People are paying more for online content than last year, with overall spending up 10%, according to a report from eMarketer.
How come?
· A lot of free sites died out during the dot com crash, reducing the choices for consumers.
· Online advertising slumped. So surviving sites had to figure out ways to charge for content—premier areas, sex classifieds, and, hold your breath, better information.
· Plus, more folks are pouring onto the Web every day, and the percent who feel comfortable with buying online keeps going up.
· With broadband connections surging, more folks are willing to pay for streaming video and audio. (63 million broadband users this year, compared with 99 million dial-ups. EMarketer predicts half and half by the end of 2005.
What does this mean for web writers and editors?
A glimpse of the sun coming up.
Not a big boom in business right away. Most of the big content sites are, well, surviving, but you can’t expect a hiring frenzy within the next few months. Most of the money’s paying off old debts, eking out a few bonuses for execs, and beefing up the servers, for the high-speed customers who want to see out-takes of the Victoria’s Secret fashion show, or Jacko doing the perp walk.
And look where the growth is.
The biggest increases in spending for online content are in these areas:
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Music and radio (148.8% increase over 2002,buoyed by 17 million tracks sold on Apple’s iTunes)
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Personal growth and dieting (121.2%)
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Personal ads and dating (48.3%)
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Online gambling (24%).
Not a lot of writing and editing jobs in those areas, unless you have already worked in those fields before.
The increases for content that resembles traditional journalism are up a bit, which is mildly encouraging:
Odd twists on the data: entertainment news is off by 10.4%, and something called research is down 13.2%.
Of course, since the beginning of the Web, folks have been paying a lot to satisfy their greed and lust , so the upticks in financial and adult content rise from a large base. In those areas, we’re seeing the kind of growth we might expect in industries that are, well, mature. So there are probably going to be a few more openings in sites that have three x’s in their names, or dollar signs in their emails subject lines.
If you want your own report, you can get it from eMarketer. $695 will get you 24 pages with 32 charts. Release date: December 3.
Summary of the report: http://www.emarketer.com/news/article.php?1002566&;trackref=edaily#article
A few more details, along with the pitch to buy: http://www.emarketer.com/products/report.php?content_on_dec03.
9:39:45 AM 
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