Ellis Booker, editor in chief of Media Business magazine, asked me to write a guest column for his July 2004 issue. The column, available as a PDF online, and reproduced below, takes a look at the future of trade publishing.

Note that the column mentions an article I wrote for the September 26, 2000 issue of Business 2.0. It is good reading today and of course related to the article mentioned above.

Here's the Media Business article:

Online Trade Tech's Publishing Juggernaut

It is only a matter of time before trade print magazines will be virtually eliminated. I first made this prediction in the September 2000 issue of BUSINESS 2.0 magazine ("I Want My N/TV!").

In that article I went on to say that the then-recent acquisitions of CMP Media and Ziff Davis would be viewed as bad investments. I stated that the acquirers had paid way too much for the respective properties.

Fast forward to today. My prediction was on the mark. And firsthand experience tells me that things will only get worse for any tech print trade publisher.

The previous issue of this magazine (June 7) had an article with the headline: “Trade Magazines’ Influence Wanes.” The subtitle read: Veronis Communications Report Bullish on Internet, Trade Shows, Database Service.” This report did not concentrate on the tech space, but a reading certainly shows that online is the future in BtoB publishing (which includes tech trade).

There have been a few attempts at launching tech trade print magazines in this century. But they are far and few between. On the other hand, numerous magazines have been killed or consolidated as ad dollars dried up. Most of the tech magazines that continue do so as razor-thin magazines with a handful of advertisers.

Advertisers are turning to the Internet for a better ROI. Why? A vertically focused Web site with audited traffic offers the advertiser an opportunity to rifle shot his ad to an absolutely focused reader. The economics of running a Web site are miniscule compared to a print magazine. A magazine requires a direct mail campaign to find subscribers. A new magazine also requires a large staff, and distribution costs (paper, printing and binding) are huge. And, of course, a magazine requires a reasonable number of ad pages. A new Web site requires only one writer to start and its distribution cost is virtually zero since delivery is over the net.

For example, Jupitermedia (my company) was able, at modest cost, to take a chance and start a Web site devoted to Wi-Fi back in 2001. Today this site (Wi-FiPlanet.com) is thriving with readership and paid advertising. If we were back in the 1990s, a hot topic such as Wi-Fi would have spawned several print magazines, but not now. Publishing
PageTwo-Meckler

Economics favor the online publisher when it comes to risking money on a new title. And at the same time, the vertically focused Web site offers a better ROI for the advertiser than an ad in a general enterprise computing trade magazine.

It will only be a matter of time before some of the larger tech magazines bid goodbye to print and continue life as online titles. I am sure we will see at least one or two such moves before the end of this year.

Now let’s turn to a small BtoB online publishing company called MDlinx.Com (Jupitermedia is a stockholder) as an example of a company that fills a need that could only be accomplished online. MDLinx.Com has over 300 Web sites and companion e-mail newsletters aimed at doctors and medical professionals. Each Web site targets a specialty niche of medical practice. In the cardiology area there are approximately 15 Web sites and newsletters. The MDLinx.com service selects the best articles of the day in each medical specialty that it covers. Over 35,000 doctors have registered for these services. Advertisers are primarily pharmaceutical companies. CPM’s at MDLinx.Com average close to $175! The company is very profitable and growing rapidly.

MDLinx’s success was hard won. It took almost three years for advertising agencies to buy into the concept. But once ad agencies understood the concept and the vertical power of these specialty Web sites, MDLinx became a revenue juggernaut. Obviously MDLinx is not a tech print trade publisher, but in the medical field it is now taking ad dollars from traditional medical print publications.

There are countless examples in the online publishing world similar to MDLinx. A larger example is TechTarget.com, which has received over $100 million of VC funding in the last few years. TechTarget claims that it is doing $50 million in revenue and is profitable and is projecting $100 million in revenue in three years. Whether these numbers are realistic or not, clearly TechTarget is draining dollars from the traditional trade print tech publishers.

There is a saying about soldiers made famous by General Douglas MacArthur that is appropriate for tech trade print magazines --- “Old soldiers never die, they just slowly fade away.”