Magazines are designed to be read from front to back. They have covers and a table of contents. Magazines are arranged in a series of articles. Portals are not meant to be read from front to back, and are in no way linear. Users may begin on an article they found through search and hyperlink
PR is so different now than it was even five years ago, nevermind ten or twenty years ago. Because major news outlets still require press releases, we still publish them, however there are secondary efforts too. After publishing, you may contact a few journalists that typically cover your niche. At Mequoda, we also keep track
Discover the carefully guarded source of the world’s most effective email subject lines that most professional copywriters don’t like to share
Pricing psychology is fascinating. A couple cents can change someone’s mind about purchasing a product, no matter what the total cost is. For example, some people are more willing to spend $99.97 on a product than $100, even though it’s only three cents more. In Western society, seven is a lucky number, but it also
Digital-only magazines have had their ups, downs, and (in some cases) its “in-betweens.” While some digital magazines have remained powerful and influential after going digital, others have since been discontinued. And some of them end up seeing the light of print again after they go digital for while.
Publishers have their reasons for adopting digital-only magazines–from a
I’ll make this quick because I know you’re busy. You’re invited to join us on December 8 at 1:00 PM ET for a FREE webinar, 7 Subscription Landing Page Tests You Can Do Now. This is your only chance to get these test ideas for FREE, before this webinar becomes a premium training program in
Magazine covers matter. As Samir Husni (aka Mr. Magazine) states in a recent article on Poynter, “The power of the magazine cover in print has always been significant…High-profile people, it’s clear, know the power of the magazine cover.” Magazine covers on digital magazine websites matter too, perhaps even more. And they come with benefits, like
If you’re experienced in online copywriting, you know that “you” is generally considered to be one of the most effective copywriting power words, ranking right up there with free, new and save.
As direct marketing legend Herschell Gordon Lewis says in The Art of Writing Copy, “Unless the reader regards himself as the target of your
Follow these landing page guidelines for your vanity URLs so that people can both remember you and find you organically
You know the importance of landing pages, but it’s completely possible that you don’t know how important your vanity URLs are. Vanity URLs that are too long, don’t make sense, or are hard to read can
In recent years, publishers have been testing paywall pricing, and for good reason. Hearst, for example, tested a paywall that changed based on what the reader was consuming. Instead of letting editors choose which content was free, and which was premium, the habits of first-time readers predict when they should hit a paywall and are
If your magazine doesn’t have a consistent social media presence by now, then you’re light years behind the competition. It used to be a struggle to get buy-in from the higher-ups and prove the value of social media marketing for magazines (heck, any industry), but all of that has changed. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest—they’re
The web lets publishers create a wide variety of products more affordably than ever. That is good news, but it carries a downside: we aren’t experts in creating every digital product. The term “white paper” means a lot of things to a lot of different people. When you hear white paper, you may think of
When a visitor arrives at your website landing page, you have about five seconds to make a good impression and capture their attention. If you don’t succeed immediately, they’re likely to click away and you’re apt to lose them forever.
Your landing page needs to be a fast, effective messenger, and this is especially true to
If you’ve considered starting an online magazine, or are a legacy print magazine considering going digital, you’ve asked this question: How do online magazines generate revenue? And the answer is that the successful ones use a multiplatform and multi-revenue approach. A single online magazine with no print counterpart, no website model, and no multiplatform ad
It’s amazing to look back to just a year or so ago, when digital magazines were still something of a novelty. Today, it’s a given that print publishers will soon create a digital version of their product if they haven’t already.
The only thing standing between you and more revenue is better landing and order pages.
But how are you supposed to know what to test, beyond copy, images, and the words themselves?
Look, on December 8 at 1pm ET, we are presenting a webinar, 7 Subscription Landing Page Tests You Can Do Now to show you the
Magazines are designed to be read from front to back. They have covers and a table of contents. Magazines are arranged in a series of articles. Compare that with other media, where the articles are arranged with taxonomies and hyperlinks, and are not linear.
Hyperlinking is not linear. Any medium that enables or encourages the reader
You have to spend money, to make money, right? But how much do you need to spend in order to earn your money back in digital publishing?
That’s the question marketing professionals in publishing ask themselves but may not spend the time to find out the answer and adjust accordingly. To avoid that mistake, take a
Email subject lines are just one part of the email delivery equation. Emails are delivered to inboxes based on subject lines, content, and reputation. In some cases, engagement is even applied to this filter.
As you know, having an online portal for your information is essential for growth. Using the web to publish and distribute content and not just serve as an extension of your brand is critical. But this is a new beast, and to be prepared, you must plan. This holds true even if your business has
Digital magazine publishing software is important; which option are you using?
Publishers have been trying digital magazine publishing software during the last few years in hopes of creating the best digital products for their audiences. And like everything else in digital magazine land, digital magazine software has evolved at light speed since we made our initial
The answer many people give to the common question, “What is a web magazine?” is often incorrect by our definition.
Some may say that a magazine’s website is a web magazine, but strictly speaking that’s not correct.
Others believe a web magazine is the same thing as a digital magazine, and they’re partly right, but perhaps not
Everything we’ve read as observers of social media and publishing communities tells us that most marketers don’t get a click rate on a Tweet of more than one percent, and in fact most marketers get less than that.
Meanwhile, publishers on Facebook are most often reaching less than 10% of their fans due to Facebook’s algorithm
Isn’t most content online an advertorial these days? With so much conversion architecture built into websites, aren’t we always trying to convert visitors into subscribers, or get them to click on an ad? A proper advertorial definition might include synonyms like native ads, sponsored content, or even infomercial if you’re in broadcasting circles. An advertorial
Audience development personnel have a very specific, and incredibly important job, within an organization. Writing an audience development job description and then finding the right audience development staff can mean the difference between thousands of email subscribers and tens of thousands of dollars in additional revenue.
After decades of training and supporting audience development editors at our
When WIRED went live with the world’s first iPad magazine – a mere six weeks after the iPad’s debut – it sold 24,000 copies in the first 24 hours. For a few years, most magazine publishers and consultants, including Mequoda, focused on the 20% of tablet users reading digital magazines every day on their devices.
What
The steps to facilitating an effective roundtable discussion with roundtable discussion questions
Have you ever run a roundtable discussion?
Throughout my years in publishing, I’ve taken part in countless roundtables. During some, I was the facilitator and other times I was a participant.
Although there are many ways to direct them, my ideal approach to running roundtables focuses
On content-driven, information-rich websites we use press releases for more than the basic announcement. We also use them to release free white papers because we know they offer more opportunities for inbound links and the SEO benefits required to get a landing page ranked well in Google.
Since Google now holds us responsible for the inbound
Since 2006 we have held these fourteen guidelines as the most fundamental principles of the best website design.
Every website is unique to its own audience, so you can’t include things like the best colors to use, or anything that will tell you exactly how to design a site. What we’ve put together is a report
Multiplatform publishers can generate revenue from users, from sponsors, or both. Consumer-focused portals that are sponsorship-based ask users to pay – not with money, but with time and information. They spend time viewing web pages and signing up for email feeds, thus creating advertising inventory that can be used to sell the publisher’s products (internal
In 1926, a long-form print ad for the U.S. School of Music was written by John Caples, and the headline read, “They Laughed When I Sat Down At the Piano, But When I Started to Play!” It’s been noted as one of the most perfect headlines ever written.
If you look at Shorenstein Center and Lenfest Institute’s Digital Pay-Meter Playbook, you’ll discover that one key metric you can measure, which identifies high-performing publishers, is your “stop rate.”
Your stop rate is quite simply, the percentage of users “stopped” by a paywall (or metered paywall, or a floater). According to the Playbook, if you’re over 6%, you’re
While the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) began as a tool for self-discovery, it has become a widely used tool for building high performance teams in organizations. It provides users with a valuable self-diagnostic tool for seeing ourselves as others see us. It also gives us a shared context for understanding how others are different
Successful website homepage design allows visitors to achieve their goals
Is your website properly designed to meet the expectations of your visitors? Often times websites encourage visitors to take an additional step, be it a request for more information, a visit to a different web page found at the website, or the step of making a
It strikes me as somewhat ironic that the word magazine which simply means storehouse, is becoming more true than ever as magazines go digital and digital magazine libraries make it easier than ever to be a genuine storehouse.
Printed magazines have always been a storehouse of curated work from multiple authors brought together by editors and other artisans to
In-person, live events can be a fun and profitable revenue stream for any multiplatform publishing company. When passionate people are committed to a topic, they want to go to the source; the company, the author, the guru, the expert who really knows the content. They want an interactive presentation. They want to be able to
How would you like to increase your subscription revenues by almost 60%?
It can be done, and it’s not magic. All you need are a paid subscription website, a couple of other great products to sell and one secret: Decoy pricing.
More and more publishers are discovering this secret. And it’s not a new concept. You might
We all have a need to feel taken care of. How many things do you buy to fill that need?
Don’t we go to a restaurant not just for the food but to be treated like royalty? What really matters is what they do to help us feel nurtured.
Every purchase is a symbol for emotional satisfaction.
“Hello, sailor. Can I buy you a drink?”
“Do you come here often?”
Of course these silly pick-up lines are good for a laugh, but do you know how to really introduce yourself to new prospects? When you’re about to launch a relationship with new customers, the subject line for introduction email is the first time you
Some people accuse me of being an academic wonk. At Mequoda we’re often forced to make up our own lingo because you can’t pioneer an industry to the digital shores without making up a few words. While our terminology hasn’t changed very much since we invented it, the rest of the world has been progressing
Over the years of attending in-person publishing events, we noticed a trend where a solid portion of the speakers invited to present are vendors and consultants, and a decent number of the attendees are magazine publishing consultants or digital marketing consultants.
But the thing about many of the consultants we meet is that they’re specialists. There’s
In the words of David Ogilvy, “a good advertisement is one that sells the product without drawing attention to itself.” And when selling a web magazine, one of the best ways to do so, is by giving away enough content that it basically sells itself, but not so much that visitors don’t convert into subscribers.
Before we get into content marketing podcasts, let’s talk about podcasting in general. Podcasting has had a culture that has been behind the scenes lurking in the background for well over a decade. When media organizations were brushing the platform off as a fad, independent podcasters were happy to stand in and take millions in
Magazine pricing strategy has certainly evolved over the past decade. Back in 2013 we still believed that universal pricing was the best way to handle print, website, and tablet products. And at the time, it was! Today, we’ve evolved our own thinking to incorporate true all-access subscriptions, and we have come up with two prices
When website users are asked whether they like pop-ups, they say no. They’ll say they hate them. They’ll tell you they’re the most annoying things on the Internet. They might even tell you they never fill them out.
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all content management system. The best CMS for a magazine should be built with a publisher in mind. After all, you have a different business model than a software company, e-tailer, or a small business using the same CMS, which is often the case with some of the household
Our clients publish in many different niches: food, investing, archaeology, environmental infrastructure, natural health and clinical pathology among many others. When they first come to us, they have nothing in common with one another, but after working with us for six months to a year, they all have one thing in common: a Google Visibility
Do you run or contribute to an online magazine?
Most of our readers would consider themselves in the magazine publishing industry, that is true. But do you think you run an online magazine, or a digital magazine, a print magazine or a magazine website? You might have chosen two or three of those, or you might
If you’re making plans for your own digital publication, it behooves you to also plan how to make money from it with strategic digital magazine marketing.
After all, buying a list and mailing a big direct mail package, in hopes of getting a bunch of people to subscribe as we all did in the old print
We are thrilled to announce that as of November 1, we have acquired GreenPrints gardening magazine in a complete asset-purchase agreement with GreenPrints founder Pat Stone. Acquired assets include GreenPrints magazine with 12,000 premium subscribers, a product line of books and notecards, and an online store at GreenPrints.com.
GreenPrints was founded in 1990 by Pat Stone,
