Tag: Speak

I woke up this morning thinking about all the great ways we’ve discovered to sell subscriptions on the Internet. Yes, these are the things that I dream about. The idea that while I’m deeply asleep, the systems we manage are busily selling subscriptions to magazines and newsletters and premium memberships that include all sorts of benefits to customers who are awake and spending money while I’m sound asleep makes me a happy guy.

If you think that your website should be the main driver of your revenue, think again. Email subscribers are responsible for between 60 and 80% of all digital revenue generation, while passing website visitors and social followers make up the balance.

Over and over again, we’ve found that passing website visitors don’t immediately turn into buyers. They simply remain

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.

At Mequoda, we’ve crunched the numbers and discovered how beautifully email newsletters work to drive revenue. It’s not the traffic that comes to your site, which is the prevailing view among folks in all industries who jumped on the bandwagon early. Back in those days, it was all about impressions! Eyeballs on your page! After all, if they show up on your website, they’re bound to subscribe to your magazine, right?

Wrong.

12 subscription marketing offers you can test with your existing email subscriber list
Think selling magazines is hard? Look at Netflix. Their offer is that you can try out their video streaming service for 30 days, then pay $8 a month. Not $10 or $12 per year like a magazine, but $8 every single month. And is

Publishers who are generating revenue through multiple platforms may include events on their list of products. If you’re in the B2B publishing niche, you may see your competitors throwing roundtable events and wonder, “what is a roundtable event?”

The ten biggest take-aways about magazine media learned at IMAG
If you’re in the magazine industry, you’re probably familiar with the MPA’s annual IMAG conference. My colleague Kim Mateus and I attend this event every year and speak at it often. This year, we were surrounded by some of our favorite magazine publishers and clients, like

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 the fundamental needs of the attendees.

Web libraries, collections and editions provide a profitable opportunity for global subscribers, and for special-interest publishers.
“Our global audience is not interested in another local news source…Our signature journalism is the biggest draw.” These were the words of an associate managing editor at The New York Times who also oversees NYT Global, according to Digiday. And

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 – not better or worse – just different from those around us.

Create a freemium by developing free content with free content – or write it yourself. Either way, make it good.
We’re all about the mighty freemium around here. Create content and give it away for free so that people know how good your premium content is – and they’ll buy it later. And they do.

We’re in

There are ways to control how Google reads your website with sitemap tools. While we assume most of our publishing friends are creating kosher content and abiding by the rules, if Google has considered you a black sheep in the past, you can reinvent yourself by cleaning up your sitemap. If you’ve been good, you can always improve how well your website is indexed, and often the updates are pretty easy!

In the book The Giving Tree, a young boy visits a tree and forms a relationship with it. At first he simply wants to swing on it’s branches, but as he gets older he becomes more materialistic. He asks the tree, which has grown fond of him, to turn its apples into money, it’s branches into a house, and its trunk into a boat. The tree obliges, but eventually becomes a stump.

If you’ve ever been on an external link regimen by your company, you might feeling like the stump in The Giving Tree after a lifetime of giving away apples and branches, trying to please. There is a lot of information about Google’s search signals online, and one of those, reported by SEO’s, is linking to external website. But are you giving away more than you’re getting?

Many online business professionals have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. Some love the audience development opportunities from the social giant. Others are discouraged by the marketing response from it. Today we’re looking at a variety of news stories involving Facebook and how these may impact digital publishers.

Our first story looks at the expansion of Facebook’s Marketplace categories, an act that appears to be an appeal to content publishers. Search Engine Land reports, “Facebook launched its classifieds site Marketplace in October of last year. Now the company is rolling it out to more countries and adding new categories and content from (local) business owners.”

These multiplatform publishing business models can be incorporated into your business at little extra cost, but with huge revenue potential
At the beginning of the year we highlighted three resolutions multiplatform publishers should make in 2017. As we’ve watched the success of our clients grow by adding new platforms, my main recommendations for this year were to

Website updates tend to be commonplace in the rapidly-changing digital landscape. Today we’re looking at three websites making changes for a variety of reasons.

Our first story involves Meredith Corp.’s Parents magazine and the redesign taking place. MediaPost reports, “The Meredith Corp. magazine’s new design includes a modern logo with a new typeface, the “Parents Stencil.” There are also new layouts, photography and additional coverage.”

Study shows trust in branded content; Bloomberg proves value of branded content; Digital magazines aided by branded content from major publisher
Content marketers, digital magazines and publishers are turning towards branded content to build better partnerships and audiences. We look at three stories for a glimpse at branded content’s influence currently.

Let’s begin today with some recent data on

Media company acquisitions from Hearst and BrideClick; Access Intelligence acquires digital advertising and events company

Today’s news focuses on media company acquisitions, including some interesting ones that expand the current business model of the companies involved.

Ask yourself these seven questions before starting your journey towards digital magazine transformation
I’m going to go ahead and assume if you’re reading this, you have a print publication who is asking for siblings. You’re at the magazine store and it’s eying the “big brother” t-shirts and wondering when it’s getting playmates.

Below you’ll find a comprehensive

While the biggest news of the last week might be Ryan Seacrest joining Kelly Ripa on the new Kelly & Ryan morning talk show, there have been many adjustments in the publishing world as well worth talking about!

Because multiplatform technology is an evolving, changing target, publishers are limited only by their imagination—and tenacity—when it comes to creating new revenue streams. It’s manifest destiny in the digital age.

Most website copywriting tips will fall short of their potential if word choice isn’t a top priority for your copy.

Words are more than just symbols on a page that provide information. They communicate thoughts and ideas. They speak to the human psyche. They evoke emotions. But they don’t do any of these things very well

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As a publisher, you may never get the chance to sit across the table from every one of your customers. You may never be able to ask them very specific questions and in turn, get them to ask you very specific questions.

But isn’t this the ‘fidelity’ that every customer wants with their beloved brands, the ability to ask questions and speak directly to the experts and celebrities behind these brands? And isn’t this what every publisher or business owner wishes they could do more of, to speak directly with customers to understand (and better address) their biggest concerns?

So how does a publisher with low-fidelity products create these one-on-one experiences so richly desired by their audiences?

What to look for in live event management software from Haven Nexus, to Bizzabo, CVent, EventBrite and Event Ready.
As publishers have struggled with print revenues during the last 10 years, many have turned to live events as an additional revenue stream. As a strategic extension of a publishing brand, events make a lot of sense.

Do your magazine marketing promotions spark revenue? If they do, recycle them. If not, dispose of them.
A few years ago, a publisher came to us and during our initial conversations about email, we looked into their EMS backend and discovered that they were creating new email templates for every day of the week as part

If people aren’t opening, maybe they’re worried they might “have trouble viewing this email.”
Some marketers have noticed that the first thing a reader usually sees when their email shows up in the preview pane of an inbox is “Having trouble viewing this email? View this email on the web” or similar wording. That boilerplate line

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What to look for in a learning management system, from Haven Classroom, to Edmodo, Moodle, Teachery and Blackboard.
Many multiplatform publishers have turned to e-learning platforms to help subscribers either increase their skills or improve their lives. Publishers, along with many other organizations, such as universities and corporations, have found that text heavy explanations of complex subject

When you have a course content business model, you organize a series of courses for paid subscribers that are updated regularly – but not frequently
Every successful publisher we know launched their digital existence with at least two content models. One is a portal content business model, and the other is usually a magazine content business

We’re surrounded by a goldmine of creative video ideas in magazine publishing – which one will inspire you?
I sit here writing this as I just finished watching six videos in a row on Vogue’s site, all 73-questions long, about celebrities I don’t have an interest in, in a format that felt heavily scripted.

I don’t know

What is a web magazine compared to a digital magazine or a magazine’s website?
The answer many people give to the common question, “What is a web magazine?” is often incorrect.

You’ll often be told 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

Bullish 5-year study on digital magazine market shows record growth; plus, Forbes’ focus on events
Monitoring the digital magazine market is a necessity for us to successfully help online publishers establish strong online presences.

But we’re in the trenches, working shoulder to shoulder with publishing executives: Many trends we can anticipate; others we experience in real time.

For some digital magazines, the effort to generate online ad revenue can evoke a verse from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink.”

Here’s the thing: The money is there to be had. Marketers are ready to spend — are spending as we speak — across desktop and mobile. On sites, apps, and social media channels.

But if you don’t have the right infrastructure, content distribution strategy, audience development, and magazine business model in place, it’s like stepping inside one of those old game-show cash chambers with your hands tied behind your back.

How magazine content monetization has gotten more profitable, if you publish it in the right places

Something we know from talking to niche publishers at the industry events we speak at, and during our own CEO Institute, is 99% of magazine publishers are giving away 100% of their content and not separating their free portal content

The latest publishing trend isn’t just about magazine publishing in general. It’s a digital publishing trend: Launching digital-only magazines without legacy print publications behind them.

Mequoda has a client who is doing just that. Prime Publishing is a company that began with free websites but no print publications whatsoever. Now the company is launching digital-only magazines such as I Like Crochet and I Like Knitting as premium products to enhance their associated websites, AllFreeCrochet.com and AllFreeKnitting.com.

Bryan Welch’s successor, Bill Uhler, aims for more publishing events and ecommerce content strategy; plus, an industry update halfway through the year
Publishing events comprise a big piece of the puzzle when it comes to the Mequoda Method and multi-platform publishing, which itself has become the predominant piece of publishing success. Publishing events scale well: It

As MediaShift puts it, “what advertisers want from B2B media is solid leads on potential customers for their products and services.”

Not so long ago, web and digital magazines were considered adjunct media—the consensus among publishers was that almost like ads, they would drive prospective subscribers to their print editions. In fact as readers struggled with flat, inflexible pdfs that served as copy, many did go running back to print.

Today, magazines are going digital at a gallop, keeping pace with legions of increasingly sophisticated web and mobile device users whose facility with the digital landscape is driving sales of iOS devices and tablets into the stratosphere. Digital media consumption on mobile devices has climbed from 18 minutes a day in 2008 to about 3 hours in 2015.

Do new visitors to your site subscribe, or do they take one quick look, then click back to where they came from? Here are the top 10 reasons your visitors may not be converting to subscribers.

Monetizing social media by converting side-door traffic into subscribers is one of the most important challenges publishers currently face. Convincing curious visitors to sign on as customers via quality content that’s skillfully distributed and diversely packaged requires patience, experimentation, and diligence, but it’s well worth the effort when those additional revenues start rolling in. Remember: It’s not the number of likes that define social media strategies; it’s the the level of audience development that will drive true reader engagement. Easier said than done, of course, but let’s take a look at how a legacy publisher like Bloomberg pulls it off, via Digiday, along with some other relevant recent articles.

Over the past few years, publishers have been wringing their hands over the failure of digital advertising to come to their rescue as print advertising revenues continued to evaporate. You had to look hard to find the occasional glimmer of hope.

Before quantifying the readership of digital magazines, we wanted to first understand what percent of the American adult population with Internet access reads print magazines. We also wanted to learn how many print magazines, on average, they are consuming in a 30-day period.

Mobile programmatic is the next frontier for publishers looking to generate digital ad revenue, and some believe it could finally give digital magazines the opening they need to establish a foothold in this most elusive terrain. MediaPost is on top of this angle and others in some of their recent exemplary industry coverage. Let’s take a look at what they have for us this week.

Want to increase the click-through rates on your email newsletters? I’ll give you a couple hints: the first is to start using snippets of your content, and linking back to the full-length content on your site. That’s a test we ran two years ago when we were running full content previously, and it’s a test I for one, was happy won, because it makes creating daily email templates much faster on a day to day basis.

Design is a delivery mechanism for content – nothing more and nothing less. The more elegant, the better, of course, but getting caught up in appearances is never a good idea no matter what you’re doing. When we talk about good design at Mequoda, aesthetics (as much as we love them) take a back seat to user experience. And when discussing the responsive vs. fluid design problem, we always caution publishers to not overcomplicate things by getting bogged down in industry buzzwords.

How to get your readers to act with buttons and text

The best emails are fully engaging; the content interests the reader enough to go through the entire email while the relevant calls to actions persuade the reader to get more involved with a brand. This can equate to purchasing a product, signing up for a future event or subscribing to more content through Twitter or Facebook.

In order to start this process, strong calls to action need to be employed throughout the email.

Your website taxonomy is how you speak to those who are looking at your website. Publishers live in the visual world and have a habit of going for over-designed websites that overwhelm users more often than they inform them. If your readers are running in the opposite direction of your sales pages, then this could be the problem.

Today’s new media landscape can be utilized to better serve your business

Have you embraced new technologies and trends within the online publishing environment?

By now we’ve all heard about the benefits of online components like social media; Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ are all utilized to build closer relationships and portray a sense of transparency. Yet, the technology that can be used and shared on these social platforms is often overlooked.

Tiered Rate cards can be used for calculating hosting charges, interest rates, credit card fees, the list goes on.

Email pricing for publishers, the rate they’re charged to send emails, looks a bit like how retailers are charged to process credit card payments.

In retail, two popular forms of payment processing rates are the most prevalent today: Interchange Plus and Tiered Pricing.

Retailers like Interchange Plus the best because it’s transparent, the retailer is charged a percentage per transaction. The Tiered pricing model is less transparent, but simplifies pricing by providing bucket rates. Tiered pricing also often includes lots of extra fees that aren’t accounted for in the buckets.

The cost of email marketing typically works on a similar tiered bucketed pricing model, and like retail tiered pricing models, often ends up in hidden fees you weren’t expecting.

BOSTON, MA, January 30, 2015 – Don Nicholas, a journalist-turned-publishing consultant-turned novelist, has just published his first novel, Homecoming, a mystery inspired by many of his favorite writers and characters – and also by small-town politics, social life and true crime.

The book is now available on Amazon at $19.97 for print and $4.97 for the