I’ve been talking with several publishers who have asked what are the key metrics they should be using to measure their web site business? Obviously, the number one metrics is revenue per month, but here are the key metrics that I like to use when measuring the health and growth of a web publishing business. Unique visitors per month – Even with the problems counting unique visitors, this is still a useful metric to guage the overall reach of a site. Just remember that cookie deletion is on the rise and the number of unique visitors you report is likely quite inflated over the...

Wow, what a wild ride the past few weeks have been. I’ve been incredibly busy working with various B2B and consumer enthusiast publishers. It’s been exhilarating and I see so much opportunity in the companies I’ve been working with. It’s exciting to see them really embracing online media and making significant impact on their businesses. However, I realize that I’ve been delinquent in keeping my blog up-to-date. I feel kind of like your favorite auto mechanic who is so busy working on other people’s cars that his own car is neglected. So it’s time to get...

Metrics continue to be a real hot spot for publishers and marketers alike. It’s become so much of an issue that I am collaborating with a friend of mine to write a strategic report called “Online Metrics Demystified: What Marketers and Publishers Need to Know to Buy and Sell Online Media” … or something like that. Be on the lookout for it next month. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a conversation that I recently had with someone trying to make sense of email newsletter metrics. They asked me for the definition of several email-related metrics. Hope this helps! What...

NOTE: I wrote this article for the June 2007 issue of Folio. Here is the complete, unedited version… Just when you thought you had the hang of SEO and SEM to drive traffic to your publication’s web site, along comes another acronym for you to master: SMO. Social Media Optimization (SMO), was coined by Rohit Bhargava of Ogilvy Public Relations in 2006 and is a set of tactics to get more exposure for your site in social media (blogs, forums, social bookmarking sites, etc.). The goal of SMO is to make it as easy as possible for others to link to your content and thus get as many...

I had the honor of being on the “smaller publishers” panel discussing social networking at the ABM Spring Meeting in Naples, FL earlier this week. It was a great session with excellent questions and a great group of panelists. One of my fellow panelists was Steve MacMinn, CTO of Globalspec, an internet-based information company focused on engineering and industrial markets. Back in April 2005, they launched their version of a social network called CR4 (which stands for Conference Room 4, BTW). I enjoyed being on the panel with Steve as it was very obvious he knew what he was doing and had...