What Do Publishers Really Sell?
There is no single factor more important to a site publisher than audience. Andy tells you how to determine which audiences to pursue a relationship with and build a business upon.
There is no single factor more important to a site publisher than audience. Andy tells you how to determine which audiences to pursue a relationship with and build a business upon.
There is no single factor more important to a site publisher than audience. Your understanding, knowledge, and awareness of your audience, and your relationship to it, defines your business. Period.
If your revenue model is primarily advertising-based, the product you sell is access to your audience.
You don’t sell content. Content attracts and retains audience.
You don’t sell ads. Ads are the vehicles advertisers use to reach your audience.
You don’t sell page impressions. Page impressions are a peripheral reflection of your audience’s activity on your site.
You don’t sell clicks. Click-throughs are merely one of many indicators that an ad has elicited a response from your audience.
You sell your audience, period.
So the first of many questions you need to ask yourself is, “Who is my audience?” Actually, your first question should be, “Who SHOULD my audience be?”
Let me tell you what I mean. At ClickZ, we’re developing and interacting with a number of audiences. As the online marketing industry becomes increasingly granular, we HAVE to respond to that by seeking and nurturing multiple markets.
As a site publisher, you are a member of at least one of those audiences. In fact, you are probably a member of more than one.
For example, if you buy interactive advertising in order to build your brand and drive traffic, you are part of our media buying audience. If you use email as a tool to interact with your audience, to drive sales, or to attract traffic, you are part of our email marketing audience. So there is a great deal of overlap among what might seem at first to be very distinct audiences.
Let’s look at how to determine which audiences to pursue a relationship with and thereby build a business upon. It’s actually fairly simple.
Does that audience represent value, in that its members are willing to spend money (preferably frequently and a lot of it!) on the solutions they are looking for?
Are the companies that are pursuing this audience spending money to reach it? Are they funded? Are they spending online dollars now to reach this audience, or do they need pioneer work?
If you as a site publisher can consistently offer value by providing great information and resources to a group of people with similar interests and needs, you can build a valuable audience.
If you can then offer value to companies vitally interested in that audience by helping them reach that audience in appropriate and effective ways, you can then build a profitable site publishing business.
It’s your job to bring them together in a win-win way… and only in so doing can YOU win.