Why Technology Titans Want to Help Newspapers
Is it irony, or only logical that the Internet, an entity that has come close to destroying the print news industry, has also prompted some of its titans to make efforts to promote journalism and news production? Many veteran news industry leaders are openly skeptical of efforts by tech leaders like Jeff Bezos, Eric E. […]
Let Your Employees Show Some Personality on Social Media
Your business is more than a building or website, and it’s more than upper-tier management. Your people – your journalists and site writers – are the lifeblood of the business, and each person has something unique to offer. Where some executives might strive to unify the company with a single branded image, others let employees […]
Effective Ecommerce: Use These Tips to Increase Sales
Many digital news publishers and trade publication websites have ecommerce pages or sections as part of their revenue development strategy. Selling branded content like t-shirts and mugs, or selling books related to your site, can bring in extra revenue and keep your income streams diverse. Adding ecommerce along with paid advertising, sponsorships, custom job boards, […]
Will Mobile Optimization of Your Site Help Job Board Traffic?
Digital news publishers have to design their sites to appeal to new readers and to keep recurrent visitors coming back, particularly if they have a paywall. After a few years of newspapers trying to cram as much content as possible onto their online front page in ”messes of wretched excess,” papers are now emphasizing judicious […]
Digital Advertising Continues To Gain Ground on TV’s Strong Hold
Even though television is still the most popular medium for media advertisers, the gap between TV and digital ad spending is now at its lowest of 9%, according to the latest quarterly survey results conducted by STRATA. With last year’s survey numbers showing the TV/Digital gap at 24% (STRATA Q4 2012), the race for advertising […]
Reach New Audiences (for Free)
If you have a trade website, you have a defined niche market and that puts you a step ahead of many websites. However, there are plenty more potential readers out there, and you’d like to draw them in as well. How do you reach new audiences and get these people to check out your site? […]
Why Celebrity Guest Bloggers Matter More Than Ever
”The biggest free agent signing in the world of sports occurred off the playing field,” is how Inc.com described Nate Silver’s recent decision to move of his FiveThirtyEight blog from The New York Times to ESPN. Silver’s byline was perhaps the most important political byline the Times had during last year’s presidential election. In the […]
1 in 4 Smartphone Users Now Have Local TV News App
It’s no surprise that mobile usage continues to rise. In fact, 50% of all adult Americans now own smartphones (up from 36% just two years ago). Local TV news apps seem to be riding this wave to the top, with 1 in 4 US smart phone owners having a local TV station’s mobile application installed […]
Introducing Your Print Readers to Your Site
In the newspaper industry, audience development means growing readership. Where once the print copy hot off the press was king, now online newspapers have taken a more than significant bite. The reason isn’t confusing: Online is convenient, readers can pick and choose what they want to see, and there’s nothing to throw away. There’s also […]
Does Hyperlocal Work?
Hyperlocal journalism is coverage of events on a very small, local scale. A hyperlocal website, for example, may cover a specific neighborhood rather than an entire city. The focus of hyperlocal journalism is news that doesn’t get attention in larger media outlets, like Little League scores, the sale of a historic home, or an interview […]
4 Reasons to Add a Niche Job Board to Your Site
Niche job boards may specialize in a particular industry, a particular profession, a particular demographic, or a particular geographic area. Often, niche job boards have listings that aren’t available on huge general job boards and job search engines. Adding a job aggregator or general job board to your website can aid in your audience development […]
Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post: What Does This Mean for Newspapers?
On August 5, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos bought the 135-year-old Washington Post for $250 million in cash, which is less than 1% of Bezos’ estimated net worth of $28 billion. His other recent large scale investments include private spaceflight company Blue Origin, driver reservation service Uber, and travel rental service Airbnb. The most common reaction […]
Infographic: How to Monetize Your Website
Follow the infographic below to find the best way to monetize your website. Whether you’re a trade publisher, newspaper, job board, broadcaster, or an online media site – there are several options for you. Depending on your audience type and size, along with your current advertising set-up, one of these 5 options could work for […]
Don’t Underestimate the Power of Quizzes for Audience Engagement
Quizzes are perennially popular because people naturally want to test their knowledge of a subject or learn things about themselves. While most magazine or online quizzes shouldn’t be taken as comprehensive or scientific, they can prompt reflection on a topic and make a great springboard for discussion. Quizzes can be a terrific addition to your […]
Why Contests and Giveaways Are a Win for Your Site
Running a contest or giveaway related to your website can be a terrific way to gain valuable insight about your audience and bring attention to other revenue development programs like custom job boards. Contests require work up front, but the results can be well worth it. The two big benefits of running contests and giveaways […]
Why Add a Job Board to Your Site?
Trade publications and niche online media sites are discovering that adding a custom job board to their websites can develop a new, exciting revenue source. Employers pay to list job openings on the job board, and they may choose premium features like adding photos or video to their job listing, or having their job openings […]
Capture Attention With Infographics
Infographics are becoming part of everyday life. Sites like Pinterest and Facebook are full of them, and even weather apps are getting into the act with shareable forecasts. An upgrade from bar graphs and charts, infographics arrange information in a visual presentation that’s eye-catching and easier to understand and remember. They show information in picture […]
How Online Communities Can Help Develop Your Audience
Online professional communities represent a terrific opportunity for forming new professional relationships and extending existing ones. The value of bringing people together from all over the world is obvious in terms of sharing of knowledge and building of relationships. With the web, technology has allowed the creation of a brand new type of relationship. Online […]
3 Ways a Job Board Can Increase Website Visitors
Your team is busy creating brilliant content and managing everyday operations. But there’s something missing, and that something is traffic. Here’s a bright idea for driving visitors to your website: How about a job board? Job boards work best for businesses with a specific focus, such as niche industries, according to Entrepreneur Magazine. However, any […]
Are Tablets the Future for Newspapers?
Declining newspaper readership is hardly a surprise to most people. According to the Pew Research Center, only 29% of Americans claim to have read a newspaper ”yesterday,” with only 23% saying they read a print newspaper. In the decade leading up to September 2012, the percentage of people who said they read the previous day’s […]
Set It and Forget It: Generating Revenue From Job Boards With Little Effort
Many digital publishers have added job boards to their websites. A job board can be a promising income stream in conjunction with advertising and other revenue development methods. Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as an effortless job board. A job board that you leave to its own devices will languish. However, if you’re smart when […]
3 Examples of Successful Native Advertising
Ask three people for the definition of native advertising, and you’ll probably get three answers. Some say advertorials qualify, while others strongly disagree. Ask the supposed coiner of the term, Dan Greenburg, and he’ll say that it’s ”a form of media that’s built into the actual visual design and where the ads are part of […]
BuzzFeed: The Future of Sponsored Content?
Few things make a boring wait at the DMV more tolerable than Buzzfeed’s phone app. On it is an endless supply of funny and thought-provoking content. You’re not likely to run out of funny dog GIFs on Buzzfeed before your number is called. Yet powering it all is a data-driven system to encourage viral sharing, […]
City-Specific Job Boards: A Huge Traffic Opportunity
The keyword phrase ”job boards” along with the name of a city is one of the most powerful search combinations for those seeking jobs, with millions using this type of search query every month. Most readers aren’t interested in browsing just any jobs, but are focused on the ones in their area. That’s why web […]
5 Ways Newspapers Can Use Video to Improve Readership
Over the past year and a half news video has gone from being a somewhat novel feature to being a staple of many newspaper websites. However, the quality of these videos is all over the place, from cringe worthy efforts to works that set new standards of excellence. Most online news video occupies the middle […]
3 Ways to Use Job Boards for Audience Development
Trade websites can benefit from a well-designed and executed custom job board. Not only do employers like them because of the targeted audience they reach, your website audience will find them helpful in numerous ways aside from the obvious. Passive job seekers can get a feel for what opportunities are out there, and even those […]
What Buffett Thinks of the Future of Newspapers
As of March 2013, investor Warren Buffett had a net worth of 53.5 billion dollars. One thing Buffett has done very successfully in the past is zigging when other investors zag. He has bought into distressed industries at bargain prices, and has tended to avoid “hot” industries, famously ignoring the late 1990s tech bubble. Warren […]
Job Board Ad Templates to Help Your Advertisers Succeed
A job board helps your website make great strides toward traffic development and increasing revenue. But what if your advertisers don’t know what to write, or how to write it effectively? Their loss in applicants might translate to your loss in traffic. It’s worth your while to help them succeed. Create a job board ad […]
New Opportunities for Radio Through Online Advertising
As online content and mobile communications continue to propel new revenue streams for the nation’s public radio stations, broadcast media companies focus on digital to extend their reach into local communities. Radio websites are beginning to demonstrate a broader reach to more listeners in the market than with traditional programming on its own. One example […]
6 Revenue Development Approaches You Haven’t Tried Yet
Successful monetization of your website depends on audience and traffic development, but it may also depend on your going off the beaten path a little to find new options in revenue development. Of course, the revenue development methods most appropriate for your site depend on factors like your niche, your audience, the type of content […]
TV Ranked Number One Media Source for News
For most Americans, at one point or another throughout your day you are going to try to obtain relevant news or information. Whether it be from surfing the web, listening to the radio, or just browsing on your smart phone. With so many sources available for people to obtain news, which one ranks highest among […]
Digital News Publishing – How Good Do Online Images Need to Be?
With the ubiquity of phone cameras and online sharing there is no question that people are exposed to more beautiful, funny, heartbreaking, and frightening photographs than ever. And people expect digital imagery (or video) in just about all the online content they consume. In 50 or 100 years, how many of the photos being made […]
The Celebrity Angle: How It Can Help You Increase Your Audience
Celebrities and viral content are quite similar. Nobody really knows why some famous personalities skyrocket, and the same applies to share-able content. With celebrities, people relate on a personal level or because their status seems like something worth aspiring to. It’s one of those magical alignments in the stars, which might be how stars earned […]
Washington Post Allowing Sponsored Content
Sponsored content, native advertising, and advertising content are three terms used more or less interchangeably to generally refer to content paid for by a brand that’s included in a site’s regular content stream. It has to be labeled as paid content to meet FTC guidelines, but otherwise it looks very much like other content on […]
Social Media Guidelines for Breaking News
In today’s news climate breaking news often appears on Twitter before going through any formal editorial processing. When non-journalists Tweet about breaking news they’re experiencing, people see it as an individual account, understanding the limitations that go with that. But when news organizations break news on Twitter it can compromise journalistic integrity and undercut one […]
Job Board Technology: Which Is the Best?
If you’re a web publisher or have a website for your trade publication, your revenue development strategy generally involves several potential revenue streams, like CPM advertising, premium advertising you sell yourself, sponsored content, and in many cases, a job board. If you are considering adding a custom job board to your site, you may be […]
The Art of the Headline: 3 Tips for Headlines That Get Attention
Writing a great headline isn’t the same job as it once was. In some ways, it’s as important, if not more important, than the story itself. Headlines are what help readers find your words online. Without the right elements within the headline, both the headline and article are doomed to be lost and buried under […]
Take Advantage of Long Tail Keywords for Audience Development
The term “long tail” applies to a particular feature of some statistical distributions. In a long tail distribution, a high frequency population tails off into a low frequency population that approaches, but doesn’t reach zero. Imagine a graph of book sales. The Y (vertical) axis represents sales. The X (horizontal) axis represents book obscurity. The […]
Increase Ad Revenue By Offering Video
It takes resources to run a blog or website, especially a successful one. When those resources aren’t recouped, the challenge to keep the site going mounts almost daily. You need a revenue development strategy, and that’s where video comes in. Videos are an ideal platform to help increase ad revenue. You can start slow or […]
How Job Boards Can Help You Sell More Ads
Trade specific or local websites have much to offer advertisers. The audiences for this type of website are often highly targeted, and businesses that seek the same type of audience can make their advertising campaigns more effective by advertising on the site. For example, the manufacturer of wholesale cosmetics products may choose to advertise on […]
3 Rules for Mobile Apps for Newspapers
It is not a secret that newspaper readership is trending downward all the time. But somehow, the most prominent papers in the country remain relevant through listening and adapting to what the audience wants, even if it’s unfamiliar territory. One such territory is mobile devices. If you want to reach readers, you’ve got to offer […]
5 Unlikely Publisher Partnerships
Smart digital publishers continually look for ways to expand their audiences, and one way of doing that is by partnering with other publishers. There’s no single ”right” way that publisher partnerships are done. In many cases, no money changes hands between publisher partners, but partners benefit by exposing their content to many more readers. News […]
4 Successful Content Bundling Ideas
Bundling content is nothing new. Cable television companies, phone companies, and utilities have been bundling services for years, and magazine publishers have long handed out free gifts with paid subscriptions. With the shift from print to digital, many newspapers and magazines are offering bundled digital content as a way to shift revenue generation away from […]
What Features Lead to Successful Job Boards?
Trade websites and digital news publishers often find that a custom job board on their site is a terrific way to build audience development and cultivate a promising revenue stream at the same time. For today’s digital publisher, display ad revenues generally can’t shoulder the entire revenue development burden, and sponsored content or native advertising, […]
Your Next Site Design – Should It Be Responsive?
Is website design part of your audience development program? A well-executed redesign can be a great adjunct to a social media push or a new content marketing strategy. Besides, if nobody redesigned their websites, we’d still be looking at the retina-burning flash animations that induced headaches throughout the late 1990s. You may have heard the […]
Social Recruiting: How Social Media Can Help You Find the Best Job Applicants
For employers looking to hire, social media can expand the pool of applicants and yield valuable information about candidates when it is used with a disciplined approach that doesn’t infringe on hiring laws. Sound social media hiring policies can help organizations keep their hiring and screening lawful and ethical, and can help them compete successfully […]
Creating PDFs and Ebooks for Your Audience Development Plan
One tried and true method of building traffic and engaging more effectively with existing traffic is offering downloadable products like PDF white papers and e-books on your website. Most sites offer these downloads for free in exchange for signing up for an e-newsletter or submitting a valid email address. These freebies are great for establishing […]
6 Tips for the Most Effective Job Board Postings
If you manage a custom job board, it’s important to have quality job listings on it that draw in A-list applicants. Otherwise, employers won’t continue to list with you, and companies that are considering listing may not bother because they won’t see a well-populated, dynamic job board on your site. It’s a good idea to […]
5 Benefits of Going Local
If you publish a newspaper or work in broadcast media, you may wonder how valuable local and neighborhood news coverage is. The answer is that it is very valuable. Upon buying The Roanoke Times, investor Warren Buffet said, “If you want to know what’s going on in your town – whether the news is about […]
Broadcast Media Reaps the Benefits of Digital-Only Sales Reps
Local media companies – including TV, Radio, and Newspapers – are getting comfortable with the idea of digital-only sales reps to help ramp up their digital sales strategies. According to a recent survey from Borrell Associates, a majority of traditional media companies now report having at least one digital specialist on their sales team. 56% […]
What Is Native Advertising?
Depending on whom you ask, native advertising is a mutually beneficial convergence between advertisers, publishers, and audiences that will revolutionize advertising…or it’s the death knell of journalism. Like many web concepts, native advertising is squishy and difficult to get your arms around. Different people define it differently, and because the web changes, native advertising is […]
5 Innovative Newspapers on the Web
When the topic of discussion is newspapers, it’s easy to get bogged down with depressing stories of disappearing ad revenue and shrinking circulations. However, the shift to digital has also resulted in many positive developments, including innovative approaches to online publishing. Here are five dailies that have innovative and successful digital versions. 1. The Salt […]
10 Content Marketing Mistakes
Content marketing involves creating and sharing content in multiple formats with the goal of acquiring customers, with formats including video, white papers, info-graphics, how-to guides, blog posts, and case studies. While increasing sales is the ultimate goal, content marketing is about communicating and interacting with your target audience to inspire loyalty to your brand. Content […]
5 Ways to Increase Classified Ad Revenue
Classified ad revenue fell by over 90 percent during the first decade of the 2000s, going from $8.7 billion in 2000 to $723 million in 2010. Media business analysts consider the huge drop in classified ad revenues to be one of the main reasons newspapers have suffered so extensively in the internet age. With Craigslist […]
3 Ways Job Boards Can Make You More Money
Job boards are a key element in website audience development. Since they are by nature current and relevant to your audience, they attract new website traffic and make your website stickier for existing traffic. It doesn’t matter whether the job market is hot or cold: People are interested in what’s happening in recruitment within their […]
Purchasing Opportunities: Integrating an Ecommerce Content Strategy
Launching your content-rich website without integrating an ecommerce transaction layer of some sort causes you to miss out on opportunities for both traffic development and revenue development. When ecommerce features are skillfully woven into top quality content, your site has another avenue to develop trust between your audience and your site as well as make […]
Quality Website Traffic vs. Junk Traffic: What’s the Difference?
Traffic development is critical to any website’s long term success. Who doesn’t look at their analytics and get excited to see an overnight spike in visits after posting content they worked on diligently? There are, however, different types of web traffic. If someone offers you 100 dimes or 100 pennies, of course you’re going to […]
How Can Content Marketing Help Your Trade Publication?
What is Content Marketing? According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target audience with the objective of driving profitable customer action.” Content marketing is not traditional advertising. Old school advertising involves pushing […]
Experts Predict the Future of Traditional Newspapers
In the 1920s, radio was supposed to be the death of newspapers. Later, television was to do away with newspapers, and later still, the internet was declared the final nail in the newspaper’s coffin. It’s hard not to be discouraged when the newspaper industry in the US has lost more than $40 billion in advertising […]
5 Ways To Promote Your Job Board to Employers
If you’re working on monetizing your trade publication website or are looking for ways to diversify revenue streams, you may have considered putting a custom job board on your site. Or, perhaps you manage a stand-alone job board. With custom job boards, you make money from employers who post open positions on your site. They’re […]
How Many Social Sharing Buttons Do I Need?
Your web content should include social sharing buttons. People love discovering and sharing great content and social sharing buttons make it as easy as possible for people to do this. A 2012 BrightEdge survey found that 84 percent of search marketing professionals believe social signals like Google +1s, Tweets, and Likes will be either “more […]
Will The Sun’s Paywall Experiment Mean the End of The Sun?
The Sun is the highest selling tabloid daily in the UK and it is launching its paywall, a paywall experiment of sorts, called “Sun+,” on August 1. The service offers seven-day online access to The Sun through tablet and smartphone apps and costs £2 per week (approximately $3). The “premium” feature it’s promoting with the […]
5 Real-Life Examples of Native Advertising
Native advertising spending in 2012 was relatively low at $1.5 billion compared to$8.6 billion for banner ads. However, that is expected to change as native advertising continues to grow in popularity. Native advertising is a broad concept, but what all successful versions of native advertising have in common is high quality brand-sponsored content in the […]
Job Bait: Attracting Job Seekers
You’re a digital publisher and have decided to add a custom job board to your website as part of your monetization strategy. Or, you’re a stand-alone job board/ career site. Now what? Assuming you’ve populated your job board (or are using a job board partner that brings you a board already populated with job ads), […]
5 Sources for Great Syndicated Content
If you’re an online publisher, you know you have to keep feeding your audience’s appetite for fresh, relevant content to raise your site’s profile and accelerate traffic development. That’s not easy if you have a small staff and / or a small budget. Many web publishers turn to content created by others that is relevant, […]
Upcoming Webinar: New Digital Revenue for Media
——————————————————————————————————————————————— RealMatch, the company behind the next generation in job site technology, is sponsoring a webinar about the revenue opportunities that are developing in the digital media age. The webinar features Martin Nisenholtz and Jason Kissell. Nisenholtz is the former Senior Vice President of The New York Times Company and Kissell is the VP for […]
5 Reasons Print Newspapers Will Survive
If you’re “seasoned” enough, you may remember how television was going to be the death of books and reading. More recently, e-books were supposed to make print books go away. Television was supposed to kill the radio star, and home video was supposed to off movie theaters…and yet we still have all these media formats. […]
4 Ways to Add a Job Board to Your Website and Generate More Revenue
Have you considered adding a job board to your website? It’s an excellent way to increase traffic, make your site stickier, and improve audience and revenue development. As with most revenue-enhancing website features, job board software is available in many varieties, and before you choose, you should know what your options are and what each […]
How Your Culture Can Make or Break Digital Success
Whenever your company develops a strategy of any kind, it is influenced by the organization’s culture. Culture is the connective tissue that holds organizational functioning together and influences how it approaches challenges. Company culture guides how your company gets things done. Strategy, on the other hand, is responsible for the metrics that are easier to […]
5 Reasons Paywalls Fail
Paywalls are the electronic toll gates that require website visitors to pay in order to view content on the site. There are many different types of paywalls. Some charge a yearly subscription, some charge by the month, others offer day passes, and still others charge on a per-article basis. Many print newspapers include access beyond […]
Has “Going Viral” Gone Too Far?
“Going viral” is now a badge of honor among web publishers and advertisers, and some web publishers feel left out of the social media slipstream if they’ve never experienced the heady thrill of internet virality. But is virality in and of itself a worthy goal? What is lost when virality is the end goal? Here […]
Setting up a Paywall? Avoid These Common Mistakes
The American web consumer is starting to accept paywalls, and publications are learning some hard lessons from early paywall efforts, successful and unsuccessful. Although paywalls are more palatable to web users than they were a few years ago, publications cannot simply put up a paywall and expect their reader base to blindly comply with it. […]
5 Tips for Digital First Journalism
Before the internet, publications took a “platform-first” approach, with content specifically made for a legacy platform like broadsheet news, tabloid news, television, or radio. With internet saturation, the new normal is digital-first. Digital first journalism starts with a platform-free mindset, where digital content is created, and then distributed to various digital platforms. It is critical […]
How to Write a Great Job Board Posting
Employment listings written well separate the valuable job boards from the ones that don’t deliver. If you want to host a custom job board on your website, or if you ARE a job board/ career site, you want it to be effective because when companies advertising on the job board get results, you get a […]
Mobile Recruitment Pro Tips
Perhaps you’re an employer and you want to reach potential job candidates in an efficient manner. Maybe you are a job board or newspaper interested in boosting your online employment advertising. Either way, you should work with recruiting solution providers that know how to reach job candidates on mobile devices. The number of people searching […]
White Papers: The Ultimate Freebie
What Is a White Paper? Unlike the typical web page content, a white paper is a more detailed and authoritative document that is designed to help the reader solve a problem, make a decision or better understand a topic. While most often associated with government documents and business-to-business marketing, white papers are not limited to […]
How to Place Your Display Ads for Maximum Revenue
Do you run a news or trade publication website? If so, monetization of your site is probably a major concern. Developing multiple revenue streams is the wisest strategy. You might solicit sponsored stories, incorporate a job board targeted to your niche, and sell advertisements. On-site advertising can add to the user experience of your website,or […]
5 Reasons You Should Get Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is just like other content, and as long as publishers have rules in place to separate the role of the sponsor from the role of the writer, it can provide valuable information to readers without directly pitching products in the content. Sponsored content may be called by different names like “branded content” or […]
4 Tools to Manage Online Ads
If only success were as easy as buying online ads and then sitting back and waiting for sales to go up. However, if you have a trade or local content website, you know it isn’t that easy. The truth is that if you’re going to have online ad campaigns, you need to be prepared to […]
How to Increase Your Classified Ad Revenue
Classified ad sales are still important to the newspaper revenue model. While classified ad revenues are generally down, particularly in print, the fact is that placing classified ads in newspapers gets results. Furthermore, people sometimes buy papers specifically to look at the classifieds. If your classifieds aren’t delivering as well as you expect, there are […]
Must-Have Job Board Software Features
When considering websites for all types of digital publishers, a custom job board can be an important part of your website monetization strategy. Job boards help job seekers and employers find each other and increase the stickiness of your site. Choosing the right software is critical to developing this revenue stream. A poorly designed job […]
2013 Predictions for the Newspaper Industry
In 2006, The Economist started investigating exactly who “killed newspapers.” Since then, many newspapers’ woes have only gotten worse as print advertising has dropped and readers have shifted their attention to online news. In 2012, newspaper revenue dropped by $34 billion in the United States, taking revenues to about half what they were in the […]
5 Best Practices of Social Engagement
You can’t succeed with social media if you forget about the word “social.” If your company is expanding its web presence, or making a transition from print-only publication to online publication, using social media is essential for success. Using social media successfully involves more than just creating Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest profiles and thinking […]
Improve Your SEO & Up Your Profits
Search engine optimization (SEO) raises the profile of your website. You may have engaging, powerful content on your site, but if you don’t pay attention to SEO, it’s like painting a masterpiece and hoping the Guggenheim will discover it even though it’s stored behind a rusted bicycle in your garage. Whether you end up hiring […]
5 Ways to Kickstart Audience Monetization
There’s no “right” time to start monetizing your website audience. In fact, there’s nothing wrong with low-key monetization efforts (such as with Google AdSense) right from the start. The only way to learn what sells on your website is to try it out. Your overall monetization strategy, when implemented with forethought and good planning, should […]
5 Tools for Monitoring Social Media Analytics
Social media analytics, or “social analytics,” is the gathering of data from social media sites and blogs to analyze it and make smarter business decisions. Monitoring social media analytics can prove very valuable to trade publishers who want to reach a particular target audience. Social analytics lets you mine your social media pages for answers […]
When a Paywall Might be a Good Idea
Unless you’re running a website purely out of the goodness of your heart, your website needs to earn its keep either by inspiring purchases, bringing in ad revenue, or increasing membership or print subscriptions. At first glance, the paywall sounds simple: make people pay if they want your awesome content. But it basically never works […]
Online Ad Revenue to Pass $24B in 2013
Borrell Associates recently released a 2013 report on local online ad revenue, at their Local Online Advertising Conference in New York City. Covering over 6,000 media sites, the report includes online-only publishers, newspapers, broadcast media, and others. Many interesting factoids were included in this report, but above all was the astonishing figure of $24.3 billion […]
Digital Natives: Your New Audience
Digital natives are people who were born during and after the digital technology revolution. They’re the ones who have been using digital technology their entire lives. By contrast, a digital immigrant is someone who was born before digital technology became widespread, though they may have largely adopted digital technology later in life. Many business publications […]
Your Checklist for Sponsored Content
Audience monetization of your trade publishing website can and should take several forms. Multiple revenue streams tend to produce the best long term results for monetized websites and may include: CPM ads such as Google AdWords Website Advertising You Sell Yourself Custom Job Boards eCommerce Sales Sponsored Content Writing sponsored content requires that you balance […]
In-Text Ads: Do They Make Any Money?
What Are In-Text Ads and Why Do Advertisers Buy Them? In-text ads are advertisements embedded right in the text of a web page. Unlike regular links, which are underlined with one line, in-text ads are double underlined, and when you hover over them you’re presented with a preview of the ad the text links to. […]
Newspapers Must Prepare for New Digital Revenue Sources
What’s projected for newspapers in 2013 and 2014? Growth! You read that right – according to several speakers at this year’s NAA (Newspaper Association of America) mediaXchange, the Newspaper Industry is due for an upturn, and much of it will result from new digital revenue initiatives. According to a recent article on NetNewsCheck: Newspapers need […]
Develop a New Audience Without Alienating the Old One
Trade publishers have to work consistently on audience development while avoiding losing the loyal audience they already have. This involves walking a fine line between preservation and change, and it involves a united effort on the part of your company. A website redesign plan that’s simply handed down from the executive suite with no explanation […]
News from the NAB Show: Original Mobile Content for TV
With a strong focus on digital, the NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Show earlier this month housed several discussions on monetization. Mobile (both smartphone and tablet) also came out on top as a key digital player for broadcasters, accounting for more web traffic than desktops. As a result of more mobile access to site content, […]
3 Real-Life Site Monetization Strategies That Worked
Search for case studies in successful website monetization, and you’re bombarded with sites claiming to have a proprietary system or the ”true secrets” to monetizing your website. While some of these sites may have information of value to those who want to monetize a website, why not look at a few cases where it’s been […]
When Audience Engagement Fails (and How to Get Them Engaged Again)
Failure of audience engagement hurts, and it can happen to anyone on a personal or professional website. Have you ever created what you imagined was the perfect Tweet, Facebook status, or blog post only to find that nobody really noticed? You have probably also posted an off-the-cuff, throwaway idea and somehow attracted a lot of […]
Audience Development through Partnerships
Developing partnerships with like-minded online publications or groups may seem counter-intuitive at first. After all, you don’t see Coke and Pepsi co-promoting products. The truth is, online it’s a little different from the bricks-and-mortar world. The web is an information hub, and the online audience is hungry for content, some of which you may be […]
3 Industry Gurus on the Future of Web Content
Every website owner has to think about the future of web content, including the best ways to present that content, deliver it to consumers, and monetize audiences. You have probably occasionally found yourself on a website from the 1990s with its animated smiley faces, insanely saturated colors, and nausea-inducing flash banners and wondered how such […]
The Job Board Doctor: Simplicity > Complexity with Job Boards
Jeff Dickey-Chasins, widely referred to as The Job Board Doctor, recently wrote a helpful article for job boards of all sorts: Simplicity versus complexity – why the former is always better. We all know how tedious and time consuming the job search can be – but once we’re on the other end, looking for the […]
Get More Ad Dollars with the ‘Special Report’
You’re probably familiar with several methods of audience monetization, and you’ve probably read (or written) special reports. However, did you know you can use a special report as a terrific tool for audience engagement, development and monetization? Consider the special report as an adjunct to online CPM ads in which you can showcase a product […]