Ask and You Shall Receive Answers…

Audience of Experts Awaits on SIPA Listserve

Today’s quiz question: Where did I find the following five discussion fragments?

On hiring managing editors:
I can’t imagine any single test to give a managing editor. There are so many very different skills that they have to have—from people skills to judge and manage and motivate a staff, to strong editorial skills to recognize what is a good story, to word editing and layout skills, to the ability to create new products, to the ability to set high standards and stick to them, to good ethics, to the ability to work with marketers and sales people. Wow, the list could go on a long time. I can’t imagine any way to do that other than to hire good reporters and then promote from within after they’ve been with you at least a few years.

On using social media to make a profit:
I use Facebook and also set up others to use it. You can’t realistically expect to “make a profit” on Facebook. Unlike traditional marketing tools, social media is not about selling, it’s about building relationships and networking with others. It’s also great for informing people about what you do, who you are and what you offer. Yes, I’ve picked up subscribers because of my presence on social media, and it’s a nice way to announce a special offer. But if that’s all you’re using Facebook for, people will stop following you.

On Apple’s recently instituted “30%, no-giving-out-customer-data policy”:
I absolutely think we all have the power to ultimately get a lot of the customer data in spite of Apple. Seems to me this can be accomplished through repeated calls to action within the subscription product. So if Apple sells them your paid service that has a complimentary ezine, they would initially get only the paid service via Apple. But in that content, you would inform the reader that they NEED to go to www.xyz.com in order to get the ezine and know the full story. You could ask for just email address or full customer info. Once you have their email address, you can do most of the cross-selling and renewal sales that you wish. And if the reader wants a complimentary print version, they can give you their postal info too.

On pricing webinars:
We’ve been testing pricing with our webinars over the past year, and my personal conclusion is that it all depends on your audience and the topic. There will always be a group willing to pay more, but there’s a price point there somewhere where you can increase your audience significantly by opening the door to the next level down in price sensitivity—and potentially make just as much in profit if not more due to the increased volume. Not to mention the extra exposure you get to your other products and newsletters when you do so…

On selling online ads:
…we [have] started selling by impressions. We determined how many impressions were in a month and used that for our starting base point. It took approximately one month to achieve 20,000 impressions for our banner ad when we had four ads rotating through. We used that as a base and started selling all ads in increments of 20,000 impressions this past June. Now it takes about 18 days for an ad to go through 20,000 impressions. We can stagger the ads and rotate more ads through within a month’s time period when we sell by impression vs. selling by the month.

All of this was found within the last month on the SIPA Listserve. One of the most helpful of SIPA’s many membership benefits, the three most popular SIPA Listserves are Marketing (SIPAMktg); Editorial (SIPAEdit); and Information Technology; (SIPAIT). As you can see, the information, questions, group-forming and discussions portray a dazzling array of information. And if you are a member, you can access that information by going to the “Online Forums” page under the “Members Only” button on the SIPA website.

What are you waiting for? Join the discussion now!

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You can also join another great discussion next week!
SIPA’s Winter Publishers Roundtable Conference
Monday, March 14 (evening reception)
to Tuesday, March 15, 2011
McGraw-Hill Conference Center
1221 6th Avenue, 2nd Floor
New York

There are just a couple spots left at the table!
It should be an incredibly beneficial couple days.
So register now!

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