January 08, 2002
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Here are the past two week's informal news and notes
for the online content industry from ContentBlog:
1. DaySpring Sees 350% eCards Sent Increase
2. Media Unspun Biz Model Hopes/Plans May Be Flawed
3. Update on Excite @Home Transition Mess
4. My Take on 2001 Passing & A Great Poem
5. New ContentBiz Tech Editor
6. Final Counts on ChristianityToday eCards Sent
7. 18.3% eCard Recipients Join Opt-in List
8. ConsumerReports.org Hits 700K Paid Subs
9. USAGreetings' eCards Sent Quadruple
10. Getting Hard Copies to Problem PDF Buyers
***** THIS WEEK'S CONTENTBLOG
[01/04/02 10:02AM] DAYSPRING SEES 350% ECARD INCREASE
Press release just in, "DaySpring Cards, Inc, a subsidiary of
Hallmark Cards, Inc., saw a 350% increase in e-cards sent from
its web site www.dayspring.com over last year's Christmas
season."
[01/04/02 9:47AM] MEDIA UNSPUN BIZ HOPES MAY BE FLAWED
Funniest email newsletter subscription offer I've ever seen just
arrived in my inbox from Media Unspun:
"Why else should I pay now?
Because I will pick two of the first 50 people who sign up and
clean either their house or their office. Really."
Media Unspun is a new ezine from the editorial team of seven
(that's more editors than practically any ezine on this planet
these days) who did Industry Standard's Media Grok ezine. It's
basically the same exact zine with a different name, and fewer
subscribers for now (Grok had 100k+, Unspun has fewer than 10k.)
The Unspun team hope to raise the opt-ins to the old high level -
- which is unrealistic because without a high traffic site like
The Standard funneling subscriptions to you, or without buying
them through co-reg, it's unlikely an ezine of this type will
grow that big anytime soon. (Also, um, it would help if they put
a subscribe form on their "About us" web page.)
They also plan to start charging $50 year ($39 intro offer) for
the zine when it goes from weekly to daily in March. And expect
to take payments through Amazon honor and PayPal. My take on that
is, it's easy enough to get a real merchant account and cart
online these days -- why do something that not only looks far
more professional but also more subscribers are apt to use?
Will people pay for this type of content? I don't know, but
suspect it won't be an easy sale because Grok was always more
fun-to-know than need-to-know. When people buy content, usually
it's for something that will seriously improve their life or job.
A good laugh and handy news round-up doesn't strike me as
mission-critical stuff the way that info on how to lose weight or
make more sales does. This strikes me as more of an ad-based
play. But, hopefully, I'm wrong.
[01/02/02 5:26PM] UPDATE ON EXCITE @HOME TRANSITION MESS
The Excite @Home bankruptcy-transition continues to be
problematic. According to numerous Sherpa/ContentBiz reader
emails, many East coast former Excite-customers have been given
their new email addresses by Comcast .. only to find that they
don't work. At least for now. This CNET article (link below)
talks about some of the messy, messy, mess, which continues to
affect more than a million of American broadband users. (Flacks,
I don't want to be pitched another rich media story until this
mess is cleared up, ok?)
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-8307650.html
[12/31/01 4:05PM] MY TAKE ON 2001 PASSING & A GREAT POEM
Last night one of my local public radio stations played a
selection of golden oldies -- archived New Year's Eve radio shows
from years and years ago, including a Jack Benny show from 1939
and a Father Knows Best from the very early 50s. At the very
start of one show from 1957, the male announcer burbled
enthusiastically, "Here's to another Great Year!!!" Which made me
feel tired, jaded and just plain old. We are a generation of
content business survivors; unable to be naive enough to think
things will ever be unremittingly "Great!" again.
But then I remembered my all-time favorite New Year's poem,
"Nostalgia" by America's current Poet Laureate, Billy Collins.
This deliciously witty poem reminds everyone that the golden days
have always been behind us... whether in 1340, 1790, or even the
recently departed dot-com bubble years. Check it out at:
http://www.bigsnap.com/p-qa-02.html
Personally the whole bubble burst is a bit of relief. Many of my
friends risked their marriages and/or health in the all-or-
nothing dash for almost instant wealth. Now we're back to the
ground. Now we can carry on. Happy 2002.
[12/28/01 4:12PM] NEW CONTENTBIZ TECH EDITOR
ContentBiz just hired on a new Tech Editor, Alexis Gutzman, to
start Jan 2nd and so I, Miss Nothing-better-to-do-on-a-Friday-
night, surfed over to some key Primedia sites to sign Alexis up
for news and info on our Brill Media-run competition. And gosh,
Primedia's server is down so if you want to get into sites like
MediaCentral.com or CircMan.com, you haven't got a chance. Always
fun to see the competition looking lame.
BTW: If you have tech questions related to the content industry
then shoot them to Alexis at Alexisg@marketingsherpa.com and
maybe you'll give her an idea for an upcoming story.
[12/28/01 4:07PM] FINAL COUNTS ON CHRISTIANITYTODAY ECARDS
He shoulda been a reporter... Michael Herman sent in another
update, now post Xmas, that gives real insight on the Xmas ecard
rush, "From December 1 - 25, there were more than 77,000 ecards
sent from our site. More than 40,000 of those cards were sent
from the 21st - 25th. Our previous monthly high was 33,000.
"It appears our strategy of encouraging people immediately before
the holiday was successful. Card senders can also specify what
day the card will be sent to the recipient(s)...as some other
sites offer. We advertise that feature more than most other sites
do. It's a strong selling point to tell the potential sender that
they won't have to miss another birthday or holiday again as far
as emails go. Some people even use it as a reminder service as
they send cards to themselves to remind them of things to do.
The recent changeover of a number of high-profile ecards sites to
charging for sending ecards also most likely helped our traffic
as well."
[12/21/01 11:23AM] 18.3% ECARD RECIPIENTS JOIN OPT-IN LIST
Michael Herman at ChristianityToday.com which I mentioned in my
Blog on the 19th, emailed in good news, "Just an update, we've
averaged between 800-1000 ecards send per day this year, but
yesterday was incredible. We had more than 10,000 cards sent
yesterday alone. We have been mentioning the ecards in our
newsletters recently, but we hadn't even sent out our email
newsletter to our newsletter list yet. We decided to wait to
strongly promote suggesting ecards this weekend for those who
just didn't get around to sending ground-mail cards. We hope to
see great returns on that as well.
"Another thing is that we've averaged 5,500 names opting in to
our newsletter list for every 30,000 cards sent over the past
year. It's been an excellent source of growth newsletter
subscribers. We pay Dayspring (provider of the ecard system) a
flat rate + a fee depending on the volume of cards sent if we
exceed a certain amount. Essentially, there's a minimum + volume
charges. But we've definitely seen it as an excellent indirect
revenue generating tool and awareness booster for our site as a
whole."
[12/20/01 10:37AM] CONSUMERREPORTS.ORG HITS 700K PAID SUBS
Good news - ConsumerReports.org's paid subscriber base has
continued to climb precipitously through the late fall. As of
today they announced that they have "more than 700,000" paid Web
site subscribers. Does this mean we could see them pop the
million mark by next Christmas?? Well, their continued, sustained
grow is impressive. Plus you should bear in mind that this non-
profit organization has achieved this with almost no marketing
budget so far.
[12/19/01 11:44AM] USA GREETINGS' ECARDS SENT QUADRUPLE
In a just released press release, Suresh Reddy, CEO of USA
Greetings, reports that since other ecard sites such as
BlueMountain and American Greetings have started charging minimal
subscriptions, his still-100% free site's impressions have
quadrupled, and will grow to an estimated 74 million this month.
It's a great story angle, except for one thing. Reddy doesn't
explain how much of this month-to-month quadrupling is due to the
normal holiday season surge, and how much to competitors going
paid. The Company's been around since 1998, so presumably he can
guess at it.
Anyway, like most ecard sites, USA Greetings makes a significant
portion of its revenue from syndication and licensing rights.
This is a marketplace I personally expect to grow steadily in the
coming year, because ecards are a powerful, cost-effective viral
marketing tool for niche Web sites. I've heard of sites as
different as OilofOlay.com to ChristianityToday.com having
tremendous success with them. Generally they are specially
created for the client and then paid for on a CPC basis.
[Note: on Dec 20th Jupiter Media Metrix released the following
figures on USA Greeting's competitors - Hallmark.com increased
71% to 415,000 average daily visitors; and Egreetings.com
increased 63% to 287,000 average daily visitors.]
[12/28/01 9:01AM] GETTING HARD COPIES TO PROBLEM PDF BUYERS
Thank goodness for Kinkos. About once a week we get a call from a
customer who's just purchased a PDF document from our online
Knowledge Store, just can't open it properly for some reason or
another (usually an antique Mac.) So we go online to Kinkos.com
and use their KinkosNet service to have a copy printed out at a
Kinkos near that customer and then hand-delivered to them.
However, there are a few drawbacks to using Kinkos you should
know about:
1. It's a rotten, horribly confusing Web site. In fact Kinkos
employees have told me, "Oh yes isn't it awful?" Expect to spend
at least 30 minutes figuring the darn thing out the first time.
(Later it can take as few as 5 minutes)
2. Kinkos offers two different services (both at Kinkos.com)
which make little sense to me. PrinttoKinkos can accept credit
cards and uploaded documents online ... BUT your only delivery
option is via pricey Fedex to your own address. KinkosNet can
accept uploaded documents online and will hand-deliver for free
to a local address near whichever Kinkos on earth you choose. BUT
KinkosNet won't accept online payment, and the stores are very,
very leery of taking credit cards on the phone. (You have to fax
over a signature and sweet-talk them into it.)
If you're selling a single document at a low price, then all of
this service may not be worth it to you. However my average
pricepoint is over $100, and I've learned that if we can please a
first-time customer, they will return and buy, and buy, and buy
again. So now Kinkos is our Knowledge Store's New Best Friend.
BTW: Why not just print up a bunch of hard copies ahead of time
and have them waiting to ship to problematic customers? It's
definitely cheaper and easier than KinkosNet -- but only if you
can pretty accurately predict demand ahead of time, and only if
the document won't change much (some of our PDFs update every few
months), and only if you have the rights to do so (some of the
products in our store are from other publishers.) Still, for
those emergency onesy-twosies, Kinkos is a great solution.
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