When we interviewed Björn Jeffery last year, he had just sold one half of his online media venture Manolo.se to an established newspaper group in Sweden. We wanted to follow up with him to see how the market had changed since then and what opportunities he saw in the near future.
In the short time, since we last spoke, there seems to have been so many changes in independent media and publishing. What’s changed in your world – in media and personally?
A lot! In november of 2005 the Swedish newspaper Sydsvenskan bought half of Manolo.se. They saw it as a way of extending their reach into target groups that traditionally are hard to reach as a daily newspaper. It was quite bold actually. Scandinavian newspapers are starting to get blogs at the moment - a year too late of course, but still.
On a personal level I’m involved in a number of interesting projects and I work full time (apart from Manolo.se) as an online strategist, mainly for newspapers and magazines.
To what extent is the publishing you do your business or your shop-front? How has that changed over the last year?
It’s definitely still our shop-front. We’ve had difficulties in convincing media agencies that less visitors - but the right ones - are worth spending advertising money on. It’s moving, but very slowly. Manolo.se is still a fantastic PR project for us - it’s the largest fashion site for men in Sweden and we do interviews for papers and magazines almost every week.
Beyond any financial reward, what do you get out of it all? What drives you?
The joy of running your own project! I can read about
something interesting in a blog and then try it out the same evening.
That would never be possible with client work. As an online consultant
it is more credible to actually try things out instead of just
recommending solutions that I’ve read about.
Also, I feel a large sense of responsibility towards our
readers. If we don’t deliver the goods - they let us know! Their
expectations are surprisingly high for being a free publication. That
is probably the largest driving force for me.
Are you conscious of YOU the brand as much as your site/magazine? Do you leverage the fact?
When writing at Manolo.se I hold a very low profile. Male
vanity is still a touchy subject and we’ve found that they best way of
handling it is to keep it to strict journalism. We don’t have any
pictures of us on the site for example. On the other hand I leverage
the fact that I co-founded the site to make readers interested in my
other blog in English (http://www.goodold.se/blog/trend).
How do you view the other independent publishers that cover the same content areas as you?
The independent publishers haven’t really made much noise.
I think we might of killed the competition somewhat. Last year when
PSFK interviewed me we had 25 000 unique visitors, this month we’ll
probably go over 100 000. Fashion blogs for women are exploding on the
other hand - there’s a whole community of them that came from nowhere.
How is mainstream media covering your content areas? Is there a noticeable reaction to what you and your peers are doing?
Our competitors seem to have all found the internet
suddenly! The major publishers in Sweden are all going after
style-conscious men on the internet this autumn. Sweden and Scandinavia
have had a lot of success in fashion lately and I think the general
interest has increased a lot the last year. And I’m sure we haven’t
seen the peak of it yet either. My prediction is that both magazines
and newspapers will try to tie key-bloggers to them in order to be a
part of the growing scene.
How is your world going to change over the next 12 months?
As we can’t really compete with major publishers with the
amount or type of material being produced, we will have to be smarter
than them. And we have quite a head start. Our competitors always start
of with a magazine and the internet comes second. That’s wrong from the
word go. We also make sure that we make the most of what we can with
existing technology. I think the coming year will be heavy in web
development while the editorial content will probably stay the same,
more or less. We’ll still be the largest site in our genre of course.
Thank you
Related PSFK Posts
Interview With Bjorn Jeffrey, Manolo.se
Technorati Tags: independent publishing, inspiration, inspiration interview, ideas
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