Are bloggers really selling bottles of air?

August 20th, 2005

This really burns my toast. Robert MacMillan, staff writer on washingtonpost.com, wrote a piece this week on the Blog Business Summit entitled Blog-Oil Salesmen . He suggested that WordPress superstar, Matt Mullenweg , in particular, and business bloggers, in general, are somehow taking advantage of “companies from Hewlett-Packard to Wells Fargo.” He writes, Rushkin -like:

It’s pathetic — as well as amusing — to watch representatives of multimillion-dollar corporations shell out their hard-earned cash to buy what amounts to bottles of freshly packaged air. The concepts behind blogging are not difficult to understand, nor is it difficult to throw one onto the Internet. I’d be ashamed to charge for my services so I’ll offer them for free. Want a blog? Go read some. Do what they do. There’s your Blog Business Summit.

Sure, corporates who rush into blogging because everyone else is doing it , or who pay big fees to ad-agencies with no blog experience are fools. But to characterise Matt as a conman is something else entirely. WordPress is an Open Source project which has brought blogging to nearly half a million people for free . If Matt and Co. can now eke some money out of deep-pocketed corporates, while providing something valuable in return, then good for them. Bloggers put massive time and effort into their craft, for little or no reward. Our experience gives the best of us an opportunity to sell our services to corporates, who want and need what we have. As Johnnie Moore put it back in April :

I know a lot of bloggers are in what may be a self-imposed poverty trap. They think because this stuff is easy ( for them ) they shouldn’t charge much for their advice - and nor should anyone else. I wouldn’t agree. The point is blogging is potentially hugely valuable to corporates and if they’re willing to pay someone to make it easy for them, then good luck to whoever is smart enough to get the gig. I hope sometimes it will be me.

Make no mistake, Mr McMillan, our concepts may be simple and our tools may be lightweight, but our experience is real and valuable.

Update: Shortly after posting this, I read on Silicon Beat that WordPress.com, the hosted WordPress aimed at the corporate market, will be available free of charge. If Matt is really conning those naive corporations, he is going about it all wrong.

Entry Filed under: Blogging

10 Comments Add your own

  • 1. DL Byron  |  August 20th, 2005 at 7:11 pm

    Thanks for taking up this topic. Post conference, I’m taking a break, but I don’t know where the article is coming from and I think it’s that he wasn’t there at the Summit. Matt trolling the conference? C’mon. I’ll post on your post and discuss this more a bit later. I even say in my presentation and upcoming book, the blog marketing part is easy, that’s why there are so many accidental entrepreneurs, but what people what to learn is the how, the mechanics of it.

  • 2. Adrian  |  August 20th, 2005 at 9:18 pm

    Just to be clear, I wasn’t at BBS either.

    Having looked at the various links a bit more, it seems that there has been a comedy of errors. Matt Marshall wrote a story titled Blogs for bucks . Nowhere in that story does it say that Matt Mullenweg is making money off this, just that (emphasis is mine):

    In an industry where there is notoriously little money being made, there’s hope corporations may pay big bucks for help in understanding blogs and in producing their own.

    So the title is a bit misleading - and Marshal apologises for it in a comment on Matt’s BBS follow up post . The title was the work of an over eager sub-editor.

    Robert MacMillan’s piece was based on the MercuryNews piece. My guess is, MacMillan read the title and did little more than skim the article, before writing his own diatribe.

    Anyway, thanks for your comment; I have subscribed to your feed and I will look out for your post on my post.

    Adrian

  • 3. Matt on WordPress »…  |  August 20th, 2005 at 11:07 pm

    […] nd WordPress has annonuced WordPress.com” WordPress starts hosted blogging service Are bloggers really selling bottles of air? (No!) WordPress.com — “Next thing I am dying to see […]

  • 4. Chris Bailey  |  August 22nd, 2005 at 12:52 am

    Adrian, I think there are a couple of things going on here.

    One, is the disdain that most “professional journalists” have for bloggers. I truly believe they think we’re out to steal their lunch money. And as long as they refuse to deal with real stories and issues and abuse the public trust, perhaps they should fear this.

    Two, for-profit websites and newspapers need to meet their business margins. How do you get people’s attention (and the accompanying ad money)? Post something controversial and sourly opinionated.

    Three, because blogging is just throwing up a bunch of words (hey, journalists do this all the time), it must be easy. Except it’s more than that. Blogging is really about relationships. It’s an organic process where the reader is as much participant as audience. Newspapers, on the other hand, are all about pushing something on their readership (otherwise, there would be a public comment box at the end of the article).

  • 5. Adrian  |  August 22nd, 2005 at 8:47 am

    Thanks Chris.

    The whole big versus social media issue (blogs, wikis etc) is very relevant here. Even Rupert Maxwell knows that big media’s share of readers, attention and influence is declining, while the importance of social media is growing all the time.

    If big corporations want to spend their marketing budgets wisely, should they put money into a declining media, or one that’s growing? Or at least split their spending to include both?

    To be fair, MacMillan didn’t say “don’t blog,” he said “don’t hire anyone to help you blog.” But if you apply that reasoning, you need not hire a PR firm either. PR is a simple concept, right? The same could be said for dozens of other marketing and business processes, which enterprises see fit to invest in all the time. It’s this flaw in MacMillan’s argument that irks me even more than the name calling.

    Thanks again for the comment, Chris. BTW, it’s good to see you getting back to the blogging habit after a short hiatus (much shorter than mine, I might add!). Keep it up.

    Adrian

  • 6. Evelyn Rodriguez  |  August 22nd, 2005 at 10:22 pm

    Adrian, I agree that the big (i.e. mass media) vs social media issue is very relevant here. I just wrote about blogging being akin to magic regarding this Washington Post story today. Steve Brobeck, one of the conference organizers, is a close-up magician. I wrote that I’d take a close-up magician’s advice over a mass-media journalist’s advice on two-way conversational media any day!

    I agree with the gold rush mentality you mention too.

    I appreciate you posting Johnnie Moore’s quote. I think that applies to a lot of areas - not just bloggers. We undervalue that which comes naturally to us. And assume it must be natural to everyone else too. In fact, that’s what DL does in his comment:

    “I even say in my presentation and upcoming book, the blog marketing part is easy, that’s why there are so many accidental entrepreneurs, but what people what to learn is the how, the mechanics of it.”

    DL’s success with Clip ‘N Seal isn’t accidental and it isn’t obvious TO OTHERS. It’s intuitive to him, yes. An attendee - a VP at large PR firm - remarked to me in the first day of conference that she can get others in her firm to figure out mechanics, but what they really needed was counsel on strategy and marketing.

  • 7. Adrian  |  August 23rd, 2005 at 7:51 am

    Welcome, Evelyn. Great to have you join us here.

    I think corporations may need advice on strategy and/or marketing and/or mechanics - it depends on the corporation.

    Some may have what it takes to figure all this out, but simply need - without in any way trying to devalue the work of blog consultants - a spare (and safe) pair of hands to handle the work. Others may be ready to jump in and have dedicated people ready to start - if only they knew how.

    What I am saying here (perhaps not very clearly) is that I think you and DL are both right. Strategy and implementation are two sides of the same coin; it’s perfectly legitimate for corporations to invest in one or both sides of that coin. Neither will be, as MacMillan contends, wasted investment.

  • 8. Crossroads Dispatches…  |  August 23rd, 2005 at 10:04 pm

    So What Now: Responding to Our Calling

    For where the heart goes before, like a lamp, and illumines the pathway Many things are made clear, that else lie hidden in the darkness. - Henry Wadsworth LongfellowI meant to write this post this past weekend. But your

  • 9. Adrian  |  August 24th, 2005 at 12:38 am

    Immediately, right this second, stop what you are doing and go and read the trackback above from Evelyn’s Crossroads Dispatches . Follow the links, too. Evelyn’s post simultaneously transcends this issue and cuts right to its very heart.

  • 10. Individual business blog …  |  May 21st, 2007 at 10:09 am

    […] The Washington Post thinks bloggers are selling bottled air. Webpronews responds, as does Matt Mullenweg and there?#8217;s a lively debate started by Adrian Trenholm. The author of the post article obviously wasn?#8217;t at the summit, read the Silicon Valley article about Matt and quoted it out of context. […]

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