February 19, 2002
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1. Comcast Outages Hurt Ezine Publishers
2. Fewer Press Covering Online Content Industry
3. I Make $17.32 as a Paid Journalist
4. Langa Converts 13% Free Readers to Paid
5. E&P Conference Notes from Alexis Gutzman
6. Tighten Up Your Editorial Non-Competes
***** THIS WEEK'S CONTENTBLOG
[02/16/02 10:42AM] COMCAST OUTAGES HURT EZINE PUBLISHERS
According to Ezine Tips' latest issue, some Comcast email users
have been experiencing outages over the past few days. Which
means your ezine undeliverables may have gone up. Between this
sort of thing, and the inevitable "soft" bounces built up from
folks being out of the office over the Holidays, or having filled
email boxes due to folks like Hotmail making free boxes smaller,
we ended up having the subscriptions of several thousand readers
of our various newsletters on hold for bouncing ... even though
their email addresses may still be good.
So, although list cleanliness matters in the long run, this week
I made sure folks are not deleted as bad addresses just quite
yet. You may want to do the same on your end if you are a
newsletter publisher too.
http://ezine-tips.com/articles/management/20020215.shtml
[02/15/02 6:19PM] FEWER PRESS COVERING ONLINE CONTENT INDUSTRY
I'm saddened to report that two of my most respected peers and
competitors, Bill Mickey Editor eContent Magazine and Steve Smith
Editor MIN's New Media Report, are being laid off due to the
downturn in the online media industry. Which is really too bad,
because all indications show this industry is just now turning
the corner and picking up again. I'm sure both will land on their
feet, and bring us incisive insider news for years to come. And
in the meantime, given the way the world is these days, both are
likely to start Blogs of their own. If and when they do, I'll
bring you links here, so stay tuned!
[02/15/02 3:47PM] I MAKE $17.32 AS A PAID JOURNALIST
On an entirely personal note, my article, A Yankee Girl's Guide
to Brit Chick Lit, was just published at Crescent Blues, a Web
site that January 2002 issue of Writer's Digest named as one of
The 25 Best Places to Get Published Online.
You may be amused to hear that this is the first time I've ever
been paid as a real professional journalist (vs a businessperson
in the media industry) and that check for $17.32 is gonna end up
in a handsome frame on my office wall.
http://www.crescentblues.com/5_1issue/feat_britchicklit.shtml
[02/14/02 3:03PM] LANGA CONVERTS 13% FREE READERS TO PAID
Quick update to a ContentBiz Case Study from March 2001. 10,000
Subscribers Pay $10 Each for "PLUS!" Edition of the Free
LangaList Email Newsletter describing ezine Publisher Fred
Langa's first few months of transition from free to for-fee.
According to a story in today's eBusiness Secrets Langa now has
145,000 free subscribers, 19,000 of whom have anted up the $11-12
annual subscription fee. That's a bit more than a 13% conversion
rate - which is unusually high, however Langa's price is
unusually low.
Is it worth lowering your price to try to get more buyers? My new
Tech Editor Alexis Gutzman just reminded me that research shows
about 25-30% of online customers require some type of customer
service. Perhaps they email you, or there are credit card snafus,
or whatever... So you have to add that cost in whenever you are
considering growing your subscription file. More customers means
more customer service costs. (Not that I don't fully appreciate
what Langa is doing -- he rocks.)
http://www.contentbiz.com/sample.cfm?contentID=1546
http://secretspro.com/ebusinesssecrets
http://www.langa.com
[02/13/02 11:20PM] E&P CONFERENCE NOTES FROM ALEXIS GUTZMAN
This Blog entry from ContentBiz Tech Editor Alexis Gutzman:
Editor & Publisher’s conference, Interactive Newspapers, was last
week in San Jose. The smallish crowd of 280 was visibly concerned
about the future of the online publishing industry. You’d think
there might have been some backslapping at seeing survivors of
the past year, but none was in evidence.
Overall, the individual speakers were more interesting than the
panels. Individual speakers didn’t have to take time to agree
with themselves. A few bright spots:
* Steve Rossi, president of Knight-Ridder’s newspaper division,
proved with numbers that the nichiest content does not command
the highest CPM – witness the low cost of niche cable TV
advertising.
* Bob Cauthorn of The San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate explained
his new models for making online advertising more attractive to
the advertiser. First, they permit visitors to the site to search
the previous week’s print ads by keyword and commuting path, so
that a visitor can find a furniture sale on the way home from
work. Then they turn around and sell advertisers based on what
visitors are looking for.
Second, they include job openings from the classifieds on most
pages in the site, trying to find those who are only passively
looking for a job. Finally, they’ve planted links to the
classifieds so that key categories appear on pages other than in
the classified section. Bob also reported that SFGate is nearly
consistently profitable.
* Terry Bergen of the Cedar Rapids Gazette made the case for
their switch from free to fee for non-print subscribers.
Also noteworthy: neither the conference organizers nor the new
(debonair) president of E&P could tell me where/whether next
year’s conference would take place.
[02/13/02 9:16PM] TIGHTEN UP YOUR EDITORIAL NON-COMPETES
Are your non-compete contracts with departing editorial staff (or
former publication owners) as thorough as they need to be? I've
definitely noticed a trend these days of folks who are under
editorial non-compete after they leave their companies, starting
an email newsletter and growing an opt-in list while they twiddle
their thumbs waiting for the non-compete to end. Then, the day it
does, they flip the switch and all the readers they've gathered
on that free opt-in list (many of whom include your long-term
buyers) suddenly get an offer for a subscription product that
looks like yours, smells like yours, but perhaps undercuts yours
a bit on price. So, double-check that non-compete language to
make sure it includes all sorts of writing and publishing, not
just print and/or for-fee.
