“Blank Slate” And Other Thoughts On Revolving Floor

Posted: February 27th, 2010 | Author: miconian | Filed under: Media And Advertising | Tags: online publishing, revolving floor | 2 Comments »

The new issue of RF is up, including a piece by me on life as a D&D geek in the 1980s.

A couple of ways that RF, and my attitudes towards it, have evolved since it started in August 2009:

I’m not as concerned with deadlines as I used to be. When I started RF, I was thinking in terms of the social media “hubs” that I’ve produced in the corporate world. In such cases, the site is typically part of an advertising campaign with a goal, a budget, and a timeline. The audience needs to be both earned and converted (for lack of a better word) within a few months. I couldn’t tell a client: “It’s true that only 500 people came this month, but don’t worry, they loved it, and we got one link from an influential site that I have a lot of respect for. We’re building a brand, and it will eventually pay off.”

To be clear, that is what clients should want to hear; they just don‘t want to hear it. Genuine loyalty and sincere audience interest is built gradually. RF has essentially no budget, and nobody is cracking the whip on me to make it profitable this quarter, so I’m letting it grow organically. There was no new content in January, but we did attract about another 100 Facebook fans during that time, all of whom are receiving updates about the new content. *Facebook fan pages are wonderful; the user opts in with a single, low-risk click, and the organization has only to avoid coming across as annoying and crassly commercial.)

So, I originally hoped to launch the “blank slate” issue in January, but we didn’t have enough material then, and we didn’t have the new logo and background image for the issue yet, so I waited until all the elements were in place, and we launched last week. So what? It’s true that, if we had constantly fresh content, we’d have more traffic, and that’s how most commercial publishers would see it. But I don’t believe in attracting an audience just to attract an audience. I want to attract them to stuff that I think is actually good. When we reach the point that we’re getting enough quality submissions to come out every month, or to have new content every single day, that will be great, we’re not there yet.

I remember when Suicide Girls was first starting out, with just a few models and a few sets. Then they launched a feature called “New Girl Friday,” by which they simply meant that they were confident that they’d have at least fifty-two new pieces of content over the remainder of the year. And then, eventually, the Friday feature gave way to new content multiple times per day. RF is not much like SG, but SG is a great example of an indie site with few resources that managed to build itself up gradually and organically into something huge. It also doesn’t rely on current events or celebrity gossip to get traffic.

Which leads to the other major development (in my own mind). The per-issue topics on RF were originally meant to be arbitrary constraints for the content creators, arbitrary reasons to associate a selection of disparate content, an arbitrary reason to come out with a new issue, and a way to associate content indirectly with sponsorships (e.g. the theme could be “check your baggage” and the sponsor could be Virgin Airlines).

However, what’s happened is that we’ve started to create content around a series of fairly timeless and universal themes (“how do you like your eggs,” “seconds,” “this is a test,” “lost and found,” etc.). And I’ve been increasingly talking to people who say things like “Too bad I missed out on the ‘blank slate’ issue; I wanted to submit something.” And I’m thinking, well, why not? What is an “issue,” really, in online context? It’s not like the type for the “blank slate” issue is no longer set, nor would we have to do a whole new printing and distribution if we wanted to add to it. New content could be added to any RF issue at any time. It can only be to the good, as the author’s promotion of the new content will draw attention to the rest of that issue, most of which, in all cases so far, is pretty timeless stuff.

I do want to keep coming out with new issues, but it’s possible that there will be points in time when more authors will be interested in contributing to past issues than to a new issue. But even if that happens: so what? All of the issues are still “in circulation.” They all feed into each other. And as long as the quality is high, there’s always room for another addition to each one.

There will still regularly be new issues, though. The next one is themed “back from the dead,” and we are shooting for early April. Contact me if you’re interested in being part of it.

 

 

 

 

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