(2012-04-26) Rao Blogging Model

Venkatesh Rao on his WebLog Long Game (non-BusinessModel). *Curiously, the “smart” in the smart money is the unadulterated goodwill it carries. Though there are no strings attached, I feel a strong urge to reinvest Sponsorship income back into the blog and related activities rather than using it to pay the bills. In a way, the money comes with the opposite of a moral hazard attached.

The big thing on my mind last year, when I did my first annual call for sponsorships, was paid members-only communities (Paid Site), the topic du jour at the time. My big realization was that I really disliked the idea. At the same time, I recognized that many other bloggers did have a legitimate reason for doing such communities. One of them, DanAndrews, is in fact one of my sponsors (two years running). He runs a great members-only community, and the model fits what he does perfectly. But the idea just seemed wrong for ribbonfarm. Thinking about wilderness areas helped me figure out why.

Life is long and blogging is young... What will I be doing in 2034, when I hit 60? “Blogging” somehow seems like too insubstantial an answer to the 2034 question. It seems more pragmatic to think of it as just an aspect of running a business in the traditional sense. A functional, instrumental activity that falls under marketing as a cost, driving other things like entrepreneurship. Maybe for some. There are certainly content-marketers, entrepreneur-bloggers, VC-bloggers and others whose readership dwarfs mine. But this instrumental view of blogging still strikes me as far too unromantic.

Blogging doesn’t just feel like an ancillary activity to those of us who do it seriously. It feels like the core activity. It feels like the thing that anchors our economic identity.

My best shot involves Going Deep... Going deep is about adding substance, context and narrative to relationships with individual readers and evolving content themes that start out as paint-by-numbers constructs. *