A journalist yesterday asked me if anyone had ever asked to syndicate any of my blogs in any other form of media (newspapers or magazines). I answered that I’ve had a few requests from online media outlets to syndicate some of what I write (which I have allowed in some cases and disallowed in others). Apart from that I’ve only ever had one off requests for an article or essay that I’ve published on my blog to be republished in books, newsletters etc. In terms of a regular syndication I’ve never been approached.
It is something that I’ve daydreamed about though.
It’s often struck me that the content that we write as bloggers could have more than the one use that we also tend to use it for (putting it on our blogs). In fact for many of us it’s ideal for other mediums such as newspapers and magazines.
It makes sense on some levels to use the same content in more than one place, especially if their is reward (either financially or not) in both places.
I seem to have some recollection on some blogger somewhere having this approach – but their name and situation alludes me. Have you heard of anyone who has their blogging republished in a hard copy somewhere on a regular basis?
I know of journalists who blog and bloggers who write special features for magazines – but syndication is another kettle of fish (who puts fish in kettles anyway!?).
Perhaps it would be worth exploring this further – making contact with some publications that could benefit from the writing I do on various topics. I’ve often thought that much of what I write here at ProBlogger would be well suited to a ‘blog tips’ column in a tech section of a newspaper or computer magazine. Any editors out there interested?
There is a pastor that published a book from the articles he wrote in his blog. This is his address:
http://www.reallivepreacher.com/
There’s a company that will turn your blog into a book for a fee. I think it’s a simple on-demand kind of operation, and you have to sell the book yourself once it’s produced. I can imagine some blogs would come out quite well in book form with a bit of editing.
On content sydication, the general view seems to be that online content has now reached zero price, so is not really worth protecting like the Crown jewels. I just let anyone use mine, providing they tack my resource box on the end. Then at least you get something out of it.
Not been approached for direct syndication of my material, but I did get an email from someone at the London Evening Standard who asked me to write a summary of an article I’d written about a current news story, to go in the letters section. I’m not sure if it ever got published though!
I have some experience with this topic. My wife and I have run a hairstyling Web site for women for several years. Three months ago I decided to start a blog to broaden our horizons.
Within a month we got a call from Harris Publishing (publishes 17 different hair magazines for women). They had seen the blog and wanted to know if they could incorporate the blog into each magazine on a monthly “Barb’s Blog” column. We will provide selections from our blog posts each month and will be paid on a per word basis.
But quite frankly we would have done it free . . . just to get the exposure in 17 national womens magazines each month. It really looks like a win-win for everybody.
Wish I had got that offer. Dude I just missed the opportunity.
Very interesting post. I am the co-founder of http://www.Stepwebz.com, an online service whose mission is to provide publishers (and bloggers) with new opportunities to promote and monetize their online content. I cannot say that we have competely fulfilled your dream. But we give an opportunity to bloggers to monetize their RSS feeds by allowing other sites to syndicate their content using our tools.
Here is how it works:
1. Bloggers add the stepwebz syndication button on their blog. This button is similar to the “Add to My Yahoo” button or “Add to newsgator” button or “Add to Google reader” button except that it enables visitors to display the news headlines of the blog on their own site or blog. The stepwebz syndication button says “Add our news to your site” or “Add my news to your site”.
2. Visitors click on the stepwebz syndication button. Visit http://www.stepwebz.com and decide to buy StepWebZ content tools (news box, news ticker…). They place the StepWebZ content tools on their own site or blog and allow their audience to read your news.
3. You get a high commission on ANY tool your referred members purchase on our site.
Please visit http://www.stepwebz.com for more details.
Hello, just to let you know that the http://www.stepwebz.com site mentionned in the previous post is now called http://www.feedzilla.com
Thanks
nico