1. Stay on top of technology offerings
There was a lot of buzz about wired magazine’s first digital edition on the iPad. But there were no real differences between that version and functionality offered in flash magazine. They focused a lot on 360 degree rotating products. In our digital editions you can import your own swf animations. So why not create your own rotating effects.
2. Offer your advertisers more
To follow up on my previous point. This type of animation is a great way to allow your advertisers to get more from there adverts. Unlike print, digital editions can offer so much more than standard flat adverts. Allow them to add audio descriptions, video descriptions or flash animation.
3. Nowhere is outside your distribution channel
Digital editions can be accessed from anywhere, at anytime. There is nowhere in the world that cannot be reached. Start to explore other areas. A client of ours, a regional newspaper in Ireland, advertised on Facebook to target expats from their local area now living abroad. This helped them generate revenue from their digital editions as the readers were outside their standard distribution network.
4. Use different adverts for different markets
Using Google analytics metrics you will be able to profile your different reader markets. In the previous example I spoke of an Irish local newspaper selling subscriptions to expats who wanted to keep up with the news from home. Now the advertising in the print edition of that paper was not relevant to that market so they could have inserted digital flyers in the form of pop-ups for adverts that get more of a click-through. For example, cheap flights to Ireland.
5. Generate revenue from old issues
With products like 3D Issue, you are not charged each time you create a digital edition. So you can digitize your entire back catalog of issues. While allowing your readers to go through all previous issues, it is also a perfect way to start your pay-per-click through strategy. Contact old advertisers to see if they want to connect with those readers at a fraction of the cost of their original investment.
6. Your digital edition doesn’t have to be an exact replica
Just because they have only one page in your print edition, doesn’t mean that they can’t have more in the digital edition. Have your sales team sell extra space in the digital editions for product descriptions, competitions extra.
7. Price fairly
If you are going to charge readers to access your digital editions then charge fairly. Tools like 3D Issue allow you to generate digital editions without any extra cost or recurring charges. The reader is wise enough to know that the cost of generating a digital edition is a fraction of cost involved in getting a print edition into their hands. So make such this is reflected in the price. Wired Magazine dropped the cost of their digital editions by 25% on their second issue.
8. Sponsorship
I visited an online cooking portal one time that charged $2 to watch a clip on how a MasterChef prepared a dish. Rather than charge the client $2, this company sold the rights to advertising on that clip to a company wishing to advertise their products to that target market. You were informed of this prior to watching the clip in the form of a popup.“The $2 entry fee to viewing this clip has been sponsored by XXXX. Please check out their advert”.Try integrating this technique into your digital editions. Try adding the sponsorship to the left of the front cover in the form of your own flash intro. Or why not try creating a embossed tiled image of an advert and use it as a background image.
9. Advertising Banners
3D Issue allows you to create advertising banners to include in your digital editions. All you have to do is add in the jpegs and add the URLS. You can also use Google Analytics to track the success of these digital edition adverts.
10. Metrics
3D Issue can be plug directly into your Google Analytics account. You will be able to monitor how many times a reader visits an advertisers website. Rather than charging advertisers for extra pages perhaps it is more beneficial if you charge them per click through.
11. Follow the KISS strategy (Keep it simple stupid)
Do not over do it. Digital editions are a perfect example of good user experience design, so “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Do not flood the magazine with too many distractions. Do not detach their focus. This will only irritate the reader. Instead steer the reader towards the revenue generating areas such as adverts.
12. Enhancing your visibility
Each time you create a digital edition with 3D Issue, for each page in the PDF edition a html page is generated. This html page contains all the text of it’s respective PDF page. These pages can be read & indexed by search engine. When the reader clicks on a search result, rather than reading a text only version of the page, the digital edition loads and opens the text at that page. This will help drive more traffic to your digital editions and enhance the click throughs to your advertisers websites.
13. Be Sociable
Allow your readers to become your marketer. Allow your readers to forward direct links to articles of interest directly to their social media sites such as Facebook, twitter or LinkedIn. This is nearly as valuable as search engine visibility in today’s market.
14. Contents menu & keyword searching
Be sure to use the contents menu and keyword searching. Keyword searching will allow users to find what they want instantly. Be sure that the advert text is not embedded as part of the image. If this is the case then the advert will not show up in the keyword search results, so use the keyword search tab in the 3D Issue Software to add the text manually and hence increase the visibility of the advert. Use contents menus to create an advertisers tab and allow the user to link quickly to ads of interest.
15. Monitor & Fine-tune
Digital editions can now provide you with live user feedback by monitoring how they interact with your digital publication. Use your Google analytics & event tracking to monitor how the reader interacts with your digital edition. Take this data to your design and product team . By monitoring the readers behavior you will be able to assess what content is working and what is not.
