I am a Vonage subscriber and despite their financial difficulties, I really like their service. Free unlimited long distance anywhere in North America and several other countries … what’s not to love? One of my favorite features I subscribe to is called visual voicemail. For a few cents per email, Vonage will transcribe my voicemails and send them along to me as a text email. Since I hate listening to voicemail, but always have my BlackBerry with me, this is a wonderful service. (I wish my T-Mobile BlackBerry phone had the same service.) I’m not sure whether Vonage uses a...

There are five types of content that we as publishers and editors can leverage to provide the best resource for our readers, generate the most traffic, and thereby create the most revenue potential: 1. Editorially generated content (EGC) – This is much more than just taking the content from the print magazine each month and putting it on the web. And it’s more than making sure you have good titles, keywords, and meta data. It’s also about the type of content you generate, the frequency, and even the workflow. Perhaps some content should flow to the web first and THEN to print. Ask...

I conduct emedia sales training sessions for many B2B and consumer enthusiast media companies and in my training agenda (PDF file) is a section on how print and online work together from a seller’s perspective. One of the key points I stress is that there is very little overlap between the online audience and the print audience of a given brand. The research I have done with various publications shows there is typically 15% overlap between the two … sometimes a bit more sometimes a bit less. As a seller this is gold! It means that your customers need to buy both print and online to reach...

A good friend of mine just sent me a link to a very interesting article on iMedia Connection about Google Analytics. I agree with the author, Brandt Dainow, that the analytics companies are in big trouble with the launch of the new Google Analytics interface. Web analytics are becoming a commodity now. But I haven’t looked closely enough to know if there is still enough value in WebTrends, HBX, or Omniture to justify the expense of those systems. They have enough extras like conversion funnel analysis, dashboards, cross-property reporting, etc that it may still be worthwhile for larger or more...

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...