What should you consider when starting a subscription-driven or membership website?
The answers are not always obvious, even to a seasoned print or electronic publisher. Starting a new website is very different from running an existing property. Over the past 10 years, my partners and I have worked on over 100 successful website startups, as well
Net sales for the entire United States publishing industry are estimated to have increased by 4.6 percent from 2002 to 2003 to a grand total of $23.4 billion, according to figures released last March (2004) by the Association of American Publishers.
A lot of member sites are set up to accept payments via credit card only. While this is convenient for you, the publisher, you could be losing sales if it is inconvenient for your prospective member.
Subscription site success is heavily dependent on email. Subscription publishers use email to keep members informed about timely information, new site content, and upcoming events.
There’s only one problem: the email must go through—but often doesn’t!
For a newspaper with only a third of the circulation of The New York Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution does an excellent job of keeping their website easily searchable and user-friendly. The New York Times’ nytimes.com and The Washington Post’s washingtonpost.com tied for a close second, while The Philadelphia Inquirer’s philly.com came in last place.
Website design tips – 8 ways to keep visitors around for more than 10 seconds
Most people can look at a website and within seconds come away with an impression of whether it’s clean, professional and worth their time, or whether it looks like it’s run by a 12-year-old out of his mother’s basement.
Before the Internet and the world wide web provided us with easy access to a plethora of information resources without charge, print newsletters were the dominant medium for publishing specialized subject matter.
With more than $40 million in annual online print sales, The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.com wins the IMR Marketing Excellence Award 2004 for Selling Print Newspaper Subscriptions Online.
Amazon affiliate Bookreporter.com has won the IMR Business Strategy Award 2004 for using best strategies and practices to make money selling other people’s books online. The other top 9 sites rated in the study do well, but would do far better if they followed a few simple rules.
Bristol, RI – September 23, 2004 – With larger magazine publishing companies falling to the wayside, the Imagineers at Disney Publishing’s Discover.com have been awarded the IMR Usability Excellence Award 2004 for Best Consumer Magazine Website.
Digital Media Advisors (DMA) announced today the launch of their first online publication, Internet Media Review: The Journal of Online Bristol, RI – September 14, 2004 – Marketing & Publishing. IMR’s mission is to help print and electronic publishers understand and profit from the best practices used by the Internet’s most successful online publishers.
Consumer magazine websites are as diverse in content and execution as the magazines they represent. Some offer robust content and interactive functionality that begin to take advantage of the promise of online publishing, while some… do not.
Domains, IP addresses, host names, sites, and URLs have always been the source of misconceptions, even among advanced Internet users.
SmartWhois is a great starting point for an online investigation.
What is the difference between a domain name and host name? What do those numeric IP addresses mean? How can I learn who owns a domain? Can
It is fine to register domain names that might increase your type-in traffic, but cyber squatting is definitely not acceptable. Here’s the difference.
The key to success as an online information marketer is feeding a starving crowd.
A starving crowd is any group of people who share an enthusiasm for a topic and are passionate enough about it to spend their money to learn more. They’re “starving” for more information.
This creates an opportunity for you, the information provider.
Jim Laube publishes one of the most successful special niche membership websites on the Internet at RestaurantOwner.com. There are a lot of reasons for his success, including that he is an authority on his topic and a very savvy marketer.
We’ve all experienced online publishers who are guilty of arrogance. When they make too many of these mistakes, they don’t last very long in the member website business.
These pithy statements about the psychology of buying and selling did not originate with me. Most were gleaned over the years from my various teachers—from their books, seminars and audiotapes.
In his seminal analysis of the psychology of mass movements, The True Believer, Eric Hoffer reminds us of how eager many people are to be led, to join a cause—any cause.
You need not spend a lot of money to market your subscription website, but you will need to follow these steps if you hope to have critical and financial success.
Or put another way, does sloppiness in spelling diminish the credibility and effectiveness of a subscription site and reflect poorly on the website publisher? My thoughts, and a tool I use religiously.
Making your online newsletter easier to read is a matter of both writing style and formatting technique. Here are some helpful hints.
Create “print and read” email newsletters
Many subscribers prefer to “print and read,” rather than read on screen. But, often, printer-friendly pages appear only marginally better than the original web page.
Most new visitors to any site get there as a result of a search engine search. What are the secrets to getting maximum visibility and top ranking?
“Users will make the best use of websites when information is displayed in a directly usable format and content organization is highly intuitive. Websites should be designed to facilitate and encourage efficient and effective human-computer interactions.”
Beware the 302 server redirect, which can either cause search engine traffic to your website to disappear or redirect the traffic you deserve to another website.
Senior citizens are the only minority group that everyone is trying to get into! They generally have some money, so many smart marketers are trying to sell something to them. That includes savvy information product developers.
Magazine publishers, book publishers and membership website publishers are re-inventing the revenue models for cross-selling information.
A recent article in Community, the quarterly newsletter of Barnes & Noble Booksellers, explains how a simple “get-to-know-you” meeting between the editors of Good Housekeeping and the magazine’s new book publishing partner, Sterling, led to a great book idea.
Like immutable laws of nature, some rules are ironclad. Follow these directives and you can expect to succeed. Ignore even one of them and your business and personal achievements will be significantly diminished.
New content for online publishers by covering trade show and conferences
Attendance is down at shows and conferences, making it more important than ever that you cover such events.
Your (U.S.) tax dollars at work: A government report on research-based web design and usability provides guidelines for organizing and designing your membership website with the subscriber in mind
