Advertising Your Site

Just because you’ve built a wonderful new Web site doesn’t mean visitors will automatically find it. Even before you launch, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to attract visitors — first-time users and repeat customers, content consumers and content creators, sponsors and advertisers. The bulk of your site’s popularity will depend on how well you promote it and how well you let people know when it’s refilled with fresh content. (For information about selling ads for your site, please see Sales, Fundraising and E-commerce.)

Putting Ads on Your Site

Now that you’re an Internet publisher, you may look at advertising in an entirely different light from when you were just an Internet user. Users are seldom big fans of ads. But as a publisher, you not only want to draw readers for your content, you also may need to raise money to keep your operations going. Let’s take a look at the various types and uses of advertising online.

Why Traffic Matters

It’s critical that you start tracking your visitors at launch so that you can gauge your site’s growth. And it’s important that your tracking tools give you specific information about what sections are most popular and how your visitors are using your site.

Deep Linking

Deep linking is the term for linking to an interior page of another site, instead of to its home page. For instance, when you link readers to a story in the international section of the New York Times instead of to the Times’ front page, you’re deep linking.

Viral Marketing

What we once called “word of mouth” has given rise to something known as “viral marketing.” Viral marketing is more than simply hoping your most ardent supporters will mention your site as they go about their lives. Viral marketing is a marketing message that is attached to or part of the normal use of your site (or more generally, your product) by its readers.

Interpreting Log Files

The most widely used metrics for measuring traffic to your site involve counting hits, page views, visits and unique visitors. They all measure different things and all have shortcomings that affect their reliability. 

Copyright and Attribution

Copyright is a tricky idea, and there are many overarching legal battles going on relating to copyright and the Internet.  It’s natural to be a little confused about it.

Identifying Revenue and Sales Opportunities

As you plan for the launch of your site, you should think about how you are going to keep it going once it gets off the ground. You’ll need funds to pay for such things as your Web hosting service, software, telephones and equipment. You also may want to pay someone to edit your site and help solicit writers. Support for these costs can come from a number of sources including selling advertising, selling subscriptions, soliciting sponsors or donors, seeking grants, holding fundraising events, and even selling some content, such as photos.

RSS Feeds

RSS is a fast-growing way to get information quickly from the Web. Basically, it drives information from the Web directly to readers instead of forcing those readers to surf a list of bookmarked sites. Think of it as the difference between subscribing to a magazine and going out each month to buy that magazine at a newsstand. 

Traffic Software

Even a moderately popular site can produce thousands of new lines, or hits, in a log file every day. To keep yourself sane, consider using a site traffic tool to interpret your log files for you.

Selling Advertising

Advertising is one of the most common ways to raise money. To sell ads, however, you have to identify potential advertisers, establish prices, and establish guidelines for content. Selling ads may also mean you need a sales representative or sales staff.

Legal Issues for Online Publishers

Terms of use, privacy, choice of legal venues and other legal details a new online publisher should consider.

Getting and Giving Links

Current thinking on when to provide links recommends adding as many outside links as are appropriate for the content you’re providing. This is a significant reversal from the linking theories of the Web’s early years, when many news sites adopted policies of rarely linking to external sites.

Online Libel Issues

Quality publications build solid reputations on competent factual reporting and sage editorials. Losing your footing on these foundations for even one paragraph can expose you to legal liability and a loss of credibility. The resignations of top editors at the New York Times after reporter Jayson Blair fabricated information in stories demonstrate that no publication is immune to the consequences of poor reporting.

Tracking Services

If your Web host doesn’t offer useful traffic software or won’t let you install your own traffic software on its servers, you can still use Web-based tracking services to measure your traffic.