With Valentine’s Day this week, I’d like to talk about something near and dear to my heart. Sure, I could wax poetic about my beloved Zinfandel, but today I’m feeling passionate about another subject entirely: site publishers.
Pity the much-maligned site publishers. They have been pawed at by cost-per-click hounds, batted about by scrappy media buyers, and tyrannized by click-through. They’ve been struggling to stay afloat amidst a monsoon of misguided metrics and inherently unfair pricing.
Well, site publishers, some of us here do love you. And this column will let us count the ways…
This week, ClickZ debuts a new column devoted to all you struggling (and even you not-so-struggling) site publishers out there. This column is for all of you who have answered the knocks of those cost-per-click zealots, who knee their way into your living room to tempt you to venture out onto roads they promise are paved with gold. (Only later do you hit some serious potholes along the way.)
This column is for all of you who have needed to wear protective headgear when negotiating mano a mano with media buyers. It’s for all of you who have had to churn out the endless reports of page impressions and click-through to skeptical advertisers. And it’s for all of you who have been too busy racking up page impressions to consider the true value of your audience.
Bottom line: This is a column written unabashedly from a pro-publisher point of view. But at the same time, it gives a solid nod toward those that make a publisher’s world go ’round: the advertisers and the audience.
The sole objective of ClickZ’s new Site Publishing content thread is to help sites develop cash-flow-positive sites that also deliver tremendous resources for their readers and enormous value for their advertisers.
How so?
Well, starting next week, ClickZ Publisher Andy Bourland will get more specific on that topic and others. In the coming weeks, he’ll address:
- Ways to develop and nurture an audience
- How to handle metric-crazed advertisers
- How to develop unique sponsorship models (it’s NOT all about banners!)
- How to leverage email as a sponsorship and publishing model.
As all of you faithful ClickZ readers know, Andy is a true champion of site publishers, and confesses to having a soft spot in his heart for them. As publisher of ClickZ, he has walked miles in all your shoes, and he continues to struggle with the same issues that confront each one of you every day.
ClickZ is also living, breathing, thriving proof that site publishing can (and should) be a highly profitable venture. (Yes, Virginia, there IS such a thing as a profitable Internet company…!)
Our friends at BURST! Media are sponsoring the Site Publishing Thread each week. For those of you who don’t know BURST! already, BURST! is a Burlington, Mass.-based ad network.
The folks there have tremendous respect and admiration for site publishers, as well. Being true friends to publishers, BURST! is focused more on content than technology. (Check out the piece CEO Jarvis Coffin penned for ClickZ last November.)
So, site publishers, here’s our Valentine to you. Sort of a gift that keeps on giving.
Now, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.
Site Publishing continues next Tuesday, February 22, on ClickZ.