Do You Know How Your Salary Gets Made?

One of the things that I watched with great fascination is when a website called Gigaom folded recently and everyone who worked there was like “WAIT WHAAAA?” The site’s own media correspondent, Mathew Ingram, was most baffled, which is kinda sad. The “why” of it was terrible spending and debt service and all kinds of nightmares — but also stuff that was way more obvious, just a series of fundamental choices that were not going to result in the publication existing for long.

It’s normal for people to be surprised when their company goes out of business, unless you are like the CFO or the accountant or maybe one of the ad sales folks or someone on “that side” of things.

Which is a crazy way to think about it. The rest of us, in all kinds of fields, have been literally trained to ignore the dirty money people. They are “over there.” Particularly in media, we are like HUSTLED AWAY from the filthy advertising and commerce folks. This is really really detrimental! And it makes us ignorant as heck.

Chris Mohney, who is head of content at Serious Eats, wrote about this last month, all about how he had to learn what the business side did, back when he worked at BlackBook magazine.

The situation at BlackBook, and the sponsored content situation in the industry, are both particularized illustrations of a larger point: If you want to be in the media business, learn the media business. Learn who sells what on your sales team, and for how much. Know which clients buy the most, and which don’t buy from you at all. Read your own ad rates. Find out how salespeople are compensated. Get someone to walk you through the RFP process, which agencies bring multiple clients to your door, and what the metrics for success may be. Badger some poor unfortunate to demonstrate how ads are trafficked and tracked. Go on a sales call — you might enjoy yourself (I’m kidding, sales calls are horrible, but you should still go on one).

Literally the best advice I’ve ever heard. Be bossy! Be inquisitive! Find out what’s going on! You might even make a new friend. One who makes three times as much money as you and can pay for drinks.

The rest of the piece, though, will just make most media people nostalgic. Mohney was at BlackBook from 2008 to 2012, which were, unbeknownst to all of us at the time, GLORY DAYS for advertising and sponsorship. Now everything is much less fun. But something new is always just around the corner….