How to Make Lit eZines more profitable?

Simon Owens of Bloggasm discusses the business models for ezines, with sobering conclusions:

It’s worth pausing for a moment to note that most of the ezine editors I interviewed for this article have day jobs, and if I had bothered to ask them to categorize their editorial practices within the larger framework of their lives, the word “hobby” would have surfaced. More than half of them don’t even attempt to bring in revenue; they’ve accepted the fact that any payment given to writers would come directly out of their own pockets.

To date, there have been few serious entrepreneurs who have tackled this profitability question. A cloud of pessimistic realism has overcome many in the genre, and discussions seem to focus more on the decline on the pulp magazines and how to reverse it rather than the rise of the ezines.

When we talk about advertising, the value of a website is often based on its niche. Advertisers, in their eternal quest to get maximum efficiency for their dollars, tend to seek out forms of media that are frequented by the demographic they’re trying to reach. This is why advertisements in Wired Magazine tend to be focused on technology and the ads that appear on a political website like Daily Kos are often sponsored by special interest groups.

Here lies the difficulty for short genre fiction; it fits into such a specialized niche that it can often be difficult to monetize.Add to this the fact that many of the subscription-based ezines that have emerged — where the stories are hidden behind a pay wall — have failed to gain much traction, and you can begin to appreciate the hurdle that these editors must overcome.

Good examples here, especially the problems besetting the more successful scifi mags. One thing curiously missing from the discussion is ebooks, which increase ease of reading and portability. All of these ezines are basically on the web only and not available in downloadable form. Author of the SEO Book Aaron Wall claims he has made 6 figures writing and selling his no-DRM PDF ebook (which includes free updates); I can’t comment on that, except to say I paid the $79 (!) for it and found the content well-organized and useful; though even by his own admission you could find much of the same information simply by following his blog. It is easier to attach economic value to a book on a useful subject like SEO or programming than something more personal or artistic.

As for monetization, Daily Blogging Tips  has a good rundown of how to make money with your websites. (Vaughn’s One Pagers also has an excellent analysis of web monetization).  The question is whether advertising undermines a  website’s editorial bent.  Sites require a threshhold of profitability before they think of monetizing. Suppose for example a blogger could make $25 or $100 per month by plastering his blog with ads. Sure, the extra money would be nice, but is $100 really sufficient inducement to abandon the purity of noncommercialism?

Perhaps the best role for ezines is not to make money but to be promotional tools for individual authors (so they can sell ebooks later on).  Under that scenario, it seems unlikely that authors should be paid anything for their ezine contributions–which is pretty much the case now.  The challenge is more than simply a business one; the challenge is: how do you persuade people to read anything?

(For the record, Teleread has been entertaining ads and sponsorship for a while and will probably be starting another ezine fairly soon–one more for the dustbin perhaps).