Jacqueline Marino

Journalism students are different than they used to be. They’ve become increasingly entrepreneurial, intellectually adventurous and skilled in content production, technology and social networking.

Those are skills publishers – both legacy and the new media ones – need to survive. Yet, according to a 2009 University of Georgia study, only six out of ten 2008 journalism school graduates had a full-time job six to eight months after graduation. That’s the lowest rate of employment reported in the study’s 23-year history.

This troubles me because I teach at a journalism school. It should trouble legacy publishers for a different reason.

Journalism school graduates who would have started out working for them 10 years ago – perhaps as fact checkers or entry-level editors – are going to be competing with them instead.

The New York Times columnist David Carr recently wrote, “For every kid that I bump into who is wandering the media industry looking for an entrance that closed some time ago, I come across another who is a bundle of ideas, energy and technological mastery. The next wave is not just knocking on doors, but seeking to knock them down.”

Can we at journalism schools take any credit for this? I think so. Over the past few years, journalism education has become more than relevant to the digital age – it’s helping shape the digital age. We used to train worker bees. Now we’re training risk takers and boat rockers.

In the three years I’ve been teaching journalism, many schools have gone from ruminating about teaching multimedia storytelling to doing that and much more. According to a Northwestern University Media Management Center study, news organizations need to develop six competencies in order to survive. Since these competencies emerge from general media technology trends, I think they will be as important to niche publishers as they are to news organizations.

In order to get a quick gauge on how journalism schools are teaching these competencies, I emailed subscribers to a national listserv of magazine journalism educators. What innovative courses were they teaching in mobile journalism, social networking and other emerging new media?

The following list, organized under four of the six competencies identified by Northwestern researchers, is only a sampling from the deluge that hit my inbox (as well as a few others I couldn’t not mention). Many schools are in a perpetual state of updating curricula and courses, trying to prepare students for the evolving media world.

The Platform Strategist

“To capture and keep eyeballs, it is vital to engage audiences over multiple platforms.”

How it’s being taught: Much of the time, we don’t have to teach students to use multiple platforms. Students are increasingly platform agnostic. Once equipped with basic reporting tools and storytelling prowess, they become nimble, enthusiastic creators of content on multiple platforms. We do need to teach them the capabilities and how to reach and keep audiences.

Interesting courses: Last year at the University of Missouri, the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute held an iPhone application student competition. (Other schools are also teaching students to create iPhone apps, including the University of Iowa.) This year, students are coming up with ways to create news content while reducing costs by using Adobe’s Flash Catalyst. Peter Young’s New Media course at San Jose State requires students to produce audio podcasts, videocasts and websites that comply with mobile screen and distribution standards. By the semester’s end, the students have all produced a range of products on the topic they chose at the beginning of the semester, such as “Cooking for One” or “Nightlife of San Jose.” Ball State’s iMedia course has students developing interactive news and advertising content for television broadcast and touch-screen mobile devices.

The Community Builder

“News organizations can sustain audience by aggregating communities.”

How it’s being taught: Thanks to social networking and the millennial generation’s join-in attitude, journalism students today are often engaged in many communities. They’re often taught to look beyond their personal interests, however, to connect groups and shape conversations.

Interesting courses: In Social-media Skills for Journalists, Sree Sreenivasan teaches Columbia University graduate students to use social media to “find new story ideas, trends and sources; connect with readers and viewers in new ways; and promote their own work to new audiences.” Sreenivasan noticed how many news organizations were hiring social media managers and started gathering best practices. He doesn’t just teach the tools of social media in this five-week, one-credit-hour course; he teaches strategy.

At Point Park University, Heather Starr Fiedler teaches “Citizen Journalism and Building Online Communities,” which focuses on “building interactivity between a media source and their audience including social media postings, promotion and discussion, building message boards, encouraging participation in comments and even some crowdsourcing.”

At the University of Kansas, Simran Sethi teaches Green Reporting, Green Building, Green Justice, a service-learning course that embeds students in green jobs and has them report about this movement from the inside.

The Complete Storyteller

“Understanding the way people experience media is key to developing deeper engagement with consumers.”

How it’s being taught: In journalism school, students often learn how to produce the kind of rich multimedia stories that complement major news and feature stories online. However, a growing number of schools are teaching beyond the basic Web, video and slideshow skill set.

Interesting courses: Students in Advanced Editorial Presentation at Ball State, for instance, create “instructional diagrams, narrative animations with audio, journalistic & persuasive games, data visualizations and explorative packages.” Rutgers teaches a multimedia reporting class focused on sports.

The Entrepreneur

“To remain viable, news organizations must think like entrepreneurs to identify new models for engaging audiences.”

How it’s being taught: It’s being taught in many places and in many ways. Arizona State has the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship. In 2009, two students won $95,000 to develop a web and mobile-based service to inform and entertain those using the city’s new light rail. At other schools, students often participate in the grant-supported projects of their professors. Schools across the country have won tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands for start-ups. (See New Voices or Knight News Challenge for examples.)

Northwestern’s graduate journalism program debuted an Interactive Publishing concentration last fall, specifically for “students interested in running, starting or helping to lead digital publishing ventures.” They develop one or more new media products by the year’s end.

Interesting course: In Jeff Jarvis’s Entrepreneurial Journalism class at the City University of New York last semester, graduate students pitched their ideas for “sustainable journalistic enterprises” to a jury of investors, journalists and other media types. Last semester, four new businesses were awarded $57,000. (See Jarvis’s report on BuzzMachine.)

At the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conference last summer, I heard Mequoda founder Don Nicholas address several of these key competencies. Smart positioning of content across platforms and building solid relationships with consumers are among the components of the Mequoda Media Pyramid.

“Life is not over for print, but if your print publication is not part of a larger media strategy that includes a very robust online strategy, and you’re not using online to power the acquisition of new subscribers, whether they’re print magazine subscribers or whether they’re Kindle subscribers, we would say you’re probably in trouble,” Nicholas said. “So, real synergy back and forth here . . . it’s not about one platform, it’s about being on many platforms and using them appropriately.”

Who can help you do this? New J-school graduates. They can fact-check, too.

Jacqueline Marino is an assistant professor teaching in the magazine sequence at Kent State University. She writes about evolving storytelling forms and magazines’ migration to the Web. Her students work on the multimedia aviation project, Stories That Fly, winner of a New Voices grant from J-Lab: the Institute for Interactive Journalism.

The Wall Street Journal

With so many newspapers going out of business, how has the Wall Street Journal not only survived but thrived?

WSJ has made the transition from print to online publishing look easy.  What’s the secret to their success?  Is this a business model you too can follow?

There are four criteria that define a successful Mequoda System Publisher:

1. Content Driven – publish new content via a periodical website and an email newsletter on a regular frequency
2. Google Friendly – make the periodical website organized, tagged and easy for Google to find and index
3. Email Centric – priority one is to build a permission based email subscriber list through at least one free email newsletter
4. Multi-Platform Content- 3 R’s: reuse, recycle and repurpose content through a minimum of 3 media platforms, with at least one premium product

WSJ.com offers up robust content to satisfy the massive traffic it receives every month. The abundance of inbound links and keywords add to their successful SEO.

Traffic and Keywords from Compete.com, Pages and Links from Yahoo! Site Explorer

What is the Mequoda Media Pyramid?

The Mequoda Media Pyramid is the core of every Mequoda System. The pyramid provides a system for organizing content to maximize profit.  Various media products have a natural hierarchy in terms of price, content and trust.

You create many products in many formats and pull customers up the media pyramid, thereby, increasing profit. That is the essence of the Mequoda Media Pyramid.

Mequoda Media Pyramid

Brand Building

WSJ.com is a Periodical Website and Membership Website making it a Periodical Website Hybrid.  It can be confusing, as the average user may have a hard time understanding what is free and what is paid.  Only about 15% of their content is free, the other 85% is premium content for members only.

WSJ has expanded its brand online to become the Wall Street Journal Digital Network. The US market is comprised of five separate websites WSJ.com, Market Watch, Barron’s, All Things Digital, and Smart Money.

Wall Street Journal Global Network Navigation

The five nameplates shown in the Global Network Navigation are the five primary US sites in the network. We love the consistent top navigation bar, so no matter which of the five sites you visit, it remains the same. This lends to the branding of each of these sites individually as well. The WSJ Digital Network also includes a dozen additional international sites all listed in the bottom site map.

To demonstrate how strong the WSJ brand has become, this small advertisement caught our attention:

WSJ Wine Club

WSJ now offers an exclusive wine club, where members receive a case of wine every 3 months.

While they make it clear it is a separate entity from the news department, they are counting on the strength of the WSJ brand to carry off this totally unrelated venture.  When your brand is so strong and well known, sometimes you can veer off the beaten path and diversify with success. Now that’s thinking outside the box, no pun intended.

How Many Levels in the WSJ Digital Media Pyramid?

What does Wall Street Journal’s Media Pyramid look like?  What medium does each level of the pyramid include?

7. Live Events: Seminars, conferences & summits.

Example: WSJ Executive Conference – an exclusive, invitation-only conference of the world’s most influential leaders to discuss with global experts the most pressing topics of our time. This year’s attendees included Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO, Google; Peter Darbee, Chairman, President and CEO, PG&E; Václav Klaus, President, Czech Republic and President, European Union; Al Gore, Chairman, Alliance for Climate Protection and Anne Mulcahy, Chairman and CEO, Xerox Corporation.

The D Conference – the industry’s top players gather for informal but pointed conversations about the impact digital technology will have on our lives now and in the future.  This years speakers included: Mark Cuban, Chairman of HDNet and Owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Landmark Theaters and Magnolia Pictures; Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief of the Huffington Post; Carol Bartz, CEO of Yahoo; Biz Stone, Co-Founder of Twitter; and Jeff Zucker, CEO of NBC Universal.

Barron’s Winner Circle Top Women Advisors Summit – an elite gathering of the nation’s pre-eminent female financial advisors.

6. Memberships: Associations, clubs, libraries, directories, forums, classifieds, hosted software applications & databases.

Example: WSJ Online Edition

SmartMoney Magazine

5. Subscriptions: Newspapers, magazines, podcasts, newsletters & loose-leafs.

Example: WSJ Print Editon – good old black and white

WSJ Kindle Edition – read anytime, anyplace

WSJ Podcast – digital subscription of “WSJAM” for your listening pleasure available through iTunes (learn more about how The Wall Street Journal embraces podcasting)

Barrons.com Daily Stock Alert – Daily investing newsletter from the editors of Barron’s Online

SmartMoney – The Wall Street Journal Magazine discusses stocks, personal finance and mutual funds

4. Virtual Events: Audio conferences, online seminars, webinars, webcasts, radio & TV.

Example: WSJAM – 5 radio programs including the popular “WSJ This Morning” which broadcasts live on various local stations

3. One-Shots: Online store with books, reports, seminars, training, & software.

Example: WSJ Books – They publish Wall Street Journal-branded books by their own writers and editors that reflect their reputation as the authoritative source for business information. Titles include nonfiction narratives, easy-to-use service guides and anthologies of popular Journal features.

Archive Search – While keeping their eyes on the future, they haven’t forgotten their past. If you’re looking for an older article, check out this great archive feature: “Search Wall Street Journal articles older than 1979 for just $4.95 per article. Separate registration with ProQuest required. Articles, including their accompanying photos, charts and graphs, may be purchased in PDF format.”

2. Free Email Newsletters: High-frequency, single-story or multiple-story summary.

Example: WSJ Email Center – user friendly with many choices to customize including Breaking News Alerts, Market Data Alerts, Columnist Emails and Journal Perks.

1. Free Periodical Websites: Content-driven, Google-friendly & email-centric with free content

Example: WSJ.com - continually updated 24 hours a day to provide up-to-the-minute news in business, government, technology, marketing, the law and more

MarketWatch.com –  market conditions and stock quotes with real-time data

Barrons.com – America’s premier financial magazine, renowned for its market-moving stories and in-depth reporting

AllThingsD.com – devoted to news, analysis and opinion on technology, the Internet and media

SmartMoney.com – investment and financial advice, tips and tools

WSJ Digital Network - Unique Visitor Comparison

Below the 7 levels is the Golden Foundation of organic (free) media links & mentions:

Example: Other Peoples Media – Search engines, referring websites, email pass along, podcasts, television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, newsletters, public events and personal referrals.

Podcasts are digital subscriptions, and not all subscriptions are paid. You’ll notice that WSJAM’s broadcast is a live digital media event, while the podcasts are available as a digital subscription.  They are two truly different products. The content is the same, but the method of delivery is different, once again showing that WSJ is a best practice example of the 3 R’s: recycle, reuse and repurpose content.

The Wall Street Journal has at least one compliment for every level of the Mequoda Media Pyramid.  Therein lies the secret to their success.  Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket, they have diversified to become a multi-platform media empire and a Mequoda System best practice example.

There’s Always Room for Improvement

Here are 3 things the WSJ.com could do to improve system performance and increase online revenue:

1. Email Newsletter Subscriber Acquisition:

We believe job number one of a website should be to build a free email subscriber database. The only conversion architecture we found above the fold on the homepage is the “Register for FREE” button that appears on the upper right side of the navigation bar.

WSJ.com could dramatically increase its ECR (Website Visitor Email Conversion Rate) by using Floaters, OFIEs, OFINs and RCLPs to build WSJ’s free email subscriber database, which would in turn drive paid product sales and advertising inventory. As of this writing, an unknown user can not even reach the well-crafted WSJ Email Newsletter Center to see, much less sign-up for, the email newsletters available to free and paid members (pictured here).

WSJ Email Newsletter Center

2. Free User and Unregistered Visitor Exposure to Premium Content: While Mequoda System Best Practices suggest that a free periodical website and premium membership website function best when accessed by the user as two discreet sites, many legacy publishers use the free and premium hybrid model used by WSJ.com.

The WSJ implementation does a poor job of exposing the free user to premium content.  Free articles should, at the minimum, include related article links to both free and premium content with the premium content clearly labeled as premium content available only to premium members.

Other than the orange and white “The Online Journal” subscribe button displayed on the top right side of the free user and unknown user nameplate, free and unknown users get no exposure to the concept of premium WSJ content being available.

WSJ Unkown User Home Page

WSJ Member Home Page

Note: See the new Ragan.com periodical website for a best practices example of how to execute the free and paid Periodical Website Hybrid content strategy.

3. An Easy to Find Bookstore & Event Marketplace: If there was one thing WSJ.com could do to improve revenue, it would be to improve the exposure to their one-shot paid products.  While they have them, they are not easy to find.  We couldn’t find a product page or store link, not even on the universal site map.  A visitor may just happen upon the book section or special reports list.

But, what if a friend or colleague recommends something they purchased from WSJ?  If you haven’t received a link to it or know the exact title, you may have difficulty locating it on their site.  It would be nice to see each of the 5 websites in the WSJ Digital Network have their own product or store page for easy access. Another possibility would be a bookstore tab in the top navigation bar, like Mequoda Daily (pictured here).

Mequoda Daily Top Nav Bar

Conclusion

The Wall Street Journal has done an excellent job of building its brand online.  WSJ utilizes every level of the Mequoda Media Pyramid.  With the few adjustments mentioned here, WSJ could see increased online revenue, improved system performance and enhanced customer loyalty.

We will be discussing 16 case studies of B2B and B2C publishers with profitable media pyramids at the next Mequoda Summit.  You’ll have the opportunity to talk one-on-one about your media pyramid with some of the most savvy online publishers in the industry.  Sign up now to reserve your seat at the Mequoda Summit.

This article was written by Michelle L. Rodriguez with the help of Don Nicholas. It is the first in a series of digital media pyramid case studies.

All of the successful website publishers we’ve studied have one thing in common: a consistent management system for achieving success that includes a number of key behaviors that are repeated over and over to become organizational habits.

With that in mind, we’ve studied thousands of successful and not-so-successful website publishers to arrive at seven best business practices that can be used together to create The Mequoda System.

The Mequoda System, when run as a repeating cycle of management behaviors, creates an audience-driven continuous-improvement website management system. The system can be used to launch a new website property, or to manage, maintain and improve an existing website.

A Mequoda System Publisher is the master of their Mequoda System, employing the staff to maintain it and holds the rights to distribute content using it.

BLR.com is a Mequoda “best practice” multi-platform content publisher, and its creator, Bob Brady, has been setting a standard for excellence and innovation since before we coined the term “Mequoda.”

What are the characteristics of an effective, profitable, Mequoda System Website? There are four elements of primary importance.

First, a Mequoda System Publisher is content-driven.

Content-driven means you are an online periodic publisher who has committed to publishing news and information on a regular frequency to build reader trust and brand authority.

Second, a Mequoda System Publisher is Google-friendly.

Google-friendly refers to search engine optimization, or the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to your website by making it easier for search engines to find and index the site for the appropriate keywords. SEO involves selecting targeted keyword phrases related to the website editorial content, and making certain that the site ranks high in the results returned from a Google search of those keyword phrases.

I used to think that being Google-friendly was the most important characteristic of a Mequoda System, but I’ve come to realize that there is a least one very successful B2B Mequoda System Publisher whose highest priority is not about being found by Google.

Cindy Carter’s FDANews.com is not particularly Google-friendly, and doesn’t need to be, because she doesn’t rely on website traffic to build and maintain her email marketing programs.

Being Google-friendly is of utmost importance to most online publishers and marketers, but not all. That’s because Google is often the largest source of inbound traffic for a Mequoda System Website.

For Mequoda Daily, 58 percent of our website traffic comes to the site organically from the search engines, and 80 percent of that traffic is driven by Google. That means almost half (46 percent) of all arrivals at Mequoda Daily are owing to Google.

Our site converts six percent of arrivals into email subscribers, so we regard Google as a very powerful engine that is responsible for as many as 400 new subscribers each month.

Third, a Mequoda System Publisher is email-centric.

Email-centric means you publish at least one free email newsletter to build and maintain customer relationships. Also, that your website uses conversion architecture that facilitates converting casual visitors into regular email subscribers.

Building your email subscriber list is a priority. Obtaining permission to communicate with subscribers on a regular basis is of utmost importance.

Fourth, a Mequoda System Publisher is multiplatform.

Multi-platform means your media pyramid has at least three levels including at least one premium level, i.e., at least one premium (usually paid) product.

The average multi-platform Mequoda System Media Pyramid has seven levels — two that are free (periodical website and email newsletter), and five that require registration and in many instances, require payment.

The five levels include online stores to sell one-shots, digital events and live events, plus levels that are companions to non-website subscription products, and membership products and their websites.

Of all the best practices we’ve discovered, the defining characteristics of a Mequoda System that supersede all other best practices is a multi-platform media pyramid.

Heard at the Mequoda Summit: “Tell me about your Media Pyramid.”

When you meet the rock stars of Mequoda System Publishing & Marketing at the October 7-9, 2009 Mequoda Summit Boston, ask them about their Media Pyramids.

What does a best practice Mequoda System Pyramid look like?

Bob Brady is one of the craftiest Mequoda System Publishers I know, with more than 30 years of experience. He launched the first Business & Legal Reports (BLR) print product back in 1977.

Today, BLR markets more than 500 products. Many are subscription publications that are updated daily, monthly, quarterly, or annually.

Information is provided via a variety of media in order to meet the needs of a diverse customer base, including live events, digital events, membership websites, loose-leaf services, CD-ROMs, DVDs, newsletters, and booklets.

I know of no B2B publisher that exemplifies the seven-levels of a successful Mequoda System better than BLR.com. BLR generates 99 percent of its revenue selling premium information products, as do 80 percent of all “rock star” Mequoda System Publishers.

Here is a generic breakdown of the seven levels of a Mequoda System Pyramid levels with specific examples drawn from Bob Brady’s BLR Mequoda System Pyramid, top to bottom:

7. Live Events: Seminars, conferences & summits.

Example: National Employment Law Update

6. Memberships: Associations, clubs, libraries, directories, forums, classifieds, hosted software applications & databases.

Example: HR.BLR.com in Your State

5. Subscriptions: Newspapers, magazines, newsletters & loose-leafs.

Example: Compensation & Benefits Newsletter

4. Virtual Events: Audio conferences, online seminars, webinars & webcasts.

Example: Virtual Boot Camps

3. One Shots: Online store with books, reports, seminars, training, & software.

Example: 10-Minute HR Trainer

2. Free Email Newsletters: High-frequency, single-story or multiple-story summary.

Example: HR Daily Advisor

1. Free Periodical Websites: Content-driven, Google-friendly & email-centric.

Example: HR Daily Advisor

At the Mequoda Summit, we’ll present 16 case studies on B2B and B2C publishing companies — large and small — that have built profitable media pyramids.

Come to the Mequoda Summit, October 7-9 in Boston, prepared to talk one-on-one about your media pyramid with some of the most savvy online publishers in the industry.

Sign up today and reserve your seat to get a chance to mingle with and learn from Bob Brady (BLR.com) and David Pyle (Knitting Daily and Beading Daily). Bob is a leading B2B media pyramid expert. David has built three exemplary B2C media pyramids.

Register for the Mequoda Summit today.

Are you in the process of writing a business plan for a new online venture, or an extension of an existing online business?

As you know, having an online portal for your information is essential for growth. Using the web as a new medium and not just an extension of your brand is critical. But this is a new beast, and to be prepared, you must plan. This holds true whether your online business unit launched six months ago, or hasn’t launched yet.

If your company relies on investors, like most large publishing companies do, this doesn’t make you exempt, it actually makes having a killer business plan even more critical. Now, remember that investors tend to read a fraction of your business plan before deciding to get more involved, but the plan is not just for your investors, it’s for you. It’s a roadmap.

The first step in this roadmap, is deciding what your website will offer and how it will make money. This is why, in every business plan we’ve created for our clients, we include a Mequoda Media Pyramid.

The Mequoda Media Pyramid supports the notion that media products have a natural hierarchy.

Building a Mequoda Media Pyramid is an exercise through which you dig down and determine exactly how you’re going to run your company. The pyramid provides a method for organizing content to maximize profit.

The foundation of the pyramid shows how you’ll draw prospects into your customer base, or online hub and build relationships. Then, level-by-level, you monetize those individuals by pushing them up the pyramid to product levels that are increasingly more valuable to them and certainly more profitable for you.

For Flora Daily, a hypothetical gardening website, we created this pyramid for its business plan:

It’s a fairly simple business plan and model. At the bottom of the pyramid, there are all of the marketing and partnership opportunities we can utilize to build this brand and drive traffic.

Second in the pyramid is the website. It’s the online hub and it’s free, as signified by being gold. Second is the next free product, which are free reports. Free reports are used to build email circulation and drive business to the next layer in the pyramid, which are paid books.

Books are Flora Daily’s own branded products. This is original content that is then repurposed back down the pyramid, into free reports and FloraDaily.com blog posts.

The next level of the pyramid represents the plan to have Flora Daily promote and sell other people’s gardening magazines for an affiliate commission. Flora Daily would partner with as many magazines as they have editorial topics on their site.

Designing your enterprise in a Mequoda Media Pyramid is a dramatic departure for most media companies, which have historically been horizontally integrated as magazine, newsletter or book publishers. Over the past 30 years, we’ve seen special interest media evolve toward vertical integration in which the goal is to produce media in and for a variety of content platforms.

Media companies implementing this vertically integrated strategy use outside media to acquire new customers, leveraging “free media” first. They use content to build a permission database. They create many products in many formats and recycle, reuse and republish content. Finally, they are able to pull customers up the pyramid to maximize profit.

Mequoda Media Pyramid Key Concepts

Here are some tips for building (and implementing) your own media pyramid for use in your online business plan.

• Media products have a natural hierarchy
  • This follows the time, money and trust media continuum
• Use outside media to acquire new customers
  • Leverage “free media” first
• Use content to build a permission database
  • Components of a niche media super-brand
• Create many products in many formats
  • Recycle, reuse and republish content
• Pull customers up the pyramid to maximize profit!

Want help building or restructuring your online business plan?

A complete Mequoda business plan strategy includes creating a publishing model, using the formal Mequoda publishing business plan creation technique, including key statistics and a five-year financial forecast for your market.

One of the many benefits of attending our Mequoda Summit is not only the chance to discuss your own business plan and model with us, but also the interactive spreadsheet you’ll receive, which contemplates all the factors you need to consider, whether you are launching or retooling an existing publication.

Register for the Mequoda Summit today at our earliest early-bird rate of only $897 and walk away twelve sessions later, with twelve actionable tools and techniques for building your online publishing business to last.

The Mequoda Media Pyramid supports the notion that media products have a natural hierarchy. Media companies implementing this vertically integrated strategy use outside media to acquire new customers, leveraging “free media” first. They use content to build a permission database. They create many products in many formats and recycle, reuse and republish content. Finally, they are able to pull customers up the pyramid to maximize profit.

Many of my clients are creating a book series that supports and monetizes their brand’s knowledge base and information architecture. Some are experienced book publishers and some are experienced periodical publishers. While both skills are required to be a successful Mequoda Internet Marketing System operator, most of my clients do not possess both sets of skills.

The periodical skills are needed to create, manage and grow the daily email newsletter that is the backbone of the customer relationship. The book skills are required to build the digital book series that is often the first level of paid product that the customer buys in the operator’s Mequoda Media Pyramid. Ten email newsletters, published 26 times per year, and 10 digital books on those very same 10 topics are core to the Mequoda Marketing System.

Look no further than Johns Hopkins Health Alerts for a well-executed example of a Mequoda Media Pyramid that starts with 17 free email newsletters and 15 paid white papers on matching topics (the Men’s Heath and Women’s Health topics do not have matching white papers at this time). Hopkins also offers its email subscribers paid periodicals and books that match the 17 free email newsletter topics.

Advice to a New Digital Book Publisher

One client, an experienced periodical publisher, once asked me “Why don’t we just license the book content from several other publishers and repackage it into digital books on each of our 10 email newsletter topics? It would be so much faster and easier than writing them ourselves.”

Risks & Benefits of using OPC – Other People’s Content

The Benefits of Using Other People’s Content

1. Effort: It’s easier than creating your own content. Creating great content is hard. The process involves research, interviews, editing, organizing and packaging a topic into a digital book that is accurate, concise and easy to read.
2. Speed: It’s faster than creating your own content. The process of creating a new digital book will take 90 to 180 days from concept to publication, as each step in the process must be done before the next can begin. Research, writing, editing, illustrating, design, layout and production are for the most part discrete steps that make it difficult to produce a quality book or report in less than 90 days.
3. Cost: It may be cheaper than creating your own content. The editorial cost for hiring a “writing partner” who brings both time and expertise to your project will cost from $1500 to as much as $7500 per book depending on the topic and length. A book designer, whether on staff or freelance, will cost between $500 and $2500 depending on the length and complexity of the book. Then add in your time to contribute concept, do research, rewrite, edit and manage the process. Each book you create will cost between $5,000 and $25,000 when all costs are allocated.
4. Quality: It may be better content than what you can create. If you can find a well-researched book on the topic (perhaps a 600-page reference on the topic that can be divided into 10 60-page digital books) you may get a series of products whose quality you can’t match on a reasonable budget.

The Risks of Using Other People’s Content

1. Brand Building: Unless it comes from a single source, it will be inconsistent in tone and structure. Book series like the Hopkins White Papers, America’s Test Kitchen Cookbooks, Fodor’s Travel Guides and the entire Dummies series work based on the users’ correct assumption about each book’s tone and structure. The book series builds and leverages the trusted brand.
2. Earned Media: It will limit how you position your staff as the expert on the topic. When your editor-in-chief is the lead author for each book in the series, your editor-in-chief becomes the person other journalists want to interview, the person event producers will invite to speak and the guru that gets offers to do everything from a PBS series to a guest spot on the Today Show. The celebrity author is a powerful technique for leveraging earned media.
3. Line Building: Not having your own content will make it more difficult to extend your book series into other media products like paid newsletters, magazines, audio CDs, video seminars on DVD, events and consulting. Original content, to which you own all rights, is the key to extending your Mequoda Media Pyramid into many lucrative levels.

There is, of course, no reason not to mix and match the content you create. Fodor’s publishes multiple book series using different brands that each has its own tone and structure. All are sold at Fodors.com – although it’s my bet that the Fodors branded products sell best to the Fodors email newsletter subscribers and website visitors.

More on Media Brand Building

For more insights into the process of building and managing media brands, check out our new guidebook: Multiplatform Publishing Strategy: Using Blogs, Video, Podcasts, Email Newsletters and More to Expand Your Audience and Keep Them Coming Back .

You might also be interested in one of the half dozen in-depth Mequoda Case Studies that go into greater detail about how each publisher is building and managing their brand in a multiplatform publishing world, such as: Forbes Mequoda Case Study, America’s Test Kitchen Mequoda Case Study or The Daily Reckoning Mequoda Case Study.

Years ago, long before the Internet and the birth of online publishing, my old friend Alden Todd was a full-time freelance writer.

He had a regular desk at the Library of Congress and he spent his days researching subjects about which to write books and magazine articles. Making the most of his time was essential to making a decent income. So early on he learned how to maximize every research project into at least three saleable products.

For instance, if he became interested in retracing the steps of a Confederate Civil War regiment, Mr. Todd might do some initial library research and then take a hike. The hike would be a recreational experience to enjoy with his family on the weekend.

When it came to writing about the experience, Mr. Todd might produce a formal historical piece for American History magazine, complete with lots of detail that was of interest to amateur historians and Civil War buffs.

Then he might write another article slanted to the interests of recreational hikers. He might sell that story to Hiking magazine.

Next he would produce a shorter, less detailed story for sale to Boy’s Life magazine, the official publication of the Boy Scouts of America.

And maybe, finally, he would carve out a very brief piece about what to look for on a nature or historical outing for My Weekly Reader, which was a mini-newspaper for young grammar school students.

One recreational experience with his family, plus one library research project resulted in four saleable stories for the freelance writer.

The online publishing recycle, reuse, republish system should be part of your Internet marketing strategy

Today, online publishers should try to maximize their time, experience and content similarly.

Each bit of information your contributors write should become a unit of content with several lives—created once and used, repackaged and reused many times and monetized over and over again.

In this “re” system of publishing—recycle, reuse, republish—an online publisher also uses content written for, deployed to and even contributed by readers to create additional products.

Consider the how-to story—a basic staple of many publications.

First, you could write the basic how-to article for dissemination in print or online through your membership website, or both.

Second, you could use excerpts of the how-to article on your blog or email newsletter, with links to your membership website.

Third, you could use the information contained in the how-to article to produce a wholly new and different information product, for instance a video, DVD, or audiotape interview.

Next, you should be able to create an abbreviated how-to article for the free use of other email newsletter publishers, in exchange for a link to your email newsletter sign-up page or membership website. So, post the abbreviated how-to article on any of the numerous “free content” websites.

And finally, you should create a press release for general distribution to both online and traditional print media. The focus of the press release should be on the information you learned and published in the how-to article, not on trying to sell the audio or video product.

Make the content of the press release so compelling that it results in journalists calling you for an interview and more details. If you craft the news release properly, the news media may end up linking to your membership website and helping you to market your how-to audio or video.

One research or information product creation experience can result in at least three additional spin-offs. That’s the way to make the best use of your time and efforts, and help to maximize product sales or new membership website subscriptions.

Perhaps the thing I like most about the Mequoda Internet Marketing System is its flexibility.

This online publishing system is all about maximizing the value of online advertising inventory (website space, email newsletters and email promotions). This is true no matter how you monetize the inventory.

As you may recall, the Mequoda Media Pyramid offers a visual representation of your options for putting your online advertising inventory to its most profitable use. Here’s a version of what one special-interest publisher’s Mequoda Media Pyramid might look like:

Using Google AdSense to Benchmark Online Publishing Revenue

The easiest way to make money online is with Google AdSense. Google provides pay-per-click text advertisements that match the content on your page. You just make great content and drive targeted website traffic in to read it.

In addition to generating revenue for your online publishing efforts (Google paid out $780 million to its AdSense publishing partners last quarter), Google AdSense becomes the benchmark against which all other uses of your digital advertising inventory must be compared. And since every other use of your advertising inventory requires more effort on your part – any alternative use must produce more revenue per impression—or as we measure it—revenue per thousand impressions (RPM for short).

Put simply, if you can generate $10 in RPM when you run Google ads on a certain web page, then you must earn more when you move up the Mequoda Media Pyramid and use your online inventory for other forms of advertising (other external ads) or internal ads that promote your own branded information products and services).

If I’m making this sound easy, that is not my intention. Deciding how to best use your online advertising inventory requires a great deal of thought, experimentation and a willingness to make changes to your core online business model. The annual budgeting process is a chance to identify the three to five ways you plan to monetize your online advertising inventory over the coming year. You will make assumptions about how to maximize the RPM for your website, email newsletter and solo email promotions. Then every day you will try to meet or beat those projections by choosing the best way to use your inventory.

Choosing the Best Way to Monetize Your Online Advertising Inventory

“It’s all advertising inventory,” says Harvard Medical School Publishing Director Ed Coburn. “Deciding whether to use it to promote your products or someone else’s is just a mater of economics.”

As you’ll discover in this week’s new case study on Harvard Health Publications, Coburn currently chooses to use all of his online advertising inventory to promote Harvard Medical School products and services. Other online publishers like Forbes.com make most of their online publishing revenue selling their advertising inventory to third parties. Still other online publishers like Ask the Builder and The Motley Fool maximize their online publishing revenue by selling most of their website and email newsletter inventory to others (external advertising) and using their solo email promotions to sell their own branded products (internal advertising).

So in the end, the path to the biggest online publishing profits will go to those online publishers who do the best job of monetizing each website and email impression—because the online publisher who can generate the most revenue per impression can also afford to spend the most to make more of them.

How will you monetize your online advertising inventory in 2007?

Share a thought or a question about online publishing below.

If you take a close look at the Media Pyramid, you’ll notice we list subscriptions and products as two different things. When we say products, we are referring to non-renewal products: books, eBooks, CD-ROMs, DVDs and other one-shots.

If you question the value of one-shot products sold online, try this simple test: offer the same item as a renewable and a non-renewable product.

• Offer a single one-shot—a book, binder or loose-leaf service—in which you deliver all the information at once and charge them once.
• Using the same pitch, the same set of benefits, the same landing page, etc., offer the same product as an ongoing renewable product. Tell them you’re going to charge them today, keep it up to date and then charge them again in 12 months.

Our research shows that the response rate will be significantly higher for the one-shot. Human beings, it seems, don’t like commitment.

Of course, we encourage you to run your own test. If you already have run this test and have feedback, please post your comments below!