Today we hear from traditional turned digital publisher – James Tuckerman, founder of Australian Anthill.

Q) You’ve recently stopped printing your magazine and moved to digital publishing. How did you find the response and what benefits have you found from the move?

A) It has been been exciting and slightly sad.

The reader response has been overwhelmingly positive. We fretted and gnashed our teeth over when and how to make the move. However, reader feedback was largely, ‘We don’t care how you do it, just keep doing it!’

“I love magazines, as a consumer, but I’m not convinced about their longevity, as a business owner.”

So, while it was a hard decision, we now find ourselves in the enviable position of being ranked among the Top 50 Business and Finance websites in Australia, according to Nielsen. The ASX and ComSec take the two top spots.

Not bad company, for a standing start.

Q) What’s been your biggest surprise/benefit of taking the magazine online?

A) We’ve been really surprised about what we can now do for advertisers.

We knew that our print product was generating a good result for sponsors but now we can measure and track the effectiveness of advertiser activities – and suggest new things when we see what works (and what doesn’t).

“We’ve been really surprised about what we can now do for advertisers.”

This week, we started offering pay-per-click advertising for email, starting at $190 for 100 click-throughs (something accessible for almost anyone with something to sell).

I’m not aware of any other organisation that is offering PPC for email. Digital allows us to be more innovative and trial new things.

“The biggest surprise has been the reluctance – rather, the lack of interest among PR professionals when given the option of print or digital coverage.”

At the same time, one of our digital pieces is likely to attract twice as many readers as a print article. And a digital article is more likely to send traffic to the subject of the article, right? And that’s the purpose of PR, yes? Publicity, positive sentiment, sales, customers etc.

But I guess you can’t thump a laptop down in front of a client with a beaming smile of accomplishment, like you can with a magazine – even if the numbers for print rarely compare or measure up.

Q) What effect has the integration and use of social media and networking sites like Twitter had on the business?

A) I mentioned earlier that we’re now ranked among the Top 50 Business and Finance websites in Australia.

This could not have happened without social media.

I do wonder, with a degree of apprehension, when or whether the mainstream brands will wake up and start to exploit the potential of social media.

Almost 6 percent of our traffic comes from Twitter. It’s amazing the reach that you can now give a digital article by asking and assisting others to spread the word for you.

“I do wonder, with a degree of apprehension, when or whether the mainstream brands will wake up and start to exploit the potential of social media.”

We have a LinkedIn Group, a Facebook Fanpage and a four Twitter accounts (on four different subjects). We use these to syndicate stories and, more importantly, ask for feedback and respond to unsolicited feedback.

We’re also now offering our articles to help others populate their own business websites with current, topic specific articles, using RSS as a formal syndication tool.

Q) anthillonline.com is highly interactive – people can leave comments, they can follow you on social networking etc. How has this increased personal interaction helped the magazine?

A) It means that people return daily, even when we don’t post an article or distribute a newsletter.

People will always find a fresh conversation to join. We only hope that we can augment this aspect of our site.

“Many websites use the word ‘community’. We can use the word without the self-consciousness that most people must feel when using the word.”

The word ‘community’ is massively overused because in most cases it is an aspirational sentiment – used by ambitious marketers – that is rarely achieved.

That’s an aspect of our site that we are obviously proud of. Our readers will rally to assist us and each other when in need. I can’t see that happening over at some of the other business blogs that generate daily news – yet they all call themselves ‘communities’.

Q) There’s been a lot of talk recently about how to monetise online news through paid subscriptions. What are your thoughts on monetising content online?

A) Only in very few instances will people pay for news. Journalism is built on a false economy. Publishers and journalists still believe that news is the foundation of a newspaper or news website.

The truth is that advertising has always been the foundation of newspapers.

“In fact, news articles were a late addition in the evolution of newspapers. News articles were created when someone said, “How can we get more people to read this advertising flyer we’ve created?”"

What’s happening now is that the bottom has fallen out of the advertising market – advertisers can no longer buy attention like they used to and products like Adwords have commoditised classified advertising.

This means that advertising can no longer be relied upon to support news creation – but neither can the ‘wallets of punters’.

“The future I see is a place where news is fragmented into niche categories, quite probably owned by organisations with the most interest in owning each category.”

For example, Energy Matters is a solar panel company. It is also becoming a world leader in CleanTech news. So long as it remains impartial, it will ‘own the space’ and happily subsidise quality, free journalism.

If someone asked me, “If advertisers won’t pay for news and readers won’t pay for news, who will?” The answer is clearly, “The organisation with the greatest interest in ‘owning’ the news category.”

Visit Australian Anthill.

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Filed under: Inspiration, Interviews