Tech News as a Natural for the Web

Tech News as a "Natural" for the Web

The type of online news most likely to make money today and in the foreseeable future is news about computer hardware and software. This is obvious; by definition, anyone who reads news online owns a computer or computer-like device which he or she uses to connect to the Internet. That computer or device is going to wear out sooner or later, even if "wear out" means only that the case gets grungy or the monitor gets a bit dim rather than a catastrophic failure. Where better to advertise computers than on computer screens? And what kind of news site could be more likely to attract computer industry advertisers than one carrying news about computers and software?

This does not mean you can put up an ill-conceived site that lists or reviews Windows programs and suddenly have advertisers beating down your virtual door and waving million-dollar banner ad contracts in your face. All it means is that a tech-news site has a better chance of survival than one that can't define its audience closely.

But you must also realize that there are plenty of tech news sites out there already, because the "Computer information is a natural for the World Wide Web" thought is neither new nor original. Almost every major computer-oriented trade magazine publisher moved online to some degree or another between 1994 and 2000, and almost every one of them pulled back heavily between the summer of 2000 and the end of 2001, because after online ad rates plummeted these publishers could no longer afford the large staffs they had accumulated during the easy-money years. Hundreds of sites closed in 2000 and 2001, and layoffs among tech journalists were so massive that the whole industry suffered as hard as a steel town whose biggest plant has shut down.

Do you really have a unique idea for a site? Is it one that is likely to attract enough users to make it worth selling advertising on at $2 or $3 per thousand banner ads you display? Can you keep your costs low enough to pay all your expenses and make a profit too? What if the company that hosts your site suddenly raises its rates 15%? Will you still be okay? What if, out of three writers you hire, one turns out to be a "star" whose work generates two-thirds of your traffic and another publisher suddenly offers her 30% more than you are paying? Will you be able to match that offer? Playing "What if?" in a negative direction is a gloomy game, but any person in any business who doesn't play it regularly is liable to be wiped out by even a minor negative change in business conditions.

Tech news publishers, online or offline, must be prepared for downturns as well as good times, just like any other business. Sadly, an awful lot of people who go into tech publishing, especially on the Web, are optimists at heart. Give them a chance of a prayer of a profit, and they're off and running, hiring everyone in sight who can string a coherent paragraph together and knows the difference between Windows and Linux. If you are serious about doing tech news online, and plan to build a site or group of sites that will last more than a few years, you are probably best off putting together a small group of aggressive reporters and editors and running a small number of accurate, leading-edge stories instead of trying to flood your site with material regardless of quality. When the advertising market is healthy, it's easy to think you need to maximize the number of new pages you publish in order to maximize revenue, but that same expansionist thinking is what gets you into trouble whenever the ad market tanks, as it does every time there is a hint of an economic downturn.

The tech news market from the advertising side, which is what really counts is a highly volatile one. It is also one in which it is easy to latch onto a new technology that seems to be rising fast, figuring that you are going to catch hold of a whole bunch of new revenue, only to find that you were not the only one who had this bright idea.

Linux reporting is a prime example of this problem. Linux, a community-created computer operating system, was all the rage from about 1997 to 2000, literally the fastest-growing operating system in the world. The only thing that grew faster than the number of Linux users was the number of Linux-related publications. Almost every possible domain name shorter than 25 characters that had "Linux" in it got registered, along with most of the ones that contained the words "tux" or "penguin" ("Tux the Penguin" is the Linux mascot) or anything else even remotely related to Linux or its open source relatives, the BSD Unixes. For a while it seemed like the first thing every new Linux user did after he or she got Linux working was put up a "Linux News" page of some sort. In most cases, once the thrill had worn off, those sites stopped being maintained and just sat there, sucking up search engine referrals that otherwise could have gone to useful sites into which continuing effort was being poured. Now the wave of new Linux "news" sites has abated. Linux continues to spread (and is still the world's fastest-growing operating system), but it is no longer a fad, and there are established sites which most Linux and open source software users know about and rely on for the bulk of their Linux information, so there is little room for new ones to draw more than a few hundred daily pageviews unless they offer something radically different from what is already out there.

What applies to Linux news applies to all other niche or specialty tech news publishing, on or off the Internet. Publishing entrepreneurs and established publishers start new ventures to cover the new technology, and before long two-thirds of these efforts die, leaving a small corps of stalwarts to thrive or at least survive in a marginal fashion with their futures tied to that particular technology's ups and downs.