Journalist Bailout Program from TypePad
I found this via a Jay Rosen tweet: Six Apart, the company that owns the blogging platform TypePad, is offering a Journalist Bailout Program for the “recently-laid-off or fearful-of-layoffs journalist”. Here’s the gist of the program, in Six Apart’s own words:
- You get a free TypePad Pro blog account. That’s the real deal, the same service that powers big-name media blogs, and it even includes professional support so we answer any questions you have.
- You get enrolled in the Six Apart Media advertising program. These are real display ads, that pay a lot more than simple Google text ads, and you get to keep the revenue.
- We’ll promote your new site on Blogs.com. It’s a fast-growing directory of the best in blogs, and Blogs.com will be a very effective way for all of your peers in the Journalist Bailout Program to cross-promote and share traffic for your independent sites.
- Lots more. Getting started with Six Apart opens the door to lots more ways to succeed in the future. We can introduce you to our VIP program to help drive traffic to your site, help you connect your blog to your LinkedIn profile, make it easy to manage your site’s comments from an iPhone, and even show you how to automatically promote your posts to your Facebook friends.
Some observations/questions about the main points of the program:
- The free TypePad Pro account: I haven’t used TypePad, so I can’t comment on its quality, but from the list of features for the TypePad Pro account, I couldn’t really see anything that you can’t achieve with free blogging software like, say, WordPress, and a few relatively easily installed plugins/add-ons. Besides, a successful blog still comes down to content. The software behind the blog can only do so much for you, so I’m not sure why someone starting a blog would pick a platform that requires you to pay rather than a free one that would do all or almost all of the same thing. Yes, Six Apart is footing the bill for the account for this program, but I couldn’t find anything that tells me how long that’ll last, and my spider sense tells me it won’t be forever.
- The Six Apart advertising program: The description says that the display ads pay a lot more than Google text ads. True, but it also neglects to mention that Google AdSense also offers display ads in addition to text ads. So what does the Six Apart program offer that AdSense doesn’t? Also, the Six Apart program isn’t something exclusive. You can sign up for it as long as you have a site, not necessarily one with TypePad.
- Promotion on Blogs.com: Not surprisingly, Blogs.com, like TypePad, is owned by Six Apart. Also not surprisingly, anyone can submit their site for a listing on Blogs.com. There’s a big yellow button on the top right of the home page saying “submit your blog now”. So, like the advertising program, this feature also isn’t anything exclusive to the program.
- All the “Lots more” stuff seem like things that you can figure out if you just spend a little time with a reference guide.
(Help me fill in the blanks: Please leave a comment if you know the answer to the questions I raised about TypePad’s functionality and Six Apart’s advertising program compared to competing products)
This is pretty obviously an effort to increase content on and usage of Six Apart properties, marketed as a way to help journalists (it’s interesting to see someone trying to capitalize on the wave of downsizing in the industry). About the only thing it’s really giving away is the $15-a-month blogging software, and really, from the company’s perspective, that’s no big deal. If you get somebody started on your software, as long as it serves their needs, chances are that brand loyalty and the hassle of switching all their content to another platform would keep at least some of those users even when you start charging them. In return, you get more users, more content, likely better quality for that content since they are from people who are used to writing something substantial for a mass audience, more sites in your blogs directory, and more sites in your ad program.
Don’t get me wrong: The fact that the “bailout program” is just a marketing ploy and a rebundling of existing features doesn’t make it bad. If you are not all that familiar with the ways of the Web, this would be a way to get up and running a little more quickly. I see it as akin to the free bundle of features that Web-hosting services offer when you sign up, which typically includes things like Webmail, blogging software, addition to a list of search engines (none of which you have ever heard of), Zen Cart, photo album, calendar, etc. They are all open-source software/non-exclusive features that would be free regardless of which Web-hosting service you used and can be added piecemeal independent of the Web-hosting service. But it is quicker to push an “Install WordPress” button on your control panel than to download WordPress, figure out where to upload it, and how to set up a database for it on your Web-hosting account, and for most people, that quick install is good enough for their needs. So really, the only thing about the Six Apart program that gives me a little bit of pause is the fact that they charge for their blogging software. They are offering it to journalists for free now, but what’s the expiration date on that?
Ultimately, if you are a journalist looking to strike out on your own as a blogger, the bundle of seemingly not-so-special features offered by this program can be a way to go. Just realize that it’s hardly the only way to go, and that you can get all of the features it offers for the same low price — free — elsewhere. Now, as for making money off your blog, I think this line from Six Apart’s own description sums it up pretty well:
While we can’t promise it’s going to replace having a full-time writing gig, it gets you up and running with your own site that you can start to benefit from.
UPDATE:
Anil Dash, VP of Six Apart, blogs more about the program. Sounds like they’ve gotten some good responses. Anil also left a comment below.
Hi John, thanks for the thoughtful writeup. Having been intimately involved in our launch of the Journalist Bailout program, I can probably add some information and address a few of the points you’ve brought up.
The “it’s possible to do this stuff already, simply by following these 65 simple steps…” arguments don’t hold a lot of water with me, frankly. You say that a regular journalist could start a blog with a free copy of WordPress and a few easily-installed plugins. I think that process actually sounds, to a regular beat reporter, something like “find and pay for a web host, figure out what the hell FTP is, grab a zip file, figure out how to get that onto a server, ask somebody which half-dozen *other* random zip files you need from across the web, deal with each of those, get them properly working with one another, and then repeat this process every other week just to deal with the security vulnerabilities in your WordPress”.
I don’t know about you, but that seems like a hell of a lot of distraction from actual reporting. And that’s just to get *started*. Meanwhile, I’ve heard from journalists on WordPress.com who were thinking of paying $6000 for the first year of VIP service, just so they could have ads on their blog. That seems like madness, too.
The same things go for the concerns about display ads and the promotion on Blogs.com. Even if you do figure out the secret to turning on display ads from Google, you’re still obligated to remove any objectionable ads after they’ve appeared on your site. Our program lets publishers filter ads before they’ve gone live, so you don’t end up having to monitor your own site to see if it offends you. While anyone is welcome to submit their site to Blogs.com, not every site is accepted, as the members of this program will be. And that’s not to say that the program won’t encompass more in the future — we just wanted to stick to what we know we can offer right now.
But nitpicking aside, I do think you follow the gist of what we’re doing, and I appreciate the considered take on the concept behind it. I’ve said it before and I’ll repeat it here: This isn’t designed to be a silver bullet, just a smart option for those who are interested. Sure, tech-savvy journalists could string all of this stuff together on their own, if they had the time to do it and were willing to take their eye of off their actual work to do so. But my goal was that we would provide a clear path forward, and it sounds as if you agree we’ve succeeded in providing at least a first step there.
Finally, I do hope you’ll keep the healthy skepticism about what we’re doing, but at the same time I encourage you to remember that most journalists are not in the job of learning technology any more than they were in the job of setting type. Every time I hear “just” do these technical steps or “just” learn these new technologies, I think we’re possibly leaving behind a whole generation of journalists who do good work but haven’t had the time or inclination to immerse themselves in the world of web technology like you or I have. We owe it to them to offer more.
(And frankly, I’d love to have you participate, if only so we don’t have to worry about you losing all your posts again!
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Hi Anil. Thank you for the comment. I agree to a degree with your point about the program offering an easy way for journalists to get up and running without being “distracted” by the technical aspects. But I’m also of the opinion that, if you are going to try blogging as a way of publishing and possibly making money from it, then part of it should include making yourself more techno-savvy rather than just finding a situation that shelters your lack of techno-savviness. I’m not saying everybody who blogs has to be expert programmers and Web designers, but those criteria are also not necessary for setting up a blog on your own either. Understanding how a setup works will help you get the most out of your platform. If a journalist-turned-blogger ONLY focuses on reporting and remains blissfully ignorant about how all the other aspects of the site works, that’s not really any different than a newspaper reporter only knowing how to write and not having any understanding about how the other aspects of the editorial and business sides of the paper work. As I said, I do like that this is an easy way for journalists to start a blog, but after they get set up, I would still encourage them to take the time to learn some of the ins-and-outs.
Is typepad in business? Everything is shut down. Typepad. Sixapart. My blog is down.
Looks like it’s up to me.