Thinking Outside the Ad
By David Fortino
Feedfront Magazine, January 2009
Why should it be accepted that the only way to generate
revenue for your site is to bombard your audience with ads
that your audience eventually ignores?
Far too often, publishers have come to the
conclusion that making money has to come at
the cost of compromising user experience. The
crafty publisher has realized this and embraced
new forms of monetizing their traffic that their
audience actually welcomes.
Free offers such as free magazines
subscriptions, white papers, software trials,
podcasts and webinars have proven to be
an extremely lucrative way for publishers to
not only generate an incremental revenue
stream, but also reward their visitors for their
continued support.
Tapping into human nature and the impulse
of requesting something that is free has turned
the traditional revenue generation model on its
head for many publishers.
Gone are the days where you constantly have
to rely on selling your audience something or
sending them to a site that's only going to ask
for their credit card shortly after visiting.
Think about it...itgiving your audience a free
subscription to Oracle Magazine or sending
them over to Amazon to buy a book on Oracle.
What do you think would perform better?
The conversion rates on free products are
statistically off the charts in comparison to
traditional commerce/transactional based
affiliate programs. While many publishers
realize this to be the case, they struggle to find
ways to monetize free content efficiently.
The onus shouldn't be on the publisher
to figure this out. They should partner with
companies who can help in a seamless manner
and start collecting the cash. Something as
simple as a subtle link inclusion in a post/article
could drive substantial revenues if targeted
correctly.
Audit the advertising opportunities on your
sites and test alternatives, such as free offers, to
optimize your site. If you're running campaigns
that your audience isn't interested in, you're
simply willingly wasting opportunities.
David Fortino is the Vice President of Audience
Development at NetLine Corporation and
RevResponse.com.
