Credit: Gina Argentina

Considering how the New York Times is coping with the the plight of the publishing industry and news media better than most, it’s not surprising to see that they might be pursuing a more symbiotic editorial model. Granted, when it comes to weathering the storm, the NYT is a lot larger in both scope and scale (size, authority, and audience) than many of its contemporaries, so it has a definite edge. But its continual efforts to reinvent its content model are plain.

In addition to everything it’s done with blogs and Times Wire (a real time news feed), it seems to be pursuing all three facets of a symbiotic editorial model. Most recently, not only has it started thinking of its readers as users, but it’s implemented a diversified ad-revenue model to go with it. As Adage reports:

[...] Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at The New York Times, said the company has quit calling online readers “readers,” instead referring to them as users. [...]

“When we think traditionally about creation [at The New York Times] it was limited to people within the Times,” [said Derek Gottfrid, senior software architect and product technologist at NYT]. “We created for readers … [for whom] it was a passive experience. But as we moved online, we wanted to move people from readers to users.”

This shift to users-instead-of-readers is an important part of the transition toward becoming a social news organization. As Alan Rusbridger, the Editor-in-Chief of an equally auhtoritative newspaper, The Guardian, noted in a recent interview, there is a blurring between the reader and the journalist, so it’s become necessary to involve the reader more and create a community around your journalist core.

But more importantly, the NYT’s shift toward users-instead-of-readers is also seen in its integration of apps and what those apps might mean for its revenues. Overall, it looks to be evolving into a veritable social news organization. As the AdAge article elaborates, to coax people from being readers to being users:

[...] the company has opened up its [APIs]. The Times has taken content and data — both internally created material, such as movie reviews and best-seller lists, and external data, such as campaign-finance and legislative information — and opened up the APIs so that outside developers can create tools for its consumers.

Among the results: Instantwatcher mashes up the “Watch Instantly” program from online movie-rental service Netflix with Times movie critics’ top choices. Another app, called NYTExplorer, provides an alternative article-search function to the one that exists on NYTimes.com.

These apps demonstrate how the NYT is diversifying their ad-revenue model. The “Watch Instantly” app, for instance, seems a lot like an affiliate marketing tactic — i.e. a performance-based referral marketing model.

Purusing this kind of ad-revenue diversification and the technology to implement it is 2/3 of the symbiotic editorial equation. The reaming third is integrating a full-sevice marketing agency into your organization (as Vice Magazine has), and as the Nieman Journalism Lab recently documented, the NYT has an advertising R&D lab that seems poised to evolve into just such a full-sevice marketing agency.

Back in January, at Affiliate Summit 2009, I had the privilege of meeting Jeremy (Shoemoney) Schoemaker. He’s kinda like the Chris Brogan of affiliate marketing, and is known for a picture of a big-ass Google Adwords check.

Anyways, this is Part II of a 3 part interview with him. It’s about his Shoemoney Tools, a suite of webmaster tools for people who want to drive results. During filming, I actually rubbed him the wrong way with my cautious skepticism, so I cut that part out. But Shoemoney believes enough in them to be offering a $3.95 trial. I’ve never used them, but they feature tools for PPC, keyword research, domain buying, SEO, link building, and a bunch of other stuff.

In any case, you might also want to check out Part I and Part III of this interview.

This is an interview with Jeremy (Shoemoney) Schoemaker. For those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s kinda the bad-boy blogger of affiliate marketing. He’s also well known for pulling in some serious bank off of Google Adwords.

I’ve been reading Jeremy’s blog for years, and at Affiliate Summit 2009, I not only finally got to meet him, but sit down and chat. This is the last installment of a three part interview. You can also check out Part I and Part II if you like.

It seems that Facebook might finally have a monetization plan. According to the Telegraph, Facebook demonstrated its new instant polling system at the World Economic Forum in Davos:

In an attempt to finally monetise the social networking site [...] will soon allow multinational companies to selectively target its members in order to research the appeal of new products. Companies will be able to pose questions to specially selected members based on such intimate details as whether they are single or married and even whether they are gay or straight.

Even though the Facebook database will allow pollsters to target just the right demographics, I remain skeptical over how feasible the model is. Essentially, the Facebook platform is so optimal for interacting with your personal network, many users are loath to do anything else — such as pay attention to ads and then click on them. I think this is one of the reasons that so many advertisers on Facebook (many of them colleagues of mine) have reported such poor conversions on their Facebook ad campaigns. As the Telegraph story goes on to note:

Rival research company IDC said advertisers are turning their backs on social networking sites because they have a lower “click-through rate” than traditional online ads. Only 57pc of social network site users clicked on an advertisement and made a purchase last year, compared to 79pc on the internet at large.

Come to think of it, Facebook’s greatest opportunity might be in affiliate marketing as a super-affiliate. That is, instead of trying to monetize its database by letting third parties target Facebook users based on the desire of those third-parties, Facebook might consider leveraging that database to recommend products/services to those users that they might actually be interested in already.

For instance, Facebook might considering leveraging the Amazon and eBay APIs to “hyper-target” their users with product offers that coincide with what Facebook knows their interests to be. In fact, such a monetization model would be considerably less intrusive than current Facebook ads or this new polling system. After all, users would prefer seeing things that they are already interested in over being solicited by a random third-party that is interested in the demographic that a user belongs to.

[Hat-tip Nick Tadd]

While I was down at Affiliate Summit West 2009 the other week, I attended a session about offline affiliate marketing. The speaker was Jonathan Treiber, the CEO of RevTrax, a company that specializes in offline affiliate marketing.

After his session, Jonathan was nice enough to give me a few minutes to talk about offline affiliate marketing and how it works. What I think is interesting about the model is that it affords brick & mortar retailers to take advantage of a performance-based advertising model, as well as the measurable results of online campaigns.

And if you’re interested to learn more about what offline affiliate marketing will mean for online affiliate marketers, affiliate networks, and ecommerce merchants, you can check out this other interview I cut with Jonathan.

iPhone Version

The contest/giveaway I held a little while back just goes to show that everyone can be a winner… thanks to a little help from Akoha, that is…

If you haven’t heard of Akoha, they are a web-based game with reality based play. They were also at the Techcrunch 50, have been nominated for a Crunchie, and will be presenting at the Ted conference.

iPhone Version

My time in Vegas thus far put into a few words: So far, so not-so-bad…

iPhone Version

I’m in Vegas for Affiliate Summit West 2009. I’ll be covering the event for Revenews.com.

iPhone Version