By Bob Speyer, Web Success Team

The New York Times is making news instead of just delivering it to its readers. Times have been hard on newspapers across the country. As the size of your daily newspaper dwindles, so have their profits. The NY Times operated at a $35 million loss in the third quarter of 2009.

To shore up its bottom line, the Times will now charge consumers for its web content. By increasing online revenue, it hopes to offset print advertising losses and utilize the digital press to build your business online. Let’s face it, we need our news organizations to be profitable. They provide a valuable service. As the “Fourth Estate” they act as our eyes and ears around the nation and world to keep watch on government while keeping us informed.

The New York Times’ “metered model” will permit visitors to read a fixed number of articles before charging a monthly fee. Any subscriber will have free unlimited access. It’s their way to boost readership and flip visitors into paid customers. They may even have to be more aggressive and use some online direct response marketing tactics and take advantage of social media marketing using Facebook and Twitter. Incidentally, the Wall Street Journal already charges for their online subscriptions.

So What’s Next? Our Predictions

We predict that charging for blog content will be the next online reality — and its coming to a computer screen near you! We have all been weaned on free web content, but most analysts conclude that newspapers and magazines will have to charge customers to remain in the news business.

With the explosion of smart phones, like the Apple’s iphone, delivering content to mobile devices will be the next big revenue source for providers of news and blog-worthy content. Content providers will be offering you subscriptions to news, sports, finance and more. And it may not stop there. Popular blogs may also charge a premium to be part of the “inner circle” to receive cutting edge content, such as proprietary information, insider tips and strategies.

We anticipate the pricing to be very modest but increase over time as the consumer gets use to paying for content. Paid value always is perceived to be better than “free advice.” In the end, the marketplace will decide and determine your web success.

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By Bob Speyer and Eric Pangburn Web Success Team

You can have the flashiest and most visually impressive website on the Internet, but if no one ever visits it, then your site isn’t really doing you that much good. By the same token, an e-commerce site that pulls in a fair amount of traffic but very little actual sales isn’t living up to its potential either. In both cases, the one factor that can tip the scales in your favor is effective lead generation. And not just any leads, mind you; what you want are leads that are targeted specifically to build your business.

While there was a time when leads were typically gathered by way of telemarketing and e-mail databases, these methods have largely been supplanted by more currently accepted methods using online avenues. E-mail marketing is particularly deemed outdated, since this opens you up to accusations of spamming. In most cases, the customers that you’re targeting may simply be annoyed by your marketing efforts. Worse, they may even get you in trouble with your e-mail provider. For this reason, more and more people are turning towards online means of lead generation as opposed to cold calling, telemarketing and e-mail.

Below are some effective ways by which you could generate leads and achieve web success in the face of today’s changing online world.

1. Locate the Target: Find out where your customers are and how they can be reached. You can’t go after your target market if you don’t know where it is; it’s that simple. If you have written a book on gardening, the obvious places to look for leads are gardening websites and forums.
2. Join Relevant Communities: Once you have figured out where your potential customers hang out online, join in on the community that they are a part of. Resist the temptation to blatantly market your products or services to them, and instead strive to become an active contributor to the online community. This will allow you to build a rapport with your potential market base that can be used as a foundation for a solid marketing campaign effort.
3. Advertising and Link Exchange: Find out what other websites your customers visit regularly and check them out as well. They may prove to be fresh ground for your marketing and/or advertising campaign. Find out if the website in question accepts advertising and what their rates are. They may even accept article submissions in which case you will want to find out what the terms and conditions of use are. You may even be able to exchange links with the website owner. Don’t automatically disregard a site just because you deem it as a competitor. You may be surprised at the number of websites that are willing to work with the competition just as long as they can benefit from the arrangement as well.
4. Build Your Email List with Value: While unsolicited e-mail can definitely hurt your marketing efforts, a mailing list is almost essential for keeping your existing customers in the loop. Make sure that you do have something extra to offer your customers that are on your mailing list, so that they will feel privileged and being a part of it.
5. Paid Search: PPC or pay per click advertising has been around for a number of years now. While it has its fair share of detractors who feel that it is somewhat outdated and ineffective, it is still a pretty viable means of generating leads. Google’s AdWords is still used by many individuals and companies who want to achieve greater visibility on the Internet. The rates for such ads will vary depending on how crowded your particular field is and where on the page your ad will be placed, among other factors. The beauty of AdWords is that they offer you plenty of flexibility with regard to how much you spend on your ads. Furthermore, you only pay a fee when a visitor clicks on your ad.
6. Blogging: Developing and maintaining an active blog is critical to your lead generation efforts. Posting relevant articles, tips and tidbits peppered with keywords will help drive qualified traffic to your website. One of the weaknesses of a site owner is never having enough time to blog post. We cannot stress this strongly enough. If you don’t have the time, hire a freelance writer.
7. Article Marketing: Get published! A good way to generate new leads is by writing articles that your potential customers may be interested in and getting them published on relevant websites. Most of the websites that allow article submission will feature your author bio as well as a link to your website. There are article aggregators (paid and non-paid) that will circulate your articles on directories, newsletters, blogs, websites to save you time. You submit one article and they distribute it to hundreds of relevant sites.
8. Social Media Networking: Finally, don’t neglect the popular social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and even YouTube. Such sites regularly pull in thousands of people every day, so you can imagine just how vast an exploration area that is for your marketing efforts. The field is wide open for you to reap the leads that your online business needs, and you would do well to explore them as a part of a holistic online marketing campaign.

As you can see, lead generation is a multi-faceted discipline that involves several different methods. The key to success is pinpointing which of these methods actually deliver results and focusing your efforts on them. Not all methods will work the same way for your site as it does for another, so you should carefully consider all your options.

The Web Success Team

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