Yerevan Web Meetings: Founder of Lenta.ru urges not to clone successful projects and buy traffic

Yerevan/Mediamax/. The third master class within Yerevan Web Meetings project implemented by Mediamax was conducted by one of the most popular figure in the Russian internet Anton Nosik, the founder of such famous resources as Lenta.ru, Gazeta.ru, Vesti.ru and Newsru.com.

Speaking on how internet media emerged, Anton Nosik said that it resulted from transformation of traditional information agencies into media for all the people. At the same time, Lenta.ru doesn’t have claims on competition with traditional media agencies which have correspondents’ offices all over the world, vice versa; it places their links on its site thus expanding their audience. According to Anton Nosik, 9 people were initially involved in the project and they were universal employees – journalists, editors and designers at the same time. There was no function distribution in the team – every one did everything.

According to him, the secret of the success of Lenta.ru was in the portal’s right vector of development.

“We had a clear notion of what people want to read and that helped us”, said Anton Nosik adding that while building the media business his team didn’t have any hypotheses and everything was found out empirically, by being checked up on the audience.

Touching upon the theme of content generation, Anton Nosik noted that social networks and search engines aren’t at all interested in getting involved in it.

“Conventionally, there is a very good business, good business, bad business, very bad business and content generation. It’s the most “damned” thing from the internet business prospective”, said the expert. Explaining his thesis, Anton Nosik pointed out the fact that social networks and search engines “only operate their software script” whereas content building is a constant intellectual process which requires considerable financial investments.

“Besides, media advertising and internet banners is a dead genre and image advertisement is their only function”, said Anton Nosik noting that banners are still the main source of income for online media.

Anton Nosik advised the interested persons to start their own internet business to give an honest answer to the following 3 questions:

-  Do I want to do a business at all not knowing beforehand how much money I will earn/

-Why do I want to start especially this business?

- Why does this business need me?

“Thinking over the question why you want to do especially this business the question “because other people made much money on it” is not acceptable as there is no point in cloning other’s success by buying a train ticket in 2011 for the train which left in 2008”, noted Anton Nosik.

Speaking about the internet media audience, Anton Nosik noted that quality online publications have 10-fold less audience than “yellow publications”. However, he stressed that advertisers are more interested in the audience of quality online media. Touching on buying traffic, the expert said that such type of promotion of the resource is a self-delusion and owners of resources don’t have any notion about their audience as a result.

In conclusion, Anton Nosik stressed the importance of the shifting of internet projects to mobile platforms. “A person writing or reading on the internet is being transformed into a person writing and reading through a mobile device”, said Anton Nosik and praised the prices for mobile internet in Armenia which surprised the participants of the master class.

Yerevan Web Meetings project aims to introduce the best foreign practice of building and promoting web content in Armenia. The project is implemented by Mediamax and VivaCell-MTS, Armenia’s leading mobile operator, is the general sponsor of the project.