November 06, 2001
Article

ContentBlog Weekly: Warning to Emailers - Hotmail

SUMMARY: No summary available
This week's news notes from ContentBlog are:

1. NEPA May Start Ezine Publisher's Group
2. iVillage Financials Picked Apart
3. eUniverse Profits Selling CPA Ads (Can You?)
4. Warning: Don't Send Hotmail Users HTML Email
5. How to Stop Sites from Collecting Your Content &
Giving it Away Free
6. CMP's (Stealable) New Online Ad Sales Tactic
7. NYTimes.com's Baseball Subscription Site


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***** THIS WEEK'S CONTENTBLOG

[11/6/2001 7:18AM] NEPA MAY START EZINE PUBLISHER'S GROUP

Notes on my lunch with Patty Wysocki, Exec Dir of NEPA
(Newsletter & Electronic Publishers Assn) yesterday: She said
that (surprise) new print subscription newsletters are still
being launched by the association's members and others. However
most print newsletter companies now have at least a basic Web
site and publish e-versions of, or esupplements to, their
products. She's definitely going to make a proposal at the
association's Board meeting in December that they start two new
special working groups -- one for email newsletter publishers'
topics/problems, and one to discuss selling advertising in print,
sites and ezines.

If you are a NEPA member (or are considering membership) and you
have strong feelings yeah or neah on these two proposed groups,
email Patty at pwysocki@newsletters.org
http://www.newsletters.org

[11/05/2001 4:12PM] IVILLAGE FINANCIALS PICKED APART

Oooh. Thanks to ContentBlog reader Sanj at iDirect.com who sent
in the link to a NetSlaves article ripping apart iVillage's
recent financial statements. I especially enjoyed the author's
comments on marketing and sales staffing breakdown versus
advertisers.
http://www.netslaves.com/comments/987693402.shtml


[11/05/2001 3:10PM] EUNIVERSE PROFITS SELLING CPA ADS

My new favorite Blog for the day is ModernWebMaster.com a
frequently updated Blog by Oliver Willis on "news, opinion, &
strategy for independent content producers". Very fun for content
types.

He emailed in to ask my opinion of the eUniverse third quarter
figures which show them romping ahead in profits due to -- get
this -- accepting lots of CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) advertising
while using their leftover ad inventory to cross sell in-house
subscription products such as an online dating service they own.
(I'm just jealous because eUniverse got mentioned about a zillion
times on NPR newscasts in the past 72 hours. Must have an awesome
PR person.)

My opinion is you can make money accepting CPA advertising if:

1. You are not a "serious news organization" whose brand depends
on church and state separation between editorial and ads

2. You have millions and millions of impressions to sell and
there's no other way they would move now at a reasonable CPM

3. Or you have the hearts of a niche audience who will buy
anything you tell them to, and you are prepared to personally
recommend advertisers' products.

4. You plan to spend considerable time, energy and cunning in
becoming a true "marketing partner" with these advertisers, from
hand-picking them to carefully watching results and getting
involved in creative. In effect you become a commission-based ad
agency for them ... vs a publishing company.
http://www.modernwebmaster.com
http://www.euniverse.com

[11/02/2001 6:22AM] WARNING: DON'T SEND HOTMAIL USERS HTML EMAIL

Matt Mickiewicz, who heads up the SitePoint site that publishes
advice for webmasters, said in last night's issue that email
newsletter publishers should strongly consider NOT sending HTML
to subscribers at Hotmail because Hotmail "hates external links.
Frequently Hotmailers receive 'page cannot be displayed' error
messages when following a link from HTML newsletters, and there's
nothing publishers can do about it."

So, last week he changed his system to send Hotmail users text-
versions no matter what they signed up for and recommends other
publishers do the same.

I have noticed this problem with newsletters I receive in my own
Hotmail account - some of them from very big brand name
publishers indeed. Does anyone have tips on avoiding this problem
aside from just sending people text?? Email me at
editor@contentbiz.com and I'll post them here.
http://www.sitepoint.com



[11/02/2001 6:05AM] HOW TO STOP SITES FROM COLLECTING YOUR
CONTENT AND GIVING IT AWAY FREE

Thank you Tara Calishain of ResearchBuzz who just sent me a link
to Google's content cache policies. This is really valuable
information for publishers because it includes instructions for
the NOARCHIVES meta tag you need to add to your site's pages if
you don't want them to be cached.

Many other Web sites and systems which may database your site's
articles and pages also obey this meta tag. If you plan to move
free content behind a paid-only barrier someday, or if you have
some other objection to your content being freely available on
other sites (such as the Internet WayBack machine), adding this
meta tag is critical.

(Note: If your content is already behind a "registered users
only" wall, then you probably don’t have to worry about this.)
http://www.google.com/webmasters/B2
http://web.archive.org/ (Internet Wayback Machine)

[10/31/2001 10:00AM] CMP'S (STEALABLE) NEW ONLINE AD SALES TACTIC

Another score for ContentBiz's crystal ball. As we mentioned in
our ad sales outlook report a few weeks back, we expect that more
Web publishers will start offering ads served against search
results because it's such a hot media buying tactic right now.
Well, this morning I got an email from Meryl Franzman, who does
PR for CMP Media’s TechWeb Network, announcing that they are now
offering online media buys based on keywords.

They are taking a clever tactic with this. Because they are a
niche site (albeit big honking one) they knew they wouldn't make
any money just letting advertisers pick exact search terms to buy
space against. If you're not Google or Overture you just don't
have the inventory to make this worth while. So instead they
figured out how to put the majority of searches conducted on the
site into 12 basic categories. Advertisers can buy by search term
category. To sweeten the pot, they also toss in "at least" 3
banners per buy. When somebody searches on a term in the category
you bought, you get the top banner, a vertical skyscraper plus
the bottom banner. Which basically means you own that results
page.

This online media sales idea definitely bears watching, and
perhaps copycatting.

[10/30/2001 3:23PM] NYTIMES.COM'S BASEBALL SUBSCRIPTION SITE

According to an article in today's SiliconAlleyDaily New York
Times Digital is testing a series of repackaged content offerings
for sale online. (Of course I'm psyched because I wrote a
stirring editorial piece about how smart publishers should test
this, a few weeks ago.)

NYT Digital is testing offering "Glory Days of Baseball" for
$9.95 which is compiled best-of baseball content. They're also
planning on testing bundled article offerings at 3rd party sites
- kind of like ConsumerReports.org which started this earlier in
the year. The person to contact if you'd like to sell bundled
NYTimes best-of eBooklets from your site is Catherine Levene, VP
Strategy and Business. I'll also do an interview with her in a
few months to find out how things are going with this test....


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