Digital publishing news for July 1, 2013
Salon Media Group saw increased revenue Q1 due to a nice boost in Web traffic reports Folio: “Salon is up 21 percent in net revenue from continuing operations when comparing Q1 2013 to Q1 2012, which totals about $900,000.” Due to the web traffic increase, their ad revenues and third-party ad revenues soared 10% and 23% respectively. Salon also made strategic cuts in both video production and their subscription model which also bolstered their financials.
Saveur’s Savvy Partnership
Travel Weekly has all the details on a new partnership between Windstar Cruises and cooking magazine Saveur. The two companies will be offering an eight night cruise in Spain in 2014. According to Travel Weekly , “the cruise, aboard the Wind Surf, departs from Lisbon on April 19 and visits Cadiz, Malaga, Almeria, Cartagena, Valencia, Soller and culminating in Barcelona.” It’s always good to see a magazine publisher making strategic partnerships outside of the publishing world.
BuzzFeed Announces New Head of Entertainment
In another print to web transition that we’ve been covering lately, according to Variety, Jace Lacob will be leaving Newsweek & the Daily Beast to be the head of BuzzFeed’s entertainment coverage. “I am thrilled to be joining the BuzzFeed team. I look forward to working closely with Doree Shafrir and Ben Smith to make the entertainment vertical a dynamic and exciting destination for entertainment news and opinion with a strong emphasis on television and film,” Lacob stated. BuzzFeed is building up its Los Angeles bureau to be the center of entertainment coverage.
Getting Search Visitors to Convert
Search Engine Land has a new column by online conversion scientist Brian Massey. In the column he talks about the many reasons why search visitors don’t convert. Massey discusses the five areas of your website in which you should pay attention to: risk reversal, value proposition, social proof, user interface and authority. Since search accounts for a majority of website traffic for most websites, it’s important to establish credibility through all of these points right away. By taking a scientific approach you can “test hypotheses from each of the five ‘buckets’ to find the major concern of your visitors. This gives you the direction to take for early increases in conversion rate and revenue per click.”
Glam Reinvents The Blog Wheel
Glam Media does things a little different compared to other media networks. Xcomny has a full report on Glam Media’s rise as one of the top blog networks on the web. Glam has built their blog network in a unique way, they don’t own most of the content in their publishing network. They partner with bloggers that meet their editorial standards and supply them with ads from premium brands. Samir Arora, Glam Founder & CEO says, “we have had the same business model for almost 10 years now, and that is that we want high-quality content—what a portal used to promise you—plus high-quality brand advertising and brand experiences, without following the portal model.”
