Technology: 15 favorite tips for a profitable web site
By Gary Sosniecki
Two nearly identical headlines in recent issues of Publishers’ Auxiliary grabbed my attention: “Stop giving away your news on Web for free” and “Stop giving your newspaper’s work away online.”
I’m sympathetic to newspapers that struggle to make money online, but it’s premature to proclaim that paid sites are the answer, especially for community newspapers. Free, advertiser-supported Web sites can be a profitable if you have a good plan.
Here are my 15 favorite tips for a profitable Web site:
1. Believe in your site. Enthusiasm is contagious. With a positive attitude and a solid plan, you’re halfway home.
2. Protect your franchise. If you don’t take the lead on the Internet in your town, someone else will. Anyone you’ve ticked off with a news story – or anyone who thinks you’re making too much money – can start a Web site in competition with you for a few hundred dollars. And national news aggregators like Topix, American Towns and others already have Web sites in your town, maybe even using your own news to compete with you.
3. Know your market. This isn’t a one-size-fits-all technology. Just because something worked for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. Be flexible, be creative, and don’t be afraid to experiment with your Web site.
4. Bigger is better: Use IAB ad sizes. If you sold ads in the 1980s, you remember when newspapers adopted Standard Advertising Units (SAU) to make it easier for advertisers to place ads in multiple newspapers. The same standardization in ad sizes has come to online, with the same goal. And the ad sizes recommended by the Interactive Advertising Bureau are bigger than what were common on newspaper Web sites just a few years ago. The bigger sizes are more effective for your advertisers. Make sure your site can handle these popular IAB sizes: leaderboard, skyscraper and medium rectangle. (Ad agencies will insist on IAB ad sizes.)
5. If you want to sell online ads, keep enough free content to lure readers. To paraphrase a speaker I heard a couple of years ago, if you’re going to hook readers, have some bait on that hook. And if you’re going to hook advertisers, you need some readers. If you insist on locking down your site, don’t lock down so much that you invite free competitors.
6. Make them click it. Impressions are good, clickthrus are better. Top-of-mind awareness is great, but when a reader clicks on a banner ad, it’s like walking through the front door of the advertiser’s business. Create that “urge to click” in your banner ads. Best example I’ve seen was for a car dealer in Alberta: “Shop in your underwear! Search our site now.” Irresistible!
7. Appeal to young decision-makers. They ‘get it.’ Sometimes you’re selling to young people who, unfortunately, don’t believe in newspapers as much as we do. Make sure you ask about online. I couldn’t get a medical clinic to advertise in my paper every week, but I sold the young decision-maker an online ad.
8. Sell after the sale. Online traffic reports reinforce to your advertiser how smart he or she is for buying with you. They also make you look like the Internet expert in your community. Make sure your advertisers get online traffic reports monthly.
9. Monitor performance. Tweak before the customer tells you to. If the advertiser isn’t getting acceptable traffic – see No. 8 – change the ad. Online isn’t like print, where you can run the same plumbing ad for 10 years and assume people are reading it. Online stats give you an opportunity you never had in print – to see how many people read each ad. Take advantage of that knowledge to help your advertisers succeed.
10. Complement your newspaper, don’t compete with it. You can duplicate some content safely with minimal impact on your print circulation, but also use your site for supplemental material: extra photos of school events, news releases from the extension service, video clips from basketball games, columns from your state legislators, sermons from local preachers. Which brings me to…
11. Keep it current. News updates generate more traffic, which helps your advertisers. Breaking news is what sets your Web site apart from your print product. Even the smallest weekly newspaper, with minimal effort, can post some breaking news between print editions to keep readers coming back: death notices, school sports, extreme weather, school closings, boil orders, election results. Make your weekly paper a daily paper online.
12. Be the ‘You Tube’ of your town. Credit this tip to the Grand Island Independent’s Jack Sheard, who gave a great presentation on online video at the 2008 NNA convention. Jack’s suggestions for video subjects include news events, weather, sports, press conferences, band concerts, graduations, parades, festivals and other school events. Many small-town publishers get great video from inexpensive Flip cameras, no bigger than a cellphone.
13. Think outside the box, even if we don’t know the size of the Internet box yet. Who is to say that the next great idea for making money with newspaper Web sites won’t come from you? I talked my best ROP advertiser into a video ad that had 42 viewers the first day. The weekly Anna Gazette-Democrat in Illinois partners with a local radio station to broadcast high-school sports on the newspaper’s Web site. The Georgetown News-Graphic, a tri-weekly in Kentucky, streams live telecasts of high-school sports. The Sidney Herald, a twice-weekly in Montana, posts restaurant menus online for a charge. You can add your own examples of thinking outside the box.
14. Promote, promote, promote. Never miss a chance to promote your Web site in your newspaper, and vice versa. Keep a supply of ready-made house ads – from 1×1 fillers to full-page road maps of your site’s features – and run them frequently. Include your domain in folio lines, Yellow Page ads and billboards. The Advance-Monticellonian in Monticello, Ark., displays its Web site on a big-screen TV visible to customers who visit its office.
15. You paid for it, use it. Don’t waste the features built into your site. I hate when newspapers don’t use their online poll. A good local poll question, changed every week, is a great way to build traffic to your site. If you can’t think of a poll question, use this one courtesy of David Keller of the Morgan County Herald, McConnelsville, Ohio: “Coke” or “Pepsi.” Here’s another: “Ginger” or “Mary Ann.”
Start working on that plan!
Gary Sosniecki is a regional sales manager for Townnews.com specializing in weekly newspapers. He has owned three weekly newspapers and published a small daily in Missouri during a 34-year newspaper career. “15 Tips for a Profitable Web Site” and “Web Solutions for Community Newspapers” are programs he presents to press associations. He may be reached at gsosniecki@townnews.com.