July 24, 2000
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*** MarketingSherpa.com's CONTENTBIZ.com ***
Practical News & Case Studies on Marketing, Syndicating &
Selling Content Online
July 24, 2000 Volume I, Issue 14
1. NEWS: AssociationCentral.com, Matt Hockin, Model Car Hub,
Nerve.com (Yes, again.)
2. More MarketingSherpa.com Exclusive Headlines
3. SPECIAL REPORT: Integrating ecommerce With Your Content
4. INTERVIEW: Charles Terry, CEO COMTEX News Network
5. LETTERS: FitnessLink.com, MadKane.com
** Tell your friends and co-workers to get their own FREE
subscriptions today at: http://www.contentbiz.com
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NEWS & GOSSIP
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* Dot-Com Buys Print Publisher: AssociationCentral.com &
Columbia Publishing
Last week after AssociationCentral.com bought Columbia
Publishing (which publishes our favorite association
directory) the dot-com’s Director of Marketing Susan Becker
took some time out from a trade show to chat with us on her
cell phone, “Offline and online are not at odds - if you can
merge them together it’s a beautiful thing. Our intent is
not to take the business they’ve got and change it, although
that’s the way a lot of other dot-coms have been. It’s such
an incredible resource, we want to value what they’ve got
and keep it going; while bringing our dot-com savvy and
online marketing expertise to build a new business
together.” No changes in Columbia’s staffing or office
location are planned for the immediate future, which should
make the transition easier.
http://www.associationcentral.com
* Diary of Web Publisher Chronicles Content Challenges
Bored of those sites where you can watch iguanas or pretty
girls going about their daily routine before the Web cam?
Now you can see inside the daily workings of a content-driven
Web site, Model Car Hub. Publisher Dirk Johnson has
decided to test transforming the site from relying on in-
house produced editorial to 100% visitor-produced content.
“We’re re-designing a traditional ‘top-down’ content site
into a ‘bottom-up’ visitor-generated one,” says Johnson.
Interested spectators can view Johnson’s regular text- diary
chronicling the ups and downs of the challenge -- including
the question we’re all asking, “will it be profitable?” Go to: http://www.modelcarhub.com/diary.htm
* Fame: Have a content syndication success story?
Matt Hockin, well known as moderator of the I-PR email
discussion group (now Outrider), is writing a new book about
publicity. Do you have a success story about how
syndicating your website's content has generated website
traffic, publicity, and revenue? Hockin’s looking for notes
and case studies to include. If you have a great story and
would like to see your name in offline print, please email a
brief note to him at: i-marketing@uswest.net
http://www.outrider.com
* Best Publisher SIG of the Month: Nerve.com
Ok, we know it’s the third time we’ve mentioned the Webzine
Nerve.com in as many weeks, but we just couldn’t help it
after seeing this “gotta click on it” SIG from a friend
there. Is your SIG clickable? Email editor@ContentBiz.com!
Ross Martin
[ vp, film & television development ]
www.nerve.com
t h i n k a b o u t s e x
... . . . . . . . . . . .
2000 Webby Award Winner for Best Print & Zine.
Hear Nerve at http://www.nerve.com/radio
Feel Nerve at http://www.nerve.com/printmag
--
MORE MARKETINGSHERPA.COM HEADLINES
---
Here are more exclusive news headlines you might be
interested in from other MarketingSherpa.com channels:
*Just-Auto.com Finds Serious Auto Executives Prefer Email
Newsletters With a Jokey, Casual Tone
http://www.b2bmarketingbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=539
*Women.com and Keen.com Co-Market For-Fee Content Offerings
http://www.emarketingtoher.com/sample.cfm?contentID=564
*Media Buy of the Week: Inc.com’s Opt-In Newsletters
http://www.marketingtosmallbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=548
*Top Four Lessons netgenShopper Learned From Email
Marketing Tests
http://www.marketingtosmallbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=547
Note: if you'd like to run MarketingSherpa.com headlines
on your site or Intranet for free, go to iSyndicate.com
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SPECIAL REPORT: Integrating ecommerce with Your Content
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Normally we run a new Case Study in this spot, but this week
we have a special treat for you: profiles of the top two
cutting-edge companies helping publishers integrate their
online content with ecommerce. Please note: they are
presented here in alphabetical order.
COMPANY A: FizzyLab, http://www.fizzylab.com
Clients: BusinessWeek.com, Dallas Morning News, Denver Post,
NY Post, SnowBall.com, BizJournal.com, RedHerring.com +++
Service: Fizzylab’s Relevator service automates linking
related content within your site -- or across your network
of sites. Many people leave content sites because they can’t
find what they’re looking for. On the other hand,
many sites’ editorial teams spend up to 50% of their time
trying to identify and link related content. Publishers can
also use the service to link ecommerce and classifieds
offers within stories to readers based on their typical
demographic and psychographic profiles. Base line -- you
bring the content, classifieds and advertisers to the table;
Fizzylab helps them meet each other.
Cost: There’s a monthly flat fee, based on the size of the
site and content update frequency, which can go as high as
$10,000. Plus there’s a click through fee on top of that
averaging about $10/m. But Fizzylab doesn’t take a cut of
your sales.
Notable Quote: Scott Hudson, CEO & Co-Founder, “Our goal is
to connect everything on a Web site on the basis of
relevance, but the task of identifying what’s relevant -- an
article to a product or to a classifieds listing -- requires
more than a straight forward data mining approach. A
standard automated program would link a story about a kid’s
soccer game with an offer for a soccer ball, but you might
also want to sell a mini-van. Our approach is much broader,
we extract concepts, involving demographic and psychographic
data about who’s reading what.”
COMPANY B: Nexchange, http://www.nexchange.com
Clients: TravelNow.com, Cox Interactive Media (about 30
sites), GenerationA.com, Weather.com +++
Service: Nexchange can work with you in two ways. Content
sites requiring merchandising help to grow their ecommerce
sales get a live team of expert merchandisers assigned to
them. They basically do what Fizzylab does only with human
labor instead of software. Nexchange’s other program is a
series of “plug and play” content products you can run on
your site which have been pre-imbedded with ecommerce
merchandising links and ads. Examples: An article about the
Harry Potter craze complete with a kiosk selling related
products. Holidays are big -- Nexchange offers sites
everything from Father’s Day to Valentine’s Day “pre-
merchandised content.”
Cost: There’s absolutely no cost to implement at this time …
but Nexchange takes 75-95% of each sale made as their
commission. Occasionally there are special short-term deals
where you get more.
Notable Quote: Kathy van Pelt, VP Marketing, “Our feeling is
that the automated tools are very good for capturing direct
sales opportunities. But if they see the word ‘travel,’ all
you get is a bag offer. A human person will think to add an
offer to send flowers to someone at home. So we combine
direct and indirect sales opportunities.”
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Charles Terry, COMTEX
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When we got Charles Terry, President & CEO of COMTEX News
Network on the phone last week, he had literally just walked
in the door after a two-week vacation. After we hammered
him with all our questions he said he felt like he’d been
thrown back into the saddle again, even more quickly than
usual!
Q: Are content prices changing as more and more of it
floods the Net?
Terry: We’re finding that we can charge more and more for
our services. Part of the reason that we can do that is
that content is important to the success of every web site.
The one thing they have in common is the longer people stay
and come more frequently, the more money you’ll make, no
matter what your business model is.
Our real-time always changing content makes sites sticky.
That’s why they’ll make an investment. We’re making their
model stronger so they’re willing to pay real money up front
and tie our royalties in terms of their success.
We’re signed 232 new contracts last year which is up over
previous year’s 131. The year before that we signed 50. So
we love the receptivity to what we do in the marketplace.
Our revenues are pacing at 60% growth with 16 profitable
quarters in a row. So here we are an Internet company with
profitability and growth. Imagine that!
Q: What’s up with wireless? We hear some people say it’s
just a publicity play and not anything that’s going to be
profitable anytime soon.
A: We’ve been involved, been playing it since ‘95 at least.
It really requires real time information, you don’t want
last week’s Time magazine cover article on your WAP!
It gets back to who will pay for this stuff -- follow the
dollar. Stock quotes and stock alerts are the most wanted
content. What better way to do that then headlines, maybe
summaries of stories?
We chose not to go to Bell Atlantic and Omnipage directly.
We sell to phone.com, strategy.com, etc. All of these
people have experts in that marketplace and the technology
to interface with telcos. We just use everybody else’s
marketing dollars and experts to attack the market. We’re
bringing arms to the warriors, shovels to the miners --
however you want to say it.
Q: How are you competing with all the other content
aggregation and syndication players out there?
Terry: Actually many of them are customers of ours.
Screaming Media is a customer, Infospace is a customer,
Powerize is a customer.
They offer very finely granular topic set. If you are a web
site that’s focusing on solar power we have an Energywire
which is a very coarse wire with 200 stories a day with 57
news sources. They [the aggregators COMTEX sells to] are
delivering the top 10 stories in solar power drawing from
our real time news and drawing on some of the energy
verticals. They are getting real time through us and
vertical stuff through periodicals and providing very nice
granular set of headlines to that Solar web site.
If that solar Web site wants to go directly to some
providers they have some work to do: approaching publishers,
working with them, putting together a consistent feed….
Q: Do you ever compete with the publishers who send feeds
to you? Do you ever both want to go after the same account?
Terry: Yes there’s going to be some conflict, some
occasions where it’s gonna be a key account.
We’re delivering network of 750 plus sites. For the
publisher, one relationship with us brings them immediate
real growth in revenue. Plus they’re getting branding out
of sites they would never get to on their own.
Using the solar energy site example, say we get one story a
day in Energywire. Whoever produced that would never make
that sale to that web site alone. It would cost them more
to make the phone call than they would make on that one
story. But you aggregate that and you start to get real
checks every month.
The flip side of that’s true for Web sites; you’d need 5-6
publisher relationships for real time news at the bare
minimum. We’ll deliver the news from 57 all in the same
format, all integrated for you. We’re not selling AP,
we’re selling stories about healthcare with
meta data ticker symbols discussed in article included. So
that’s a product, our public company wire. Our clients such
as Stockpoint and PC Quotes don’t want to buy stories that
don’t talk about public companies. So we sell them pieces
of wires as opposed to entire wire.
Sometimes a client will want all of one publisher. Then
we’ll work with the publisher in that situation, and ask
them, do you want to play? Here’s the opportunity.
Q: what do you think about the brand new aggregation players
such as BackWire and YellowBrix who are getting funded by
VCs these days?
Terry: The really good news is that they’re validating our
position. I looked at BackWire today. They’re similar to a
lot of others, their email push to your desktop is only as
goood as their search engine. They’ve got lots of great
sources, but like Moreover.com they may or may not have a
relationship with the publishers whose headlines they are
carrying.
If you’re going to differentiate between us and them, the
hard work, the digital reproduction of copywritable content
is a very touchy subject. We’re become a trusted partner.
We know the sensitivities of our publishing parters. If we
go to the kind of site they don’t want to participate in, we
ask them first.
We work with 57 different publishers and create 37 different
custom real time wires. There’s a lot of work that goes into
doing that right.
These others’ mentalities that this sort of content is free
because it’s out on the net -- the question is who’s it
value-added for?
Next Week: Part II of our exclusive interview with Charles
Terry, in which he tells us about the Company’s broadband
plans which new publishers he wants to partner with; and
what he thinks about ecommerce-imbedded content.
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LETTERS
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“I enjoy ContentBiz and noticed your comment about privacy
policies. I thought you might enjoy the one I wrote for my
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Among other things, I write privacy humor for
PrivacyPlace.com, some of which can be found linked on this
page http://www.madkane.com/comp.html.”
Madeleine Begun Kane, Humor Columnist
http://www.madkane.com
“I think your work is superb. Of the dozens of newsletters
I receive, yours is one of the few I actually look forward
to reading. I was struck by the privacy statement in
today’s edition and thought you might enjoy ours as well at
http://www.fitnesslink.com/info/privacy.htm
We try to take a more lighthearted tone. We felt the issue
was getting a little out of hand in the media and people
were getting a little crazed about privacy.”
Paul Entin, Associate Publisher
http://www.fitnesslink.com
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CONTENTBIZ.COM INFO
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Anne Holland
anneh@marketingsherpa.com
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