Conscious unbossing as a professional’s career choice and conscious unbossing as a leadership philosophy not only have no intersection, but can be detrimental in implementation. When does it become reckless leadership?
As part of the development of the Manifesto for Enterprise Agility, PMI spoke with a range of executive leaders to gather insights on what enterprise agility looks like in practice. Here, Terence Mauri shares how to rethink operating models.
The fiber cut problem in India is not merely the pace of infrastructure growth—it is the absence of safeguards to ensure that what has already been built remains functional, protected and sustainable. These eight steps can improve utility coordination and prevent cuts.
Early in the evolution of e-commerce websites, online advertisements played a big role in revenue generation. Then for a brief time it took a downward dip. Now, the online advertisement has again risen to such a level that a leading market research website said “Many web publishers are partying like its 1999 all over again and are refocusing on ad-supported content.”
Some are even contemplating stopping their experiments with paid subscriptions and going back to an ad-supported revenue model. For example, Hot or Not, an online dating and rating site, is reportedly walking away from subscriptions model even though 15 percent of its users are willing to pay.
According to Hot or Not founder James Hong, free is the future and the pay sites without a powerful network effect are going to be destroyed by the free sites. He credits the improvement in ad targeting, flow of more ad dollars to the internet and favorable ad pricing as some of the factors enabling small companies to make significant profits using ad-supported business models. Another reason is that the companies are increasing under pressure to generate more revenue. Trying to squeeze more revenue from subscribers is more likely to see them leave the site. Hence, the ad supported business model looks more appealing.
The online ad spending is increasing and many sites like MySpace are being rewarded handsomely. News Corp., which acquired MySpace, is well poised to recoup its investment. In a recent report, eMarketer said that MySpace made $525 million from advertisements. As a segment, the social networking websites, which are mostly free, got $865 million of ad revenue.
On the other hand, many paid content sites are still growing and are adapting to the changing market trends. In its “Information Industry Outlook: FutureFacts 2007”, Outsell Inc. says that many paid content sectors saw compound annual growth rate of more than 8 percent between 2001 and 2005. Leading the pack is HR information websites with 14.1 percent growth, followed by market research at 12.6 percent and financial content sites at 9.2 percent. Many companies like Hearst Business Media have successfully converted their business model from ad supported to paid content with deeply integrated offerings.
In an interview with Marketing Sherpa Louise Garnett, VP and Lead Analyst at Outsell Inc., some of the ways the paid content sites are competing against ad-supported websites was discussed. Some of her insights are quite intuitive. B-to-B websites have a better chance of succeeding with paid subscription model as compared to B-to-C websites. This shouldn’t come as a big surprise, as consumers are more picky and more willing to spend their time to avoid a cash outflow, whereas businesses are more apt to pay to get information so as to make better informed decisions in a shorter period of time.
Another important factor for the success of paid subscription sites is the relevancy of content. The internet has increased the number of alternatives available to readers. Readers want information relevant to their needs and do not want to be bothered by unrelated content. They may be more willing to accept other clutter from a free source, but not from the paid one. A subscription-driven website must put out specific content that helps its readers with specific tasks and needs. To differentiate from competition they also must provide niche information, which cannot be easily provided by others.
In an interesting twist, in their quest for building a paid subscription websites many entrepreneurs are providing free goodies and content. Effective marketing is a critical factor for the success of a website, whether paid for not. Using free marketing resources to promote a free website is perhaps understandable, but what do you do if you wants to launch a paid content site but does not have a big marketing budget?
Recently, Marketing Sherpa presented a case study of StomperNet, which wanted to launch a paid search engine optimization and website conversion course using free content to generate the buzz. The founders followed a strategy, which involved creating free video series, giving away valuable free content, limiting participation, not requiring e-mail registration, using Open Source code to aid viral promotion, providing third party case studies and using user feedback in marketing. The results reported are phenomenal. The thousand available spots for the 12-month program sold out in less than a day. The free video series was seen by more than 400,000 unique visitors before the launch, and 40 percent of those signed up to join the database.
Despite the successes of ad-supported websites, the paid subscription based websites have strong potential for those companies, which have valuable and distinctive content. Many print publications have collected good useful content over many years. They are well poised to make use of their repository through paid subscription. They can even increase their print subscriber by creatively combining online content with offline offerings. Harper’s magazine has been publishing since 1850. It has put an article from all issues online and made it available to its print subscribers free of charge. This is another reason for people to subscribe to the print publication. The bottom line is, despite the rise in online advertisement and increased demand for free resources, paid content websites still have potential to succeed and compete with free websites.
Sunil is the CEO of Cerebral Works, a sales and marketing company that implements marketing communications and custom publishing solutions that help clients acquire new business and enhance relationships with stakeholders. An avid mountain climber and runner, Sunil has climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and various peaks in Himalayas and finished the Detroit marathon. He holds an MBA degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a BS in Electronics and an MS in Mathematics from the BITS, Pilani, India. Voice: (703) 713-1425; E-mail: [email protected].
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