Every media company has different business challenges and business models, but certain strategies can help almost any publisher grow the e-media side of the business. Are they flashy, new strategies? No. Most are boring fundamentals. But in media, as in football, those who best execute the fundamentals are the ones who win. 1. Sell what you already have. If you sell advertising, take a hard look at your unsold inventory. If you’re less than 75-percent sold-out on your primary positions, you’re leaving significant money on the table. This is by far the easiest way to grow revenue with...

Ah, for the days of print gone by—when there was only one distribution mechanism to transmit information to readers—everything seemed so simple. But along came the Internet, and suddenly readers demanded our content via print, our Web sites and e-mail newsletters. Our once-simple content-distribution model suddenly became complicated, and disrupted the business models to which we were accustomed. My friends, we had better get used to it because the fragmentation has only just begun. Two major technologies have emerged that further complicate how we must connect our brands and content to...

This is a follow-up to my previous post on effective online advertising. Most often when an advertiser is unhappy with the performance of his campaign, he’s probably not looking at the ad the way your readers (his customers) look at an ad. Try helping your advertiser evaluate the entire campaign—ad creative, landing page and follow-up pages—as if you were one of your readers: Can I understand the ad in just a glance? Or do I need to sift through a ton of copy or wait for a 30-second animation to finish? If the goal is anything other than branding, is there a clear incentive and urgency...

NOTE: This post isn’t written to you, dear publisher. It’s written to your advertisers. Please pass it along with my regards. It will help them be more successful with their online ads and get better return on investment (ROI) with limited budgets. In the end, it will help you, too: A happy advertiser is a repeat advertiser. “I’m canceling my campaign because I’m not getting any clicks.” Over my years in online media, I’ve lost count of how many conversations I’ve had like this. An advertiser didn’t get enough clicks, leads, downloads, sales...

Why are we still selling advertising the old way with print-frequency discounts? As modern publishers, we’re selling print, Web, e-mail, events, data and more, and our advertisers are shifting their dollars from print-only to a mix of media. But one look at most of our media kits and it’s obvious we’re stuck in a print-only mentality that only rewards advertisers when they increase their frequency in print. We Want More Money, Not More Print Is our goal really to get advertisers to buy more print from us? Our goal should be to get them to spend more money with us regardless of which...

Magazine publishers are still looking for that magic formula to really boost online revenue. What new strategy or technology will help us make up for what we’ve been losing in print? A couple of years ago, it was vertical search and online events that were hailed as the “next big thing.” Now it’s mobile devices and online video. Tomorrow it will be something else. Sorry to break it to you, but there is no silver bullet when it comes to online media. Time and again, I see publishers wondering which new online technology will give them something tantalizing to dangle in front of their...