What Do Publishers Really Sell?

To paraphrase the motto that guided Bill Clinton’s successful ‘92 presidential campaign, “It’s the Audience, Stupid.”

If you are a site publisher, print that in large, bold letters and slap it on your wall. Put it on your monitor. Tape it to your bathroom mirror.

There is no single factor more important to a web site publisher than audience. Your understanding, knowledge, awareness and relationship to your audience 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 only a reflection on 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.

If you have an ad supported web site, you sell your audience, period.

So the first of many questions you need to ask yourself is, “Who is our audience?”

Actually, your first question should be, “Who SHOULD our audience be?”

During my years at ClickZ, we started by defining our audience as “internet marketers” Over time, we developed and interacted with a number of audiences: brand marketers, direct marketers, email marketers, affiliate marketers, online media buyers, website publishers, ezine publishers, the list went on and on.

As the online marketing industry evolved, it became increasingly granular, just as it continues to do this day. We HAVE to respond to that by seeking and nurturing our relationship with many different audiences.

As a site publisher, you are a member of at least one of those audiences. Most likely, you are a member of several.

If you buy online advertising in order to build your brand and drive traffic, you are part of a media buyer 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 marker or ezine publisher audience. At the same time, you might maintain a marketing blog or web site, which would put you into a website publisher audience. It’s very likely that you are involved with all of the above, so there is a great deal of overlap among what you might initially believe are 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.

* Common interest, common need. Identify a problem, a technology, or an area that has a lot of questions around it. People need information about it. People are looking for solutions. They may have no idea how to find that solution. More likely, they may be overwhelmed with choices and need guidance on what the best solution is for them.

Developing a profitable site publishing model is one such area, but so is the question of how to build an opt-in email list. So is how to build your brand online. So is how to design an effective online advertisement. All of these are issues that are ones for which there are many different solutions, so there is a huge need for good, unbiased information.

* Critical mass. Are there a significant number of people who need this information? Are many people seeking answers or just an isolated few? If just a few, have they tapped onto something that ultimately will affect a significant number of people? Without some degree of critical mass either now or in the future, some efficiency in reaching a significant number of people through a single venue, you have a hard time making a case for a good audience.

* Community of support. The biggest indicator to use to validate whether or not the audience is sufficiently large and/or valuable is whether or not there are businesses established to provide solutions for this group. For media buyers, there are a wide array of businesses that offer products and services to make their work easier and more effective. For email marketers, there is a vast array of companies that provide them lists, delivery, tracking, copywriting, and so on.

In short, is there an industry forming around this audience?

After you’ve asked those questions, look at some of the more important details.

Does that audience represent value? In other words, are they 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 them? Are they well funded? Are they spending online dollars now to reach them, 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.