There have been many confusing messages in the media about the success or failure of the Times paywall.  Competitor publications have predictably claimed it to be a huge failure; other figures suggest a drop off of two thirds readership from free to paid is a success against the 90% drop off the Times had expected.  Claims that the Times is now “an empty world” seem inconclusive with the publication themselves have declined to comment.

For me, whatever level the user base has dropped to, this is just phase 1 of the paywall process, and it will be the next 6-12 months that dictate the true success of the paywall as it begins to take shape and there are a number of key factors which will determine its true success.

Quality of content

If you are going to charge people for access to news articles and opinion, it’s going to have to be better than other articles available for free elsewhere.  The Times will have to ensure their editorial content is going to have to be of a higher quality than their competition to justify the charge and prove that the money is going to good use.

Advertising revenues

Just because the paywall is in place doesn’t mean the Times has written off advertising as a revenue channel, far from it.  In fact having registered users in a closed network opens up a host of additional options for targeted advertising.  Historically advertising in newspapers and on their online versions has been done based on readership and audience profiles.  The information required to sign up for the paywall will enable the Times to offer targeting options based on an individual user, rather than an aggregated version of the whole group.  This type of targeting general allows for more premium pricing and if they manage to do it intelligently could generate serious income.

Word of mouth

At the moment the Times are the bad guys for charging for content.  A small group have decided to stick with it and if the Times can prove the value to this group, then this group will become key to future growth.  When people find out that somebody pays for the Times content, they are bound to ask “why?”, and “whats it like?”, if the response is positive you have a potential new buyer, if its neutral or negative, then you don’t.  If the response is “awesome, great content, a great read and well worth the money” then word will spread.

The competition

The Times are the first to introduce a paywall in traditional press, but I doubt they will be the last.  Other online publications are going to have to find their own way to make sure revenues generated online cover the overheads of delivering the content.  Whilst the competition can sit back and suggest the paywall is a failure for now, there is going to come a point where they have to decide what the route forward for their own online strategy is.  And if it materialises that other follow down the paywall route, then the Times will be ahead of the game in terms of making it work.

It’s all about building momentum

All of these points will contribute to building momentum (or not).  If you present great editorial to current users, they will spread the word and your user base will grow.  Continue to add even more great content and value, and you build a snowball effect.  Similar with the advertising, if you build a solid advertising model and targeting options you might convince a few media buyers to give it a go, if it’s good, word will spread.  Obviously this requires the Times to get a few things right.  If the content isn’t good, or the advertising model is poor, then momentum won’t build and things might go into meltdown.  There’s a long road ahead, but it definitely can’t be deemed a success or failure just yet.

Link Building the Hollywood Way: My latest piece for the Latitude Group blog

Building a backlink profile: Advise on building a backlink profile for your website

Widening the bottom of the funnel: Why you should focus on widening the bottom of the conversion funnel rather than obsessing about sending more in through the top.

The constantly demanding client often gets what they want in the short term, they will huff and puff and in many cases their account manager will be pressured into running around like an idiot to service them.  Long term however this client is going to lose out.  When it comes to added value, client niceties, or the impending contract renewal this client isn’t going to get treated the best.  The agency will realise they are over-servicing(assuming they are) and demand a higher fee, or the account manager will begin to resent the client and deliver substandard service or at least minimal effort will be put into their work.  Ultimately the client is going to lose out.

On the flip side you have the client who leaves the agency to it, and doesn’t engage them too much in their work.  This is great from a cost efficiency stand point for the agency, but is it going to make them work hard for their cash?  Not in the long term.  Work will be put in for a while but as soon as a conflict of time occurs, or workloads increase, it is likely to be this client who misses out.

I suppose its a question of timing.  Be strong and demanding when you have to be, but make sure you respect your agencies work and the time it takes and let them get on with it.  If you are happy with your agency, don’t be demanding for the sake of it, they will only resent you for it.

Oh, and I have been out and about speaking a little too. Once again for the Fresh Business Thinking guys and their excellent Hit Me Summit. Below is the presentation I gave on Holistic Search: How to Combine PPC and SEO Effectively, it made a lot more sense with the commentary but might be of use for those who were there.

It takes some sort of surge to bring down Google and it is difficult to think of any other occurrence other than some sort of natural disaster which would have had the same sort of effect on the Internet in a 24 hour period.  It is surely also making the affected services question their ability to handle large volumes of traffic in a short period of time, it would appear that in exceptional circumstances, their infrastructure simply isn’t up to the task.

Surge in Michael Jackson Searchs Brought Down Google

This instance also shows a changing shift in how people are turning to the Internet for up to date information.  As SERPs speed up their indexing, and twitter continues to be the go to location for breaking news, when people hear of a news story in passing, their immediate response is to head to the nearest Internet service, be that mobile or computer based, and use the web to find out the details of said story.  In times gone by the answer would have been to turn on the TV, or wait for the next scheduled news bulletin, but in a time of immediacy this is no longer quick enough.  if you want an answer now, you turn to twitter or the SERPs.

Undoubtedly the question will come in future years, “where were you when you heard about jacko?” And for many people it appears the answer will be “I was at my computer when somebody twittered it”.

It is an ironic fact, that after his unfortunate demise last week at the age of 50.  Michael Jackson will sell enough records in the next few weeks, and earn enough radio airtime to erase the debt problems caused by years of frivolity and legal bills from fighting off child abuse accusations.  You cant turn on the radio it seems at the moment without hearing a Michael Jackson song, he has no fewer than 14 singles in the itunes top 20, 9 albums in the itunes top 10, and music stores such as HMV have big displays of his work around shops.

Jacko will go down in history as one of the greats, and will hopefully be remembered for his musical brilliance rather than his car crash personal life, but he may also go down as the man who brought the Internet to its knees.

MIVA closes down operations – as suggested may happen by The Digital Lookout back in Sep 2008 MIVA has finally closed down operations. Once a reasonable addition to any search marketing campaign MIVA has failed to keep up with the pace of change in search engine marketing and has been on a downward spiral for the last 3 or 4 years and has finally packed up its SERPs and gone home.

Ask Brings back Jeeves – in a bid to regain some of its character Ask has brought back Jeeves as the face of its search activity. The former front man for the Ask search engine has had a facelift and returned as Ask continues its bid for a foothold in the search marketplace.

Adwords Launches New Interface – Adwords has launched into testing a new interface, and the initial reactions haven’t been good! It appears the “revert to old interface” button has become the most used button in Google’s system! Of course there will come a point when it is forced upon us and we will be force to use it. No doubt in a couple of months we will be wondering what all the fuss was about.

Microsoft and Yahoo Continue to Court – without any seeming progress being made Microsoft and Yahoo have continued to court each other over potential mergers and partnerships in the battle to compete with Google. No solid progress appears to have been made but the feeling within the industry is that Microsoft will be powering Yahoo search by this time next year.

Everyone Still Loves Twitter – Twitter is still the darling of the social media world and its user numbers continue to grow every month. Question marks still remain as to what its long term revenue model will be with some suggesting it will be apps, not ads, which will be the focus of their efforts to make money.

Google Adds Further Functionality to Their SERPs – Google released details of a number of new features to enhance the SERPs including:
• Rich Snippets and microformats
• Date based searches
• Chameleon
• Spellmeleon
• Wonder Wheel

Read about what this means at the Latitude Group Search Marketing News Section

Google Changes its US Trademark Policy – a year on from opening up trademarked keywords to Adwords bidders Google has further expanded this policy and from June is going to be allowing non brand owners to use the company name in their ad text, increasing the cost of brand clicks and making the brand SERPs a very confusing place!

Google Feeling the Pinch?

Today, Google is set to post its Q1 figures and experts are predicting a sequential drop in revenue for the first time in Google’s history as a public company. And with 3 rounds of redundancies already in the first quarter of 2009, some cracks are starting to show in Google’s bullet proof exterior. The reality of the situation is that Google will still post huge profits and huge revenue and its biggest concern is appeasing investors and maintaining share price, there isn’t much danger of them going out of business any time soon. It does show however the severity of the situation however that it is hitting even the biggest and most profitable of Internet companies.

Ebay Going Back to its Core

Another Internet giant, Ebay, has announced measures this week which suggest they too, are conscious more difficult times may be ahead and they need to focus on their core business. After selling social content discovery website Stumble Upon back to its founders they have also announced they are planning to take Skype public in 2010 due to a realisation of its “limited synergies with Ebay and Paypal”. Ebay bought Stumble Upon just 2 years ago and Skype in 2008, and despite both posting impressive growth Ebay has since decided neither is a close enough fit to their core business. Both these purchases are evidence of a more frivolous time when large Internet companies had deeper pockets and could make $75M purchases (the price paid for Stumble Upon) without worrying too much about how it would fit in with their business. Now the honeymoon period is over, companies are looking harder at their businesses and spotting the need to streamline and maintain a focus on core activities.

Time to Rip up the Script

With Internet giants such as these cutting back, what chance is there for the smaller business? How does the small website owner survive in difficult times? I think it has been proven in the past that those with a solid business model who react to the changing market quickly, will survive. Sure things will become more difficult and margins will be squeezed, but those who remain agile should be able to ride the storm. Companies need to rip up the playbook of 2007-2008 and make sure their strategy for 2009 is in fitting with what the market demands. Make sure you are meeting a market demand and providing something more, or significantly better than, your competition. Be prepared to change in line with the market, stay agile, and keep in touch with customer demands. Hopefully then, you should be able to survive the difficult times and possibly even come out the other side in a stronger position. There will be casualties, no doubt about it, but for the companies which can stay strong and adapt, there could also be huge opportunities.

I was personally one of the lucky recipients and was rather impresses with the level of detail. Had it not been for the fact I knew I wasn’t due a refund, and that the website wasn’t hosted on the hmrc domain, I may have been convinced (ish).

The email did find its way to my spam box but so do many other legitimate emails so that doesn’t mean much. It just goes to show that even as technology to block such activities improves the spammers get smarter.

HMRC Phishing Email

HMRS phsihing website

In light of this I have decided I am not going to bother and I’ll leave it to the rest of industry to decide where the market is going to go. For me, I hope that none of the predictions made come to light. The unpredictability of this industry is what keeps it interesting, the speed of change and its frequency mean that every day, week and month brings about new challenges. Im happy with that so long may it continue.

For those of you that wish to hear what may be in store search engine land produced a list of categorised predictions to save you sifting through the rubbish: 2009 predictions