Monetizing A Hobby

(Crossposted from my noise blog.)

Mr. Myers at Sens Army Blog is obviously looking at the internet with a bit of jealousy in his heart these days, and is wondering why he shouldn't get paid to do the work he does.

I'll be up front: I'm picking on Mr. Myers here both because his article happened to come up in my RSS reader, and because he's been here before (see I'm Selling Out And Need Your Feedback).

As a freelance writer, Mr. Myers has every right to set both the expectation of compensation for his submissions, as well as the price he wishes to charge for that work. However, nobody is under any obligation to pay that price, with the resultant penalty that either those potential readers have to do without reading his work, or new work doesn't get created because Mr. Myers is off doing something else that someone is willing to pay him to do.

And that's the key.

The undercurrent to my reply to Mr. Myers' first go-around was "you can't sell out if nobody's buying". And the same rationale should be presented here, as well.

Economically, prices are set by willing seller selling to willing buyer. When the buyer in this case is looking at the supply of "writing done by Mr. Myers", the supply is sharply limited and Mr. Myers has a natural monopoly on this very narrow market. If the market in question is "Senators bloggers of a quality better than 'fanboys with little insight to give(*)'", the market is somewhat wider, and populated with people who will participate for no monetary compensation. Given that, the potential buyer would be foolish to pay for something he can get for free.

On the other side, the economics of internet businesses are still somewhat hand-wavey. The golden years of being paid non-fractional-dollars for low-thousand-impressions are long gone. Even a thousand viewers will add very little in the way to immediate bottom-line revenue to an internet business (see also Mr. Myer's response to my comment on his older article). So from an immediate revenue sharing angle, there is not much in the way of immediate revenue to share.

So it is unfortunate that the market has decided that the immediate value of "sports blogging" is so low that it averages out to might-as-well-be-zero for all but the highest end of the market(**).

But that's economics for you.

People who try to blog for money are like those setting up in the restaurant business. The vast majority of independent restaurants or clubs fail to last even one year before the original owner runs out of money. Done well, it is a lot of work, and even high quality writing is not necessarily a guarantee of success since the problem of attracting an audience in the sea of noise that is out there.

Or perhaps a more apt comparison would be to compare professional bloggers to professional actors. Hundreds show up at a cattle call for a single part; and most parts don't pay very well. The percentage of people who manage to make any money doing it is very small; the percentage of them who make their living is also small; and the percentage of those who get rich doing it is microscopic.

I blog because it is interesting to me at times. I'm never going to make any money doing this and I'll probably never be regularly read by anyone other than Google's search engine and myself.

You should blog because you are interested in something or passionate about something. But just having those credentials is no guarantee that you'll be able to make a living doing it.

--

(*) = so coined by Pension Plan Puppets during Toronto Star Gate. And yes, I'm under no delusion that I would fall into any other category for any of my blogs.

(**) = One of my wife's writing magazines had this tidbit in it on blogging: only the top 10% of blogs make any money. And the average annual revenue for that 10% is $19K. And keep in mind that the income from blogs does not scale linearly with the increase in popularity through that 10%.

Crystal Ball

Oh oh:

According to three sources, the LA Kings are still very much in the market to add a "major player" before camp opens. That player? At least two sources agree the kings are once again targeting Jason Spezza.

Now first of all, just because the Kings want Spezza doesn't mean they are going to get him. And second of all, Murray would be an idiot to avoid talking to the Kings about Spezza on the off chance that they are willing to give us the moon in exchange for him.

The problem is that LA is probably NOT going to give us the moon.

If Spezza goes, it puts lie to everything that Murray has been saying through the off-season, that he thinks this team is ready to compete at a higher level. That competitiveness rests on the cornerstone of Jason Spezza. If Spezza is shipped out, it means that Ottawa is in a rebuilding phase.

And it occurs to me, it would go totally against the philosophy that landed Gonchar in free agency. That was a move designed to pay off over the next couple of years, not five years down the line after a rebuilding phase.

Trading Spezza for current talent would be a waste, if not a net loss. Trading him for picks and prospects, even a franchise player prospect, is a lottery.

LA would have to offer the moon to get Spezza, and I don't think they'll do that.

So even if this rumor is true, I don't think anything short of a blockbuster would ses it actually come to anything.

Nightmare Scenario

Good news, everyone! The Ottawa Senators are the butt of a joke that Time Magazine made!

Of course, an unsexy World Series (think San Diego Padres-Texas Rangers) or hockey Finals matchup (Edmonton Oilers-Ottawa Senators!) could quickly halt some of this momentum.

Now traditionally I've said the league's nightmare scenario is an Ottawa-Vancouver final, but hey, thanks for the mention.

Don't Trade Spezza

Black Aces wonders why the blogosphere is against trading Spezza when the media seems hell-bent for it.

Personally, I'm astounded that people think we should trade Spezza. He averages almost a point a game, he's second on the all-time Senators scoring list, and his game has improved so much in the last year.

I know I am beating a horse that's been well-beat elsewhere here. But seriously -- what do people expect is going to be the return for a trade? And who is going to step up to be the top center if he goes? Mike Fisher is a snappy guy, but he isn't a #1 center.

Seriously. We've been here before. (Even to the point of linking to Black Aces again.)

Meta Cup Discussion

The meta-discussion surrounding Chicago's Stanley Cup win last night has been fascinating. Apparently when Chicago won, it meant that three teams had gone, what, 43 years without a Cup win.

Those teams? Los Angeles and St. Louis, who were expansion teams in '67. And the third?

Hmmm... 1967 rings a bell for some reason. Yep that's right -- the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Apparently the Maple Leafs now co-own the longest Cup-free drought.

Why is this fascinating? I mean, besides Maple Leafs fans being miserable, a condition they are well used to by now?

It is fascinating because the vast majority of "coverage" of this issue has been Maple Leafs bloggers and media complaining about how unfair it is that everyone is pointing it out.

Mendez On Spezza

Sportsnet's Ian Mendez takes the Ottawa Media to the woodshed for their treatment of Jason Spezza.

The Blind Leading The Blank

SenShot talkes about Bruce Garrioch. This moved me to write this comment in reply:

I think you give Boo Boo too much credit. History has shown that there's no place in the news, sports news especially, for fair, reasoned, balanced discussion. It is all about shock value and scooping the opposition. The mere fact that you pay attention to him means that at some level his crazy antics are working. Me? I read about what he's up to when you or other 'bloggers write about him.

Admit it, if Boo Boo had been right about the Kings, it wouldn't have mattered that he'd pulled it out of his ass, he'd have looked fucking brilliant.

I think the fundamental problem is that Ottawa sports fans in general are bandwagonists -- they are there when the times are good, and absent when the times are not so good (see also the CFL and the Ottawa Lynx). The problem is that bandwagonists are also lazy fans, they look for the easy answer (Hey! That centerman keeps doing those no-look drop-giveaways!) and not the hard ones (Hey!... um.)

This is why goalies get run out of town. Everyone blames the guy in the crease, but the five guys on the ice (and/or in the penalty box as the case may be) gets a free pass for some reason. I don't think Gerber, Emery, or LeClaire were as bad as the guys in front of them made them look. (Yeah, LeClaire isn't gone yet, but if Spezza goes or July 1 passes... well I think he's next on the hit list, miracle in game 5 not withstanding.)

For a bandwagonist, sports are supposed to be about fun. And for a professional sport that you pay money to go to, "fun" means "winning", and since the home team is the one there most of the time, the home team is the one you want to win. And let's face it, if you are a casual fan who's shelling out $100 to $200 a pop for a night out (plus the required 45 minutes in the parking lot), you want some FUN for your money.

Personally I have my doubts about this team. They were streaky, and only rarely showed the depth and discipline that are needed in the playoffs. There's something fundamental missing, and I'm starting to doubt that something can be found while the current core of the team (Alfredsson, Spezza... um?) are still going to be productive. And given that, wouldn't it be better to trade them now while they have value, in exchange for longer term assets that can be built up?

I don't want to say yes, but it's Murray's job to look at hard questions like this to see if there is an answer either way, no matter who in the media is banging whatever drum.

The media's job is the same as the politician, to figure out where their audience is going and to get out in front of them. And that's all Boo Boo and his ilk are doing.