“I simply don’t understand the opportunity,” one veteran magazine publisher told me at a recent industry conference. “My magazines are sponsor-driven. My issue archive includes hundreds of back issues. I have all these vendors and partners offering to digitize my back issue archive and make it available online. But I don’t have a clue how I make any money if I do it. Near as I can figure, my digital magazine archive is worthless.”
The magazine industry feels it is on the edge of a Renaissance. Digital magazines are the hot topic of industry events, digital magazine software platforms abound, and massive retail partners including Apple, Amazon, and Google are seducing magazine publishers with their siren songs.
“I simply don’t understand the opportunity,” one veteran magazine publisher told me at a recent industry conference. “My magazines are sponsor-driven. My issue archive includes hundreds of back issues. I have all these vendors and partners offering to digitize my back issue archive and make it available online. But I don’t have a clue how I make any money if I do it. Near as I can figure, my digital magazine archive is worthless.”
How to use web editions, collections and libraries to double your revenue
Are you still selling your magazine on one platform? Sure, print magazines smell good and even look good on a coffee table, but the most successful subscription and membership marketers we know are leveraging more than paper to increase profits.
What are they doing exactly? They’re
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
How to turn six email analytics metrics into a big picture about the performance and plans for digitally marketing your publication
A publisher’s minimum information unit (MIU) is the bedrock on which the best multiplatform membership website models are built.
Why would you give away content for free, in order to make money? Sounds crazy, but that’s how the smartest publishers we know have grown at an exponential speed.
Selling magazine subscriptions and memberships is part of a four-step process that begins with giving away free content.
By giving away free content, like downloadable reports, you can build
When you go shopping for a new car, you’re generally limited to the inventory on the lot. You might want gullwing doors like a Delorean or a new Tesla, but you can’t get them on an Audi. You can choose your color and wait a few weeks for your vehicle to arrive from another dealership, but you can’t get racing stripes without a custom paint job somewhere else. It’s not that different when buying proprietary software for your website and content management system, so why do so many publishers still head in that direction?
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.
The most effective blow-in cards of the 21st century aren’t made of cardstock, they’re digital. And since offering a sample of your magazine is less effort for the user when it’s done online, you have more opportunities.
In this week’s Freebie Friday spotlight, Don Nicholas, Chairman & CEO of Mequoda, explains why using monthly pricing to accommodate a user’s desire to sample, is just one key to selling more subscriptions. From there you can download How to Use Contrast Pricing to Increase Subscription Revenue to learn more about pricing your print and digital magazine subscriptions.
If you could, you’d hire a professional email subject line writer. You would, because you depend on your email list to sell magazine subscriptions or ads to advertisers, so smashing together 50-100 characters on the fly every day is a stinky approach to accomplishing those goals.
Once upon a time, online advertising had a shady reputation.
Luckily for publishers, that’s all in the past. The online advertising industry has improved its reputation, and consumers have become more accustomed to seeing these ads. Even the once-dreaded popup ad has become routine, especially when it’s carefully aligned with your content, which is a Mequoda Best Practice.
Coming up with the right subscription website business model(s) is usually the biggest stumbling block for those wanting to get into this business.
Choosing your content focus is a business-critical decision, as the focus you choose pretty much dictates your chances of success with a subscription website. However, more serious than the focus on content for
Your AAA Network, which is powered by our Haven CMS, has seen dramatic increases in website traffic in just its first six months of operations—five million page views to be exact—and recently won the award for Best Product Launch/Relaunch Success at the annual SIPA conference this June.
Most of our clients have a list of 100 or more articles that drive the majority of their website traffic, although some larger sites have 300. These posts, which we call blockbusters, aren’t just popular, they’re your front line. Some of our clients see more than 75% of new visitors enter through their blockbuster posts.
Are you still selling your magazine on one platform? Sure, print magazines smell good and even look good on a coffee table, but the most successful subscription publishers we know are leveraging more than paper to increase profits.
What are they doing exactly? They’re adding a web magazine, back issues and special collections to their magazine offers and are creating an
When an article publishes on your website, how do you go about promoting it in social media?
When I pose this question to a room full of magazine editors from different publications, their answer is typically that they wait for the post to be published and then they promote it. If they’re super savvy, they might also schedule a Tweet (using Hootsuite or CoSchedule) a week later.
Valiant effort, for sure, but simply not enough.
How lucky are we, as publishers, to live in the age of content marketing and search engines. While other marketers struggle to become adept at content creation, it’s already in our DNA.
Just add search engine optimization skills, great website architecture and a genuinely content-driven email publishing program, and publishers can literally make millions on the Internet.
Every experience you’ve ever had building and rebuilding a magazine website typically begins with you explaining what you want, and then you telling a group of developers and designers what to do and what to fix. But when did you become an expert in digital publishing strategy and website architecture?
One thing we’ve noticed about the most successful publishers we know is that they have three major things in common. And it has nothing to do with being a household name, a ton of charisma or a rampant following on social media.
One thing we’ve noticed about the most successful publishers we know is that they have three major things in common. And it has nothing to do with being a household name, a ton of charisma or a rampant following on social media.
How often do you publish an email newsletter? Once a week? Twice? For our clients, many of them publish 5 to 7 days per week. Sound crazy?
In today’s Strategy Spotlight, Don Nicholas, Chairman & CEO of Mequoda explains why a daily email newsletter is the right path, and should be considered a service to your readers.
Magazine publishers have been giving away their content for decades in an effort to attract new subscribers. In online publishing, ad-driven subscription websites have an additional incentive: Increasing the eyeballs that see their sponsors’ ads.
Publications like Mother Earth News put all their magazine content on their subscription website. They believe it hasn’t hurt their circulation, and at the same time, says General Manager Bill Uhler, it helps them cast a wider SEO net.
Multiplatform publishers have a lot more choices – and decisions – to make about marketing campaigns. It’s almost enough to make even a strong person run screaming for the nearest direct mail package designer, isn’t it? But you don’t have to surrender to the confusion – paralysis by analysis is not an option!
12 ways to make an old magazine article new again through content recycling
The VP of The Taunton Press was quoted a few years ago as saying, “We can’t afford to pay for content if it’s going to be a one-time use.”
But yet twenty to thirty years ago that’s all content ever was: one time use. There
Driving website traffic happens beyond Facebook in the world of social; Meredith launches brand for Facebook and hubs; Google outlines Flexible Sampling for publishers
Driving website traffic is always on the mind of audience development managers. We’re seeing publishers acting in accordance with this notion, as they dive deeper into a variety of locations, including Facebook,
This year, our winner was Countryside Network, who launched their Mequoda System in February 2016. Countryside was founded in 1969 and today includes four farming-related magazines (Backyard Poultry, Countryside, Dairy Goat Journal and Sheep!) and a portal at CountrysideNetwork.com that spans all four niches.
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 advertising) and/or sold to third-party sponsors (external advertising) on a CPM, CPC, CPA, or SEA basis.
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?
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.”
Procter & Gamble Co. cuts digital ad spend; Customers reportedly more trusting of marketers than many imagine; Condé Nast uses neuroscience for better digital ads
Publishers using digital ads have a lot to think about. Not only do they need to create ads that are effective and help to build positive brand awareness, they also have to figure out
Subscription publishers need to be open to constant changes in order to find the best way to drive more traffic and build a bigger audience. Today we look at three publishers who are experiencing growth and how they’ve done it.
We begin with Bloomberg, which has started driving more traffic by increasing its page load time. Digiday reports, “Between October and December, Bloomberg Media shifted all of its verticals to its proprietary article-template platform called Javelin. The move helped its articles load faster because Javelin utilizes a newer and more efficient internet protocol, and it allows web developers to more easily isolate problem areas and make more frequent alterations.”
When building email circulation, by most accounts, email capture rate is a proxy metric. You’d be mistaken to say that it’s an exact metric because when we talk about email capture rate, we’re usually talking about the number of people who came to your site from search and social and hit the email capture conversion architecture.
But in reality, that’s only about half of the people who sign up for your email list.
Digital publishers at The Economist, Bonnier, and New York Media share techniques for driving traffic; Publishers use social media to enhance brand identity
Audience development is a major factor in the growth of brands of digital publishers. Today we’re sharing some tips shared by an array of publishers who are driving more traffic and using social
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Our news of digital publishers acquiring new media entities continues, but with a few different looks today.
We start with American Media, which has acquired another magazine title from Wenner Media. NY Post reports, “American Media said it will acquire Men’s Journal from Wenner Media, marking the second magazine deal that the two companies have done in recent months.”
Audience development growing with faster ads, custom software and more social media usage
Audience development continues to be a wide area for publishers to explore. The best strategies show consistent results in audience growth, and today we’re sharing some of the latest findings from the industry.
We begin with Meredith and the audience growth they’ve found ad
Search Engine Land releases report on worthy SEO factors; Google reminds us of rules for putting links in large-scale audience development campaigns; Publisher fades in Google results after blocking Google users
It’s recommended to stay current with best-practice SEO if you want to rank organically in Google. Today we share news stories that look at these factors,
Mequoda Masters).
In fact, this council of elders in Mequodaland convinced us to come up with a set of four relatively simple principles you need in order to build a multiplatform media business that wouldn’t require a degree in Mequoda-ise to understand.
The best thing you can offer in an ad package is exclusivity, although few publishers can. Back in the days of print-only publishing, there was little opportunity to be an exclusive sponsor of anything, but what brought them in was a separate but aligned strategy: scarcity. The most scarce and desirable sections of a magazine are the back of the front cover, and the back cover, which go for more than $100,000 each in most magazines. And a new element that the web brings to advertisers, moreso than ever before, is alignment. The most successful sponsor-driven publishers we know do very well at aligning the right ads with related content.
Today we’re seeing increases in a variety of digital advertisements that some publishers have been using as part of their audience development strategy.
We begin at Media Post, which is reporting on native ad data from AdsNative. “More than half of publishers don’t believe that Google and Facebook “own” the digital advertising market. That’s one of the findings of a recent survey conducted by AdsNative, which polled its customer base of 7,500 Web and mobile publishers on the state of native advertising in Q1. The survey found that 53.9% of publishers don’t believe ad budgets are going to just a handful of players.”
Rodale’s multiplatform publishing strategy finds success with Facebook’s Instant Articles; Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages drive traffic; Medium launches subscription service
A diverse multiplatform publishing strategy can lead to many desirable outcomes, including a bigger audience, higher website traffic, and more revenue generation.
Today we highlight three publishers realizing these outcomes. We begin with Rodale, which has been
When it comes to social media for publishers, you could be spending less time and getting more out of it
There’s no doubt about it, social media for publishers is an investment. You have a lot of content, and too many options on where to publish it.
Last week there was an interesting piece on Mashable published about
Imagine you own a landscaping company. You cut lawns, trim shrubs, design landscapes and you even shovel in the winter.
Now imagine you throw a dinner party where your brother brings home his new girlfriend. This is the tenth girl in 10 years who has sat at your dinner table, so you assume that you may never see the lovely woman again who we’ll call Sarah.
After dinner, Sarah mentions that she just bought a house and the yard is just awful.
So there you are, with a potential customer in your house. What do you do?
A Mequoda subscription website Portal generates value from both users and sponsors
Mequoda has guided the development of more than a 300 successful niche media websites on a wide variety of niche media topics. Our best practice is to pair a free subscription website Portal with any premium subscription business model like a magazine or newsletter.
When you charge
There’s a never-ending stream of new tools that pop up every day to help us become better web developers. We have a dashboard of tools we look to for ideas, assistance and even implementation, and it’s safe to assume that you probably do too.
Last year we discovered and shared a lot of web design tools that we use and want to pass on. In case you’re new here or missed a few, here are our favorites.
How to use A/B testing tools for creating subscription landing pages that turn more visitors into subscribers
How many times have you been in a meeting where you and your colleagues “think” or “feel” like a direction on a project is the way to go? Maybe it’s pricing for your subscription website, or maybe it’s the
Multiplatform publishers should explore new ancillary business models in 2017
In stock investing, most long-term investors agree that you need a diversified portfolio to succeed. If one sector takes a hit for a couple years, the other sectors will keep you afloat. Over the last decade, I know more than a few publishers who would have
Since Mequoda’s inception, we’ve helped create 14 publishing superstars. We’re looking for the 15th. And the 16th, and the 17th …
Wondering if you’re the kind of publisher we’re looking for? Let me tell you about some of those superstars … we call them Mequoda Masters, so you can decide for yourself if you should join that
In 2016, our clients, who we affectionately call our Gold Members, have followed the Mequoda Method using our Haven Nexus CXMS and have seen tremendous gains in traffic year over year.
Every year at our annual Gold Member Summit, we give out Rocket Awards. The Mequoda Rocket Award honors the fastest growing website among Mequoda’s Gold Member websites.
As the
“We have used the Mequoda System to create five successful membership programs that leverage our 227-year-old brand and the many books, calendars and issues we produce."
- Paul Belliveau, Vice President New Media and Production, The Old Farmer’s Almanac
“We partnered with Mequoda to create two successful all-access membership programs that are completely independent of our legacy advertising driven business.”
- Stuart Hochwert, Founder and CEO, Prime Publishing
“Even though we are a digital-only publisher, we’ve been able to adapt the Mequoda strategies to dramatically increase our revenues in less than 12 months.”
- Hampton Stephens, Publisher, World Politics Review
“Our all-access membership program includes our print edition, our amazing New England Travel Library, and our new PBS television series. We may have been founded in 1935, but our current strategy is fully multiplatform and digital.”
- Brook Holmberg, Publisher, Yankee Magazine
"We leveraged the Mequoda System and software to create two new capstone membership programs that have reignited our revenue growth."
- Ed Coburn President Cabot Wealth Network
