Bankrupt Online Media?

A couple of weeks ago Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan lowered the prime interest rate 1/2 point...and the stock market continued to tumble!

Most of the stocks that are taking the worst drubbing are the technology/"dot com" related stocks, what with companies like Amazon.com and Priceline.com worth a fraction of what they used to be worth. But I am not complaining. I have none of these stocks.

My beef is what the "bear" is doing to the "write-for-pay" dot coms, who no longer have all that venture capital rolling in. For instance, Themestream, at "http://www.themestream.com": where at start-up they paid a hefty ten cents a click, then an okay two cents a click for traffic from anywhere (thus, you could put your articles in the search engines or link to them from anywhere and get paid for them)...just when I thought I was starting to rake in some decent bucks for my "write-for-pay" articles and my homeschooling articles, or my more controversial pieces pushing the limits of acceptable freedom of speech (kind of what you read here sometimes!)--and worst of all, a month before the pay period ends!--Themestream decides it's only going to pay two cents for all articles (even those it was paying ten cents for) and only when registered users read them, retroactive back to January! I lost $16! Overnight!

Then there is Delphi ("http://www.delphi.com"), which, not being a "write for pay" site but a great place to promote your writing online, is having some trouble, maybe lots of trouble, seeing as how they recently fired their entire indexing staff. There are sites on Delphi two months old or less that have not been indexed--this means that there is no way a non-indexed site can promote itself on Delphi. What they have come up with is a "top 100", in that if you make the top 100 they will index your site (but if you make the top 100, why do you even need Delphi to promote your site? Everyone already knows about it!). Sounds like a "Catch 22" here, and it also sounds like Delphi needs competition. But is there any company out there with enough venture capital to get it going?

Several other sites I have tried to join or have promoted in my "write for pay" articles (many of thosr article are on Themestream) either never got off the ground or wound up dying in mid-stream. As venture capital dries up (and it is drying up!) and dot coms rely more on advertizing revenues (a no-win proposition), it becomes clear that the "business model" these media outfits are following has serious flaws. (For instance I can, through experience, mention one of these "communities" in particlular that I have had a negative experience with; I won't, and I will be perfectly honest to say that since at least one of the Suite Senior Editors works for this company as a content manager, I do not want to risk losing my job here by mentioning this company. CYA, as they say.)

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