SYS-CON Interview With Alan Meckler: "I could not believe the profit margins"

SYS-CON (Australia's i-Technology News and Information Source) Media group publisher and editorial director Jeremy Geelan today features an interview with Alan Meckler:

Question: Does your own experience with corporate blogging--in which you were one of the pioneers, having started your "Internet Media Commentary" blog in February 2003, lead you to believe that in the future there will be more CEO blogs being launched...or fewer? Why?

Meckler: I doubt you will see CEOs blog the way I do. Being the largest stockholder as well as Chairman gives me some leeway that the average CEO would never have. No hired gun is going to take the chance of being frank—particularly if he has to report to a Board of Directors.
Writing a blog has its burdens—one, I have to worry about public information—that cramps my style. Also it is a lot f pressure to write three or more times a week. But now I have a following so I feel I need to keep it going. [...]

Question: ... When did you first realize that images represented such a huge market opportunity for you?

Meckler: October 2003, about 6 months after our first image purchase. I could not believe the profit margins—I was hooked and saw several openings that Getty and Corbis had missed. We are now executing on those openings.

Question: ... Does that mean that there are other business opportunities this big that may still lie ahead for Jupitermedia? Might we see Jupitermusic, for example? Or even Jupitersoft?

Meckler: Correct to a point—however we still need to direct mail and place spot ads for the image division. But this will change in about 5 years. We just made our first music deal—BBM.net, very small but very interesting. Many more chapters to come for sure.

Related: Meckler´s JupiterImages Acquires Bigshot Media and BBM.net (Dec. 07, 2005)

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