Amanda MacArthur

Research Director & Managing Editor

Amanda is responsible for all the articles you read on the Mequoda Daily portal and every email newsletter delivered to your inbox from us. She is also our in-house social media expert and would love to chat with you over on @Mequoda. She has worked with Mequoda for almost a decade, helping to evolve the Mequoda Method through research, testing and developing new best practices in digital publishing, editorial strategy, email marketing and audience development. Amanda is a co-author of our four digital publishing handbooks.

Co-authored handbooks:

The Organic Audience Development Strategy Handbook

The Subscription Website Publishing Handbook

The Digital Magazine Publishing Handbook

The Multiplatform Publishing Strategy Handbook

Contact Amanda:

Contact Amanda via email at amanda (at) mequoda (dot) com, @amaaanda, LinkedIn, and Google+.

Articles by Amanda MacArthur

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Use Offline Methods to Drive Website Traffic

Publishers that are product-driven sometimes forget that they, themselves, are retailers; publishers do sell subscriptions, memberships, books, ancillary products, events, etc.

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Don’t be Afraid of Open Source Software

When publishers hear the words "open source", it's not uncommon for them to pack their bags and head for the hills. Some publishers think that using open source software means

Subscription Website Publishing

$29 million invested in WordPress’ Automattic

Four investors, including the Times Company prove that open source software is the future of online publishing platforms. Over here at Mequoda, we are one of Wordpress' #1 fans.

MySQL devoured by Sun Microsystems

Subscription Website Publishing

MySQL devoured by Sun Microsystems

As big fans of the open source movement, we were very enthused to hear that MySQL was recently picked up by Sun Microsystems. As defined by Wikipedia, the basic program

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Is Google AdSense right for you?

Anyone with good content and lots of it can benefit from Google AdSense. Size, in terms of traffic or the number of site pages, doesn’t really matter as to

Subscription Website Publishing

Google AdSense Design Tips

Tips and tricks for increasing click-through rate on Google AdSense. One of Google’s corporate missions is to promote the creation of original content on the Internet, so finding a

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

6 Steps for Publishing your Books on Amazon Kindle

How to open a new line of revenue by publishing your books and making them available for the Amazon Kindle. The Amazon Kindle is something of a "first wave"

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

OptionsHouse seeks Online Marketing Director

OptionsHouse has an exciting opportunity for an Online Marketing Director. We are a national online options and stock retail trading brokerage. Our company is aggressively expanding and looking for talented

Audience Development Strategy

OptionsHouse seeks experienced Email Marketing Manager

PEAK6 Investments, LP was founded in 1997 and is headquartered on the original Chicago Board of Trade trading floor. PEAK6 Capital Management LLC, an affiliated market making and proprietary trading

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

OptionsHouse seeks Senior Copy Writer / Editor

PEAK6 Investments, LP was founded in 1997 and is headquartered on the original Chicago Board of Trade trading floor. PEAK6 Capital Management LLC, an affiliated market making and proprietary trading

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Making Money with Ad-Sponsored PDFs

There's a new advertising train coming to town, and guess who isn't on it? Google! We're not sure if Google hasn't discovered this method (unlikely) or just preemptively decided that

Subscription Website Publishing

How to Evaluate your Usability Lab Results

Identifying and prioritizing your usability lab results is the most interesting and valuable part Once you conduct your usability lab, it will become very obvious to you very quickly, which areas

Subscription Website Publishing

Paper Prototyping Usability Tests for Website Design

Paper Prototyping If you are only testing usability AFTER your site has been developed, you are only looking for validation, not actual usability. But how can you test a website that

Subscription Website Publishing

Card Sorting Usability Test

This test is especially helpful if you have a lot of categories or sections and you want to know how users expect to see those organized. As the name

Subscription Website Publishing

Link Affordance Usability Testing for Website Design

A great affordance test is to print off web pages in grayscale, give a test user a yellow highlighter and ask them to highlight anything on which they think they

Subscription Website Publishing

Heuristic Evaluation Usability Testing

A heuristic evaluation is one of the more popular methods of usability testing and takes place with a functional website, likely in the last stages of development or right before

Subscription Website Publishing

How to Conduct a Usability Lab

How to prepare a usability lab for several different types of studies. Usability testing is a controlled experiment that tests the architecture and user-friendliness of your website. Reasons why

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Three Pathways to Publishing Your Book

Do you want your book to open doors, or do you just want to hold your own words, bound and printed? How you publish affects your income, reputation, and your

Subscription Website Publishing

10 Steps to Better Shopping Cart Usability

How to keep smart shoppers happy and provide them with a thorough, yet user-friendly online shopping experience. Normally, we don't recommend shopping carts to our users, because we see

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Mequoda Daily’s Favorite Blogs, Tools and Research of 2007

2007 was a great year for online publishing, and the digital world in general. Here are our favorite bits and pieces. In light of the new year, we thought we'd give

Audience Development Strategy

URL Optimization for Search Engines

Why Google hates your question marks and ampersands There are two types of URLs. A dynamic URL is generally used on a PHP or Javascript based site and calls database content to

Subscription Website Publishing

Good and Bad Vanity URLs

Vanity URLs should unique, relevant, and support your brand or message. We know it's a short week, but this week we're going to focus on optimizing your URLs. Today, we're focusing

Audience Development Strategy

13 Link-Building Sources & Strategies

Increasing inbound links to your site with bloggers, competitors and social networking This week we've been talking about how to start your link-building campaign. In the last two articles, we've focused

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

3 Tools to Track and Analyze Inbound Links

Part two of this week's series How to Start a Link-Building Campaign. How to analyze your backlinks and credibility (and that of your competitors!) On Monday, we talked about discovering your

Email Newsletter Reviews

Wine Spectator’s Sips & Tips: Email Newsletter Review

“What’s not to like about an email newsletter that covers all aspects of wine enjoyment?” the reviewer asks herself as she sips a find Cotes du Rhone Rose. Okay, well

Audience Development Strategy

How to Start a Link-Building Campaign

Finding your external resources for audience development and discovering how they can help you get to page one in Google. This week we're going to talk a little about link-building. A

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Is Google “Knol” your new competitor?

How to make the best of Google's new project, "Knol" and keep your content on page one. Yesterday, Google announced their newest project, named "Knol".According to the Google blog, "There are

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

A tool for keeping track of your competitors

If you have the ambitious combination of competitive nature and a proactive approach to business, you might be interested in a new Web 2.0 application called RivalMap. RivalMap is an online

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Which online self-publishing site is right for you?

How to decrease inventory and heighten mass distribution with online self-publishing companies If you're an unpublished (or published) author with a book in you, or even a publisher looking to outsource

Audience Development Strategy

Don’t feel bad if no one opens your emails

It’s happening to all publishers as open rates continue to drop across all industries. Luckily, the email service providers have stepped in to shed some light on the situation. Two of

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Keeping your friends close and your advertisers closer

When attracting advertisers, it's not about the hair and makeup, it's about the adroll and tagroll What kind of world are we living in, where even ad-space has a place in

Subscription Website Publishing

Tis the Season for Upsells and “Subscription Gift-ers”

It's the time of year where your print counterparts are busily taking advantage of the holiday spirit, but what is your online business doing this year to increase sales or

Audience Development Strategy

Quick guide to distributing press releases online

Free and paid ways to submit your press release as well as a how-to Last October we published a list of online PR distribution services to consider for your next PR

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Amazon’s Kindle, a wireless reading device, is sure to catch fire with early adopters.

But how will Kindle arouse long-term consumer interest when the Sony Reader hasn't? The answer is in the online publishing strategy of the major news media. On Monday (Nov. 19, 2007)

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

6 Ways to Enhance, Promote and Monetize Your RSS Feed

Using RSS as a way to attract new visitors, create an open revenue stream, and retain your email newsletter unsubscribers Many publishers view their RSS feed as a self-sustaining journal, a

Subscription Website Publishing

The Importance of Article Landing Pages

The objective of the article landing page is to be picked up by search engines, capture the user's interest and lead the user to a transaction. Most website users are familiar

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

CeramicArtsDaily.com, a Site Dedicated to Ceramic Arts Enthusiasts Wins 2nd Annual Mequoda Publisher of the Year Award

Mequoda Group announced today that Ceramic Arts Daily, a website serving daily tips about ceramic artists, their work, techniques and artistic prospective, has won the second annual Mequoda Publisher of

Subscription Website Publishing

Understanding the Architectural Elements of a Web Page

All online direct response transactions begin on landing pages Mequoda research indicates that on most websites, a maximum of 20 percent of the traffic arrives at the home page. In fact,

Subscription Website Publishing

How to Choose a Web Host

Questions to ask before you decide on a Web host There are thousands of Web hosting companies, based all over the world. So it may look like rocket science and become

Email Newsletter Reviews

Computerworlds’ First Look: Email Newsletter Review

Stuck in 1995: Computerworld’s E-mail Newsletter Needs an Update When you're writing about technology, it's good to deliver that information via the latest channels. Computerworld, published by International Data Group (IDG),

Publishing Case Studies

The Motley Fool Media Network Case Study

The Motley Fool uses its powerful brand to launch seven successful print newsletters for personal investors that will generate $22M in 2005 revenues. Traditional advertising-driven Internet business model takes a

Website Design Reviews

InternationalLiving.com Travel Website Design Review

Today, most would-be travelers start their journeys online by researching destinations, carrier schedules, accommodations and free web mapping services. In order to compete with travel agencies and agents, travel information publishers,

Subscription Website Publishing

Tagging: Letting Users Define Your Content

How tagging gives you the ability to follow the customer. Tagging started out as something used internally by companies to help employees find and share files easier. Nowadays, it goes hand

Audience Development Strategy

How to Drive Traffic as a Social Network Evangelist

Making a meaningful connection with your audience. It's day two of the Web 2.0 Expo, and I thought I'd share a session I attended called "Community Evangelism: Tools and Techniques" with

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

What is Web 2.0?

User-generated content means trusting your users as co-developers and co-creators. I'm here at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, and I thought the most important thing I should bring back,

Subscription Website Publishing

Is Your Website Design Working Hard Enough for You?

Capitalize on these frequently overlooked opportunities to sell more products from your website and increase your average dollar amount per sale. If you’ve ever bought a product in direct response to

Audience Development Strategy

This Email Newsletter is a Study in Extremes

More attention to detail would help improve the reader experience and lift response. Many years ago my father bought a boat and was soliciting ideas for names. My brother jokingly suggested

Multiplatform Publishing Strategy

Six Reasons Why your Internet Marketing is Failing

Any one of these Internet marketing mistakes can doom your online sales There are plenty of ways to fail at Internet marketing, but six of the most common mistakes are these: 1.

Email Newsletter Reviews

The South Beach Diet Online’s Daily Dish: Email Newsletter Review

Atkins, Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, The Zone – diets are big business these days, a trend The South Beach Diet is looking to leverage online. But does their free email

Audience Development Strategy

Quick Fixes to this Email Newsletter Should Increase Revenue

Top Chef, Iron Chef, Rachel Ray, Bobby Flay—seems like America's new favorite hobby is cooking. Publisher Cook's Illustrated is also in the mix with a TV Show, a website network

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