All Posts Tagged With: "jeff reifman"

Take a look at the left column of this blog, at the top just under the masthead, and you’ll see something new. It’s an experimental counter that tracks your personal usage on just this site. [Clarification: you may not see the counter widget until you've clicked around to a story or two on this site.] Called SurfShare and developed by NewsCloud’s Jeff Reifman, in time you’ll see more sites carry this widget.

Thus, for those participating sites that you visit, you’ll get a quick visual cue of how often you view those sites. It’s valuable feedback (I think), because with all the websites and blogs that most people visit in a typical day, you may not be fully aware of which ones you frequent often. (Be sure to enable your Facebook Connect connection on SurfShare, then it will soon track you across different computers, not just a single one.)

For publishers, the SurfShare personalized, site-specific stats for each user represent opportunity to make money by identifying your most faithful and frequent visitors. I’ll explain that in a bit.

For a more complete explanation of SurfShare, read Reifman’s blog post yesterday announcing the alpha launch.

SurfShare already has some nifty features such as, for the site visitor, a searchable, auto-tagged listing of all stories viewed on participating sites, and a widget that shows which of your Facebook friends have read a story; and for the publisher, a widget that shows a specific site’s most popular pages. More useful widgets are coming, Reifman says, such as a feature of SurfShare.org that will recommend stories your friends have read.

Now, back to that money thing. I think SurfShare is a smart idea, for one reason, because it helps a site publisher or blogger identify their “best customers” and most-frequent visitors. For example, with SurfShare, Reifman soon will add the ability for a participating site publisher to take actions after an individual user has visited the site, say, 10 times, or read 10 articles.

Examples of what action a publisher might take are many:

• A blog owner might after a visitor has read 10 articles redirect to a page that says some thing like, “Hey, I noticed that you seem to like my blog! Thanks for being a regular reader. I write this blog in my spare time, and if you’d like me to continue, I’d love it if you click the donate button below and send me whatever amount you’d like to support my writing. Thanks!”
• On the opposite extreme, a news publisher might decide that once a site visitor has read, say, 10 stories that he/she should start paying, and demand signing up for a micropayment account where each article read costs 1 cent. (This might hook into payments systems like those coming from Journalism Online, BitCents, or Google Checkout, or be part of SurfShare’s future options.)
• A site owner could use the user tracking to identify the best prospects for premium memberships. For example, The Times (of London) website could offer visitors a discount on its £50-a-year News+ premium online membership after they’ve read 10 articles on the site — and if no response, perhaps an even steeper discount after 20 articles. (See my most recent blog item about Times+.)
• A news site might notice that a visitor has viewed 10 sports pages, then offer a sports premium membership or suggest an e-commerce purchase (e.g., souvenir Super Bowl book) at a discount.

There are so many possibilities for what a blog or site publisher could experiment with using this approach. While some smart media companies with sophisticated publishing and marketing systems may already have tried such tactics, SurfShare appears as an opportunity for small sites and blogs to take advantage of new revenue-generating strategies based on tracking individual users’ behavior and identifying their best and most loyal online visitors.

Installation involves add a few lines of Javascript to your site, and a Wordpress plug-in is planned. You can add your site to SurfShare and pick up the code from this webpage.

I have a bias toward rewarding frequent visitors to a specific website or blog. I’d much rather offer the person who’s read 20 stories on my food-related site in the last week a discount or 2-for-1 meal coupon from an advertising restaurant, or offer a 25% discount on a recipe book that I’ll sell them, than force them to subscribe or start paying per article. Reifman has a differing view and likes the micropayment model. But the great thing about technology like SurfShare is that we can experiment and figure out what works best.

One other thing I like about the SurfShare model is that I think the user feedback of the tracker will motivate heavy users of a site to change their behavior, which might be to financially support the site in some new way. This reminds me very much of the miles-per-gallon (MPG) indicator in my wife’s car, which is a gas-electric hybrid.

Huh? Well, I’ve noticed the impact of that MPG meter on the dash on my driving habits. My car does not have an MPG indicator. Guess what: I find that I drive more smoothly and conservatively in my wife’s car, because that MPG indicator lets me know when I’m being a “bad” driver and wasting gas. In my own car with no such indicator, I tend to drive in my more normal manner: faster, with quicker starts and stops. The indicator in her car alters my behavior.

I think that for heavy users of a particular site, seeing their personal stats could likewise change their behavior. They may be more willing to support a site knowing how much they use it. It will be up to publishers and academic researchers to figure out how best to persuade such people to part with some of their money — whether by voluntary donation, making a prompted online purchase, buying a premium memberships, etc.

Earlier this week, Jeff Reifman of Newscloud wrote an essay, “How Micro-payments Could Save Journalism,” which he says was inspired by most recent Editor & Publisher column, “Your News Content Is Worth Zero to Digital Consumers.” (I’m a bit slow to respond due to a busy work week.)

Reifman wrote: “I disagree with the premise of Steve Outing’s column last week. … I think consumers will pay for news content and that an aggregated micro-payment system has a place in solving the sustainability challenge facing journalism.”

In general, Reifman and I simply disagree, and you can read both articles yourself if you’d like to compare and contrast our views. (You’ll discover that both of us wrote headlines that overstate and exaggerate our positions!)

Rather than a point-by-point rebuttal of Reifman’s article (and I do find some good ideas in his writing), I want to suggest an alternative to one idea he pitched: turning on a counter or meter so that a website or blog reader sees how often he/she has used your site. He wrote:

“Place widgets on each page that show readers quantitatively how many stories they’ve read and how much time they’ve been spending on your site. … Set a threshold at which you expect readers to start paying.”

Now, I see that as essentially a negative approach. Let’s determine who our best customers are, then “punish” them by demanding that they start paying small amounts.

Here’s what I’d rather see. I like the idea of telling a reader how much they’ve used your website. If their personal counter widget clearly shows that they put a lot of time into viewing content on your site, then that’s a social cue to “do the right thing” and voluntarily donate some money to support it. (The donation mechanism must be fast and super easy.)

But just as Reifman admits that micro-payments alone won’t solve the news industry’s problems, neither will a donation strategy alone.

So let’s go one step further, and turn Reifman’s negative approach into a positive one! Instead of the counter or meter punishing a web user for over-using your website, reward that frequent user! Turn the personal counter into a tool to encourage more visits. (Most newspaper websites, in particular, have a problem with low average visits-per-month by users.)

This can be as simple and low-cost as making it a game. The “reward” for being in the top 10 users of a site in any month might be nothing more than being highlighted as one of the site’s biggest fans. (Run a photo of your site’s most frequent visitor each week.) Better would be some tangible reward, in the same sort of way that airline affinity programs reward you with points to be accrued and used to get free plane tickets. Reward points to individual users for visiting your site often; they might “spend” the points accrued over multiple visits on accessing the limited amount of premium content on your site rather than having to pay real money.

Or reward frequent visitors with real prizes: The most-frequent site users could win free-meal restaurant coupons or ski lift tickets from advertisers. The top 10 visitors could be entered into a drawing for a weekly prize supplied by an advertiser. I’m sure you can think of many more variations.

Will my approach save the news industry? No, of course not. But I think that Reifman’s micro-payment strategy will bring in little revenue, and turn off lots of online users of your site because of the negative nature of the strategy. By taking the positive approach, news sites can actually encourage more intentional repeat visits. User behavior is clearly trending toward people finding news on your website via other referral sources, rather than purposefully visiting your specific site. A positive “reward” strategy at least has the potential to encourage more loyalty and repeat visits.

None of this solves the news industry’s crisis. I think my positive spin on user usage-feedback could be one little piece of the puzzle. I put more faith in strategies like membership programs, charging for unique niche content (i.e., low pay-walls), network donation solutions (which I’ve written lots about in recent months), and improvements in online advertising. (In fact, I’m feeling more bullish about online advertising for news websites — for the first time in a long time — after learning about some developments that could be game-changing for media companies. Since I typically respect embargo requests from companies, I won’t be writing on that topic until a bit later on.)