To expand your presence online will require time, money and proof that revenue will be forthcoming. After all, why would you spend time and money to expand your web presence if there is no revenue to come from the venture. So, how do you predict the revenue to come online? It is more than a mathematical equation. There are three critical components to the calculation; circulation, potential advertiser pool and internal sales staff commitment.
Circulation is not only a measurement of your magazines reach, but a great way to gauge potential Web users to your existing or new Web site. A Web site without a magazine is just a Web site. A magazine without a Web site is just a magazine. Together, you have a very powerful force that is hard to stop. Industry experts agree that the best way to promote your Web site is through your magazine. The ability to push users from the fiber environment to the cyber world is mission critical and it is not hard to accomplish. Whether you choose to run contests or you choose to enhance your fiber articles with digital side bars, you must make a commitment to grow your cyber/fiber relationship. Your reader base as calculated through your circulation gives you a very accurate view of potential Web users that may come to your web site. In most cases, 45% of your Web users will be subscribers. This means that if your circulation is 10,000 you can comfortable count on being able to bring over 5,000 users to your Web site. Since our experience tells us that most users will view 4.7 web pages per visit, this means you can comfortably count on 23,500 potential page views per month. This is an important figure to your revenue planning. In addition, if you are not getting this traffic and currently have a Web site you may be doing something wrong.
Identifying your potential advertiser pool is also critical to your online revenue exercise. You can identify those that may run on your Web site by looking at advertisers that are running on the Web sites of your competitors. Another great way to find out if advertisers will embrace your online plan is to simply ask them. Tell each of your sales reps to ask their top 10 clients how much they plan to spend online in the next ad season and then follow that question up by asking how much they will spend with you online if your Web site is up to par with the competition. A big mistake I see often is that a magazine publisher assumes that there is a potential advertiser pool when there is not one. Another great strategy is to share your online business plan with your advertisers. Get them excited about what you are doing online and what you will be doing online to benefit them. All successful strategic Web site plans have the advertisers in the plan from the first word that is written.
People are most passionate about projects when they are asked to participate in the plan. This is a management technique that I have been preaching for many years. It very much applies to the online revenue exercise because when sales people are told what they have to sell rather than being asked to develop the sales opportunity they are less effective due to their nature of rebellion against being told what to do. Type A sales people are very easy to predict. Their attitudes, natural tendencies and performance are easy to manage if you recognize the obvious. If your sales team does not embrace your Web site plan, why would you expect them to be effective in selling the Web site? You can not sit back and say that they have too sell because it is their job. Sure, they will sell because they are good soldiers, but they will never soar because they do not believe in the plan. Many times management will create the wrong selling situation and then become frustrated when sales goals are not met. Most often these situations can be avoided by putting a representative on the strategic planning team for the new Web site. While I am not advocating a democracy, I am advocating that you get your sales team involved in the project from day one. They are in the field each day and only they know what advertisers are asking about. If your sales team is not 90% on board, you can have the best Web site in the industry, but your revenue potential will suffer.
Now that you have these three pieces of data, you can begin to develop your revenue potential. Based on the circulation example above you will have 5,000 potential web users per month. They will then look on average at 4.7 pages per visit. That means you should or will have the potential to serve nearly 25,000 page views each month. Take the number of ads you have on each page times your potential page views to determine how much ad inventory you have to sell. If 25% of your 70 advertisers are ready to get online that is 17 potential advertisers. You have determined that 50% of your sales staff is excited about selling the Web. That means you have 8 potential sales. In most cases it has been my experience that you can charge 25% of your full page rate as a price base online.
The math and philosophy to make this scenario complete is a bit more complex and requires some further questions and answers. However, if you have no idea where to start this overview should give you a place to begin your journey toward online revenue potential.
Need some help with your online strategy? Want to make money from your Web site? Contact Ryan Dohrn and the Brain Swell Media team today. ryan@brainswellmedia.com or 803-634-3886.
http://www.RyanDohrn.com or http://www.BrainSwellMedia.com
About this blogger: Ryan Dohrn ( http://www.ryandohrn.com ) is President and founder of Brain Swell Media, an internet consulting firm that helps business owners and publishers make money online. http://www.BrainSwellMedia.com or FreeAdvice@brainswellmedia.com
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Community is key, but Control is Critical.
Guiding discussions is the key to online community success. I have been teaching for many years that there are three key components to successful Web sites; content, community and commerce. There are two things that often happen when I consult with a business owner or publisher as they contemplate the launching of a community section of their web site. (When I say “community section”, I mean an area on the Web site where users can chat, post, share with other users, upload personal photos, etc. See my blog entry, Online Communities and the Law of Nature for more info. ) These two choices are either, (A) no we do not want the users to contribute for fear that they will post something that is inappropriate or will affect our advertisers or (b) lets allow users to share and see where it goes. All too often these quick choices will yield the wrong results. In brief, both of these thought patterns are wrong.
Creating a fraternal environment on your site is very important. You want users to come back often. This does not mean that they expect you to open up your site and allow them to trash each other, your advertisers or your business/magazine. Since birth humans are looking for leadership. They are looking to be guided. But, just like raising kids, you can go too far and then your users will rebel. Guiding or leading the discussions online is the first secret to success. Editing or censoring posts is also a recipe for disaster.
Create discussion forums that drive around your “theme”. If your “theme” is graphic design, create forum subject topics like, Software, Classes or Design Tips. If you are in a business or your magazine covers a “how to” driven theme, you are in the perfect business for success online. An Ask The Experts forum will allow your staff to been seen as the experts and allows you to tailor the discussion forums toward a simple yet thoughtful discussion on specific topics. In addition, it allows you to welcome your advertisers into the discussion as they are also experts in their respective fields. Remember users do three main things online; e-mail, research and seek entertainment. Your specific theme driven forums answer two of these calls to the Internet. For example, House and Home Magazine, a client of mine, is in the home décor, renovation and high end remodeling business. Their Ask the Experts forum found at www.HouseMagazine.com have been broken down into four areas that they feel will complement their magazine and four areas they know they can cover from a staff perspective. Just 24 hours after launch they had their first question from a user. Let the fun begin. Another parenting magazine I found online broke their forums into three sections; infants/toddlers, k-8 and teens.
Being specific with your topics will not eliminate the problems that come from disgruntled users or “negative Nancy’s”, but it will give direction and allow you to control the direction of the conversation. Allowing users to create the main subject headings is a sure way to open up your site to topic categories like “I hate Hillary Clinton, do you?”.
IMPORTANT TIPS TO REMEMBER: Never have a forum topic like Miscellaneous or Other. This is one of the worst things to do in the community space. Ask your forum/community provider to provide each user that is signing up with a “terms of service agreement” that they must agree to before they can post on your site. Never allow your site to be used against you. Deleting negative posts in not censorship, it is smart. But, if an advertiser is getting bashed online, invite the advertiser to defend themselves before you simply delete the post. Often, the advertiser can make themselves look very good online.
The views of Ryan Dohrn are 100% personal in nature and do not represent the views of his employer, any other person, company or entity in any way. Any similarly is coincidental in nature.
Creating a fraternal environment on your site is very important. You want users to come back often. This does not mean that they expect you to open up your site and allow them to trash each other, your advertisers or your business/magazine. Since birth humans are looking for leadership. They are looking to be guided. But, just like raising kids, you can go too far and then your users will rebel. Guiding or leading the discussions online is the first secret to success. Editing or censoring posts is also a recipe for disaster.
Create discussion forums that drive around your “theme”. If your “theme” is graphic design, create forum subject topics like, Software, Classes or Design Tips. If you are in a business or your magazine covers a “how to” driven theme, you are in the perfect business for success online. An Ask The Experts forum will allow your staff to been seen as the experts and allows you to tailor the discussion forums toward a simple yet thoughtful discussion on specific topics. In addition, it allows you to welcome your advertisers into the discussion as they are also experts in their respective fields. Remember users do three main things online; e-mail, research and seek entertainment. Your specific theme driven forums answer two of these calls to the Internet. For example, House and Home Magazine, a client of mine, is in the home décor, renovation and high end remodeling business. Their Ask the Experts forum found at www.HouseMagazine.com have been broken down into four areas that they feel will complement their magazine and four areas they know they can cover from a staff perspective. Just 24 hours after launch they had their first question from a user. Let the fun begin. Another parenting magazine I found online broke their forums into three sections; infants/toddlers, k-8 and teens.
Being specific with your topics will not eliminate the problems that come from disgruntled users or “negative Nancy’s”, but it will give direction and allow you to control the direction of the conversation. Allowing users to create the main subject headings is a sure way to open up your site to topic categories like “I hate Hillary Clinton, do you?”.
IMPORTANT TIPS TO REMEMBER: Never have a forum topic like Miscellaneous or Other. This is one of the worst things to do in the community space. Ask your forum/community provider to provide each user that is signing up with a “terms of service agreement” that they must agree to before they can post on your site. Never allow your site to be used against you. Deleting negative posts in not censorship, it is smart. But, if an advertiser is getting bashed online, invite the advertiser to defend themselves before you simply delete the post. Often, the advertiser can make themselves look very good online.
The views of Ryan Dohrn are 100% personal in nature and do not represent the views of his employer, any other person, company or entity in any way. Any similarly is coincidental in nature.
Monday, May 05, 2008
Banner Ads Work in the World of Niche
Banner ads are not created equal. Some are meant to be effective in conveying your message, while some are meant to be clicked! Low click rates experienced by some online advertisers are not necessarily the result of the medium but rather, the effectiveness of your banner ads in building brand awareness, generating click-throughs, and boosting sales depends on how it was created. Click-through rate or CTR is a way of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. A CTR is obtained by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad on a web page by the number of times the ad was delivered (impressions). For example, if your banner ad was delivered 100 times (impressions delivered) and one person clicked on it (clicks recorded), then the resulting CTR would be 1 percent.
In the niche magazine space banners work. Unlike bigger sites, users coming to niche sites are not just “surfing the web”. The days when people said they found your site by “just surfing around” are over. Users are more educated to the online experience that ever before. They are coming to a site for a reason. They are looking for something specific. Maybe it is a hobby they are looking to explore, or an article about knitting. In any event, most users do not just happen upon a rock climbing site or ATV web site for example. Sales people take note, niche users come to niche sites for a reason. So, this makes that niche user a prime target for niche banner advertising. Advertising a car supermarket on www.carsupermarkets.co.uk or car leasing company on www.contracthireandleasing.com will work very well because these are very busy, industry specific websites. Advertising car leasing on a website listing used cars for sale or vans on a car website will not deliver the same level of response or reach the target audience.
100% of all internet users surveyed have used Google. 49% of all online searches are done through Google each day. These users are searching for something specific. This means that banner ads on niche sites are very important. If they were not, Google’s multi-million dollar ad words business would go belly up. It is interesting to note that even Google is recognizing the resurgence of banner ads as they have now begun to serve banner ads into the spots previously reserved for those little text ads on the right and top of every search results page.
In the end you will still come across advertisers that simply do not believe that banner ads work. My research and experience report that banner ads on niche oriented site tend to earn a .15% greater click thru rate than banners on bigger non-niche sites. The biggest click thru rates I have ever seen were reported in a study by Nielsen/NetRatings that showed the right approach to creating banner ads can entice viewers to actually click on a banner. The banners of Harry and David, a gourmet food gifts store, yield a very impressive click rate of 67.21% among at-home viewers; while iWon/PaceFoods' banners generated 40% click rate among the at-work viewers. These figures refute the myth that banner ads will always have a low click-through rate.
Well designed banner ads on niche specific sites where the ad matches the potential user are unstoppable. All advertising works best when a customer wants to see it. One of the major factors influencing the effectiveness of banner advertising will be the quality, popularity, and specific target audience of the website carrying your banner advert.
The views of Ryan Dohrn are 100% personal in nature and do not represent the views of his employer, any other person, company or entity in any way. Any similarly is coincidental in nature. Please visit Ryan’s online at http://www.RyanDohrn.com or e-mail him at ryan@ryandohrn.com
In the niche magazine space banners work. Unlike bigger sites, users coming to niche sites are not just “surfing the web”. The days when people said they found your site by “just surfing around” are over. Users are more educated to the online experience that ever before. They are coming to a site for a reason. They are looking for something specific. Maybe it is a hobby they are looking to explore, or an article about knitting. In any event, most users do not just happen upon a rock climbing site or ATV web site for example. Sales people take note, niche users come to niche sites for a reason. So, this makes that niche user a prime target for niche banner advertising. Advertising a car supermarket on www.carsupermarkets.co.uk or car leasing company on www.contracthireandleasing.com will work very well because these are very busy, industry specific websites. Advertising car leasing on a website listing used cars for sale or vans on a car website will not deliver the same level of response or reach the target audience.
100% of all internet users surveyed have used Google. 49% of all online searches are done through Google each day. These users are searching for something specific. This means that banner ads on niche sites are very important. If they were not, Google’s multi-million dollar ad words business would go belly up. It is interesting to note that even Google is recognizing the resurgence of banner ads as they have now begun to serve banner ads into the spots previously reserved for those little text ads on the right and top of every search results page.
In the end you will still come across advertisers that simply do not believe that banner ads work. My research and experience report that banner ads on niche oriented site tend to earn a .15% greater click thru rate than banners on bigger non-niche sites. The biggest click thru rates I have ever seen were reported in a study by Nielsen/NetRatings that showed the right approach to creating banner ads can entice viewers to actually click on a banner. The banners of Harry and David, a gourmet food gifts store, yield a very impressive click rate of 67.21% among at-home viewers; while iWon/PaceFoods' banners generated 40% click rate among the at-work viewers. These figures refute the myth that banner ads will always have a low click-through rate.
Well designed banner ads on niche specific sites where the ad matches the potential user are unstoppable. All advertising works best when a customer wants to see it. One of the major factors influencing the effectiveness of banner advertising will be the quality, popularity, and specific target audience of the website carrying your banner advert.
The views of Ryan Dohrn are 100% personal in nature and do not represent the views of his employer, any other person, company or entity in any way. Any similarly is coincidental in nature. Please visit Ryan’s online at http://www.RyanDohrn.com or e-mail him at ryan@ryandohrn.com
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