting for calls or knocks on the door to evacuate. The neighbors who may or may not have phones or power communicate to the best of their ability, but they're still not certain how far away it is. They see the smoke or possibly the flames, but it's difficult to discern the distance. I found one live blog site where there was some minimal conversation via locals about what was going on to help sift through the mystery, but that was it.

So what I want to know is where do we go from here? What is the future of emergency response online? It has to be better than a few news sites and links. I'm not saying what we have now isn't good. I'm happy we have the resources we do. But I know from my technology background that we can do better. We've put together phenomenal outreach programs and online activism to raise money and repair devastated areas. Why not create a place where communities can create ad-hoc emergency response sites as they arise? It's possible something like this already exists, but not enough of us know about it.

What I found was one site for firefighters that said how to listen on short range scanners, some articles on the local newspaper site, a few maps that are only updated daily, the state fire site with data updated periodically (like every day or half a day), one satellite image of the fire, brief TV and radio coverage, a state road closures page, one live blog on the local news station web site where people exchanged notes, and a totally overloaded fire detection map at noaa.gov that nobody can use because everybody's trying to get to it. And when watching the news and hearing from locals, it seems that the firefighters and police are keeping things barricaded for safety and not allowing any information transferral during the process.

Fires are dangerous, but if people can use personal weather stations and webcams like linked on the Weather Underground, why not have a system that applies locals as information centers online and includes what's coming across the waves from emergency support services? Anyone out there have an idea of how to do this?

Two Great Chronicle Articles: Web to TV & Blogging with Babies

In today's Chronicle, two interesting articles:

First, "Web sites enable campaign TV ads on the cheap" by Joe Garofoli tells about how the web and sites like VoterVoter.com and SpotRunner.com are making video ads easier and cheaper to create and disseminate, and it discusses the ramifications of this in terms of the presidential campaign.

Micah Sifry of techPresident (and the Personal Democracy Forum) is quoted about how technology and "mass participation" is changing the face of politics. Anyone who has worked in a statewide or national campaign knows that the majority of campaign budgets go to TV advertising even now with the Internet gaining speed and digital democracy becoming a more prevalent term.

Still, the majority of voters are reached through television and it's expensive. This is why the Internet staff always takes a back seat in terms of campaign strategy; it's just a fact that television still makes the rules. I see the tides turning, but it will take time. Sites like these will help with the transition to new media as new generations of voters who are online gradually become the majority.

Second, one of my co-contributors at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog Group, Charlene Li is mentioned in Ellen Lee's article, "In parenthood, sometimes a blog is born," which I know from personal experience has many truths. Granted, I wasn't twittering from the delivery room, but blogging helped keep me sane while on bed rest and going through a lengthy postpartum recovery.

The article also quotes Elisa Camahort Page, BlogHer cofounder, and it throws around buzzwords like Web 2.0 as much as possible to get socnet cred. What is most poignant about this piece to me are the stats about how much moms are targeted now in advertising online. It's always been that way on TV, but now mommybloggers are discovering their power with corporations and other sponsors to this effect. Beth Blecherman has a great post up at SVMoms that touches on this, and I think it may be eligible for some kind of "most links in a post" award.

Rove v. Kos

This is going to be good. Karl Rove (Bush's Brain) and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (Daily KOS) duking it out in Newsweek throughout the 2008 campaign. According to the Washington Post, Rove and Kos will each have a column.

For those who see this move by Newsweek to be unorthodox or even mundane, let me say this - by putting two major figures who have shaped politics from the right and left over the recent past, we the people will have a unique angle on watching issues in this debate shift. And we will have the opportunity to hear what they think. Plus spin. I expect less spin from Kos because that's not his schtick, but Rove will undoubtedly be riding the spinwagon till the bitter end. Here are two people who are smart, articulate and knee-deep in the views of their parties' political base. I believe they'll call it as they see it and put up some great arguments for their respective causes.

Now, about the issue the Washington Post article notes of people moving from politics to press and vice versa, I understand why there's concern - the folks in power worry about leaks and message control. But if you are a person with loyalty or integrity, that doesn't happen. As someone who works on campaigns and also is a blogger, I won't talk about the internals of campaigns I work on in any way that compromises any remotely confidential information, if I write about them at all, and I won't say anything negative about the candidates because I feel it's both ethically wrong and just plain stupid. You shoot yourself in the foot if you do that. Republicans should know by now Rove isn't going to air their dirty laundry.

In cases where it goes the other way and campaigns hire people who have worked in media, they need an agreement from the get-go what those people will and won't divulge and how, once they are working on the campaign or in the government office. It didn't work out so well for the Edwards campaign early this year, but Hillary Clinton made a good move in hiring Peter Daou in 2006 from Salon.com. With media blurring into all aspects of our lives via the Internet and citizen journalism, media and political organizations should be working together more than ever.