Insider’s research team of four (and counting) has put together an enormous number of practical resources — ranging from how-to reports, to videos, to downloadable checklists, to vendor guides, to PowerPoint presentations, and even financial model spreadsheets. Plus collections of real-life marketing samples and legal contracts. The topics covered include:

1. How to optimize your paywalls.

2. How to drive more site traffic — cost effectively.

3. How to increase renewals and customer lifetime value.

4. R&D to launch new online membership services. (Includes how to pick pricing.)

5. M&As

6. Technology – including Buyer’s Guides and a list by site name of which subscription sites use which vendors.

7. New Q&A Webinars monthly

Everything is geared toward professionally run membership sites and subscription site businesses. (Sorry, we won’t tell consumers how to make millions on the Internet — we specialize in practical research to help existing and about-to-launch membership sites grow profitably and sustainably.)

Now, it’s back to redesign of our own public pages for greater optimization. The word “Beta” just means you get to improve it over and over again.

Because when people are paying for content, it shouldn’t crash on them. Ever if humanly possible.

WordPress is great because it’s (a) free, (b) relatively easy for your editorial staff to use without loads of training, (c) lots of free and cheap apps are available for it, so your site can be cooler without heavy custom dev costs, and (d) there are tons of experienced WordPress designers and developers for hire. Oh, and it’s relatively SEO-friendly.

In my experience personal though, it’s prone to crashing or to being crashed. The problem seems to lie in three things.

WordPress frequently issues upgrades. There’s a tech staff cost to going along with all the upgrades – you have to put the site on a dev server, try out the new version, see if it screws up any of your custom programming or works badly with any of your 3rd party apps… and then you move over to the main site. I’ll pay for my staff to do that once a year or so. But, WordPress’s last upgrade launched just 42 days after the the launch of the prior one.

Most of those free third party apps also issue upgrades. On their own whimsical schedules. Which you probably won’t know about until after part of your site is broken, and your customer service department is fending the calls off.

Lastly, your hosting company may throttle your traffic (ie. stop most people from getting in) when you have a spike in traffic due to, oh say, sending your weekly newsletter. Then they’ll try to point the blame at the fact that you did not comply with the most recent WordPress upgrade. Actually I’ve found often it’s just the fact their automated scripts noticed the spike in traffic and freaked out suspecting a DDoS attack or just fussing about you using too much of their precious bandwidth. Most blogs don’t have such sudden spikes, so it makes the hosting cos nervous. Yes, you can upgrade to a better account… which I’m about to do for the third time and counting.

That’s why I strongly recommend that all paid content sites be developed on a more stable content management platform. You do not need the aggravation.

I’m one of them. And I know several more who’ve reached out to me personally, as well as several who complained on other private industry email discussion groups. The flurry of handraising makes me wonder if this was all a clever tactic on RBI’s part to raise awareness and competitiveness among buyers for the titles they’re shuttering. Intended or not, it’s sure working.

Happily all of this attention has helped in one key way — officials at RBI are at last communicating with the outside world about selling the titles. I’ve received two emails in the past 24 hours from folks there. They both said “If we enter into 3rd party sales and the requested titles are available, we will contact you by May 3.” So that must be their party line.

Worth noting, the title’s websites say they’ll be shuttered and the content will not longer be online as of April 30th. So what’s with the May 3rd deadline? Something’s happening behind the scenes next week for sure.

The timing made me laugh because I just got off a webinar where question #2 was “what niches do you think are best to launch new subscription sites in?” For some reason, when I was on the spot I didn’t say “health”, although actually it’s been a category that’s been bugging me for awhile.

Health advisory subscription content for consumers was a HUGE category in the offline subscription world in the 1980s and 1990s. But that boom hasn’t translated online yet, in part, I think, because pharma ad dollars are falling off trees. Frankly, though, most ad-based health sites are so focused on delivering pageviews and clicks to advertisers that the quality of health info sites has suffered greatly. Most, even the famous names, look and feel a bit spammy. Not useful. And, certainly not written in a language that people without medical degrees can appreciate.

So, yes. Along with a few other categories I named today, I would say branded health advisory products are well worth researching for possible launches. Name brand doctors and institutions tend to work the best (Dr Weil’s team was testing paid content back at the turn of this century you know.) Often you need an ancillary revenue stream to do the best with these… consumers may pay $9 month or $39-99 year for health advice. In the past, health advisory letters often supplemented revenues by selling their own branded lines of supplements and vitamins.

The email read in part, “Your site is a f*** farce filled with useless information that you throw in with the blatent intent to get users to click on a Google adsense link. Do you think we are idiots? I am sure there plenty out there, but don’t expect me to help you get paid for nothing!”

Thing is, although the web is almost overwhelmingly littered with AdSense spam sites, MyFederalRetirement.com’s content is not spammy. Not by a long shot.

Scott himself comes from a premium content background. In fact, we worked together at B2B premium content companies in the 1990s, publishing subscription newsletters that sold for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars per year. So, he knows what truly worthwhile editorial is.

Unlike the majority of crap AdSense sites that exist on new visitors who quickly leave never to return – MyFederalRetirement has such high quality content that tens of thousands of Federal employees and retirees have joined its email list, which has less than a .001% unsub rate, and they return to the site again and again and again. Scott’s editorial team work hard, continually publishing new, expert articles to help their readers. It’s pretty good quality without the premium price-tag.

So why is Scott getting hate mail?

To me, this is a clear sign of an Internet user backlash against the nearly unavoidable TONS of dreadful AdSense-supported content out there. People are sick to death of it.

It’s gotten to the point that when I visit a new site, if I see an AdSense ad block, my immediate gut-reaction is “Oh no, this is probably crap.” It’s nearly the same emotion as when I open an email and discover it’s spam. Nearly any chance of impressing me with the value of your content just went out the window. In fact, having an AdSense ad block is almost like having a big giant “CRAP” stamp on your page.

Chances are for most new visitors, the AdSense block brand is way more famous than your own logo, so it gives more of a brand impression than anything else on the page. You can’t mitigate the branding problem by minimizing the ad block’s visibility. You won’t survive that way. AdSense publishers need to put ad blocks in multiple, prominent places on each page in order to generate income. Top, bottom, side, search box….

Due to its quality and loyal readership, MyFederalRetirement.com is doing fairly well financially. But, the time is coming when Scott may have to reconsider that site’s business model. He’s already begun testing paid content through some of his company’s other ventures. He’ll be ready when the time comes to make the jump.

Google’s made a lot of noise about eliminating AdSense spam sites from their network since the day it started. But, I haven’t seen much progress. Yeah it’s a tough job. In the end, though, there’s too much money on the table for them. Google is in the business of selling online ad clicks. That’s it. They’re not in the business of defending content’s virtue.

That’s the publishers’ job. Don’t wait for Google to “fix” things. If they do someday, fine, we can all go dancing in the streets. Until then, protect yourself. Start testing other business models, because I think AdSense ad blocks may soon be hurting your brand more than they’re sustaining it.

That said, voluntary contributions make sense in three areas:

#1. Goal is maximum public reach:
If the primary and overwhelming goal of your organization is to serve/reach as many members of the public as possible, then you can’t slam down a paid barrier. Be honest with yourself and your board of directors about this. You’ve, in effect, decided to become an ad-based or a charitable content publisher, not a paid content business. Your next step should be to hire an ad sales team or a grants officer, because the public’s voluntary contributions probably will not sustain you.

(That said, 3.3 million people subscribe to Consumerreports.org content online, which is a nice fat chunk of the public despite the paywall. It’s a testament to the usefulness of their content, and their marketing skills. The question might be asked of “public” sites that are afraid of losing audience to paywalls, are you actually scared your content isn’t must-view enough to be worth the public’s dime?)

#2. Your intended audience can’t possibly afford you:
In this case, you’d be acting more like a cross between a charity and a non-governmental organization. Your audience is the poor, the needy, the people without the means to pay. Advertisers probably don’t want to pay to reach them. You’re publishing content that helps them in some way, so you need to be supported.

#3. You have no other choice:
You don’t have enough eyeballs to get advertiser traction, and your content isn’t “must view” enough to attract a large enough paying audience that you can afford the (even moderate) marketing and tech work it would take to pop up a paywall. But, a few fans might pay, if you stick out the tip jar. So, what the heck.

If you fall into one of these three categories, I noticed two cute online voluntary payment campaigns today worth trying:

Wikipedia’s new “Quoting a payer” campaign: : Wikipedia’s been soliciting voluntary contributions, with modest success (considering its traffic) for a couple of years now. However today I noticed they’re trying a testimonial spin on it. They place a grey box at the top of an entry page that contains a quote from a previous named donator, saying why he or she gave, along with the amount they gave. For example, I saw a quote from a guy named Don who reportedly gave $200 and said “This is a magnificent service!”

Namaste Direct’s ecard campaign:: Namaste is a microlending non-profit mainly operating in Mexico (yeah, the name confused me too – I assumed it was Nepal.) Although they’re not a content company per se, they’re doing a great job of getting donations for ecard content. They run Google AdWords ads against search terms such as “birthday card”. Although it’s free to send an ecard, there’s such a prominent “donate” button next to the card that I bet many people wind up donating money just like I did. You’re in a giving mood, after all, and it seems appropriate because you just got a good content service – the ecard.

Seen any other examples of effective marketing campaigns for voluntary contributions in exchange for content online? Let me know.

And, now the next line of Net competition has stepped in to kick them while they’re down. Membership sites. These are paid content sites usually owned by entrepreneurs, laid-off journalists, and independent publishers who generally come from an Internet publishing and/or Web marketing background. Unlike formal associations, they are for-profit, but since their primary revenues are from members, their content and services are member-focused (vs sponsor focused.) Their services tend to include private online social networking, premium niche content, webinars, member classifieds, vendor directories, etc. It’s all the stuff you’d expect to find on an association member site.

Plus, the more progressive membership sites are moving into association’s offline territory as well now. For example, StomperNet runs live trade shows around the world and publishes a glossy print magazine.

This morning I asked Kevin for his take on the situation. He replied, “In our industry we have a subscription site that is an aggressive competitor. I like that, because I get to beat ‘em, but a lot of associations seem oblivious to what’s happening around them. They’re talking about ending membership while for-profit companies see membership as a goldmine!”

So how can associations differentiate themselves and provide true value without bumping heads with the membership site crowd? My immediate thought was that associations often have lobbyists in DC working on behalf of their members’ interests. Also, they often serve as a marketing agency/voice for their industry as a whole to its potential customers (albeit, usually fairly lamely.) I don’t know of any membership or subscription sites that do either of these things.

Kevin’s impassioned reply, “At its most basic, I think you are correct. Sub sites — all content and connection. Assns — vary widely. But basically some mix of advocacy on behalf of industry or profession (govt, public, other audiences), possibly certification or credentialing, possibly standards development, and plus — content and connection.

“Successful assns are what I call a perfect triangle of influence, value, and resources; need to focus on both influence and value equally (all influence, no value = nobody’s willing to pay; all value, no influence = you’re just another competitor, except one with a lot of nonprofit governance baggage). Assns have been getting cherry-picked for years: trade mags compete with assn mags, 4-profit tradeshow producers compete with assn expos, private buying groups compete with assn purchasing programs, etc. What usually happens is that assns put together a business that then draws private competitors (usually more agile, flexible, and much more focused). It’s been happening with membership, too.

He continues, “Assns need to smack themselves in the forehead and stop giving up market share, learn what the strengths of their competitors are and figure out how they can counteract or in some cases change the assn’s own culture/structure to build similar strengths. Assns focus too much on what other assns are doing and need to focus instead on their market and its own unique environment.”

Yeah baby!

Even with Twitter, RSS Feeds, online groups, mobile, etc., broadcast email is still pretty darn central to our businesses. You are probably largely dependent on your email programs (broadcasts, autoresponders, triggered messages & autoresponders) for a fat chunk of your repeat visitor traffic. And repeats mean more conversions, not to mention longer account lifetimes.

So, you can see how I’m continually shocked at the lousy answers I get from many publishers on tjhe email vendor question. Some don’t know the name of their vendor. (Can you imagine not knowing the name of a vendor that central to your bottom line? I can’t.) Others tell me they’re using an ESP that allows new clients to upload lists and start sending with nothing more than a credit card – no re-opt-ins, no double opt-ins, just upload and send — a way to guarantee you’ll be sharing a grey-listed IP address with spammers. And some tell me they use an email program that “came with” some other software they’re using, perhaps their cart, a CMS system, a circulation management program, whatever. Again, a guaranteed way to have lame delivery because companies that don’t focus solely on email don’t tend to do a good enough job of providing the service you really need.

Rant over. (I could go on and on…)

The fact is, unless you’re working with a top-of-the-line email service provider (or you’re such a huge company that you have a fullltime technical email staff in-house), your mail is probably not getting delivered as well as you think it is. Getting past filters ain’t easy. Especially if you’re B2B and you have to get past corporate filters and then probably personal Outlook filters to boot.

Deliverability is a moving target. What was true five years ago is no longer always correct. I’m delighted to have discovered this lovely blog which does a nice job of myth-busting and educating.. Tell your email team about it – enjoy!

According to this new data from SubscriptionSiteInsider.com’s own annual survey of subscription and membership site executives, the industry is looking at expansion for 2010.   302 publishers and other executives responded to these questions — a record for industry studies.   They included b2b content sites as well as subscription sites selling content access to consumers. All of the executives were actively involved in a paid content subscription site (we surveyed other online and offline publishers separately.)

Some analysis:<ul>

<li> Although mobile publishing is hot in the media, these executives are apparently far more interested in expanding in the platform they know is proven to work for them — subscription sites.</li>

<li> Experienced site publishers are interested in developing sites based on offline brands… but not so much that they’ll go out and look for the deals aggressively.  This is an opportunity for offline brands, ranging from branded instruction books and TV shows, to celebrities worthy of membership-based online fan clubs, to reach out to publishers who already know what they’re doing in the space.  We’ll definitely be covering the hows of this type of deal in 2010.</li>

<li> Folks are also interested in acquisitions, but again mainly in a passive manner.  I actually suspect this is because there are very few information sources currently for subscription site acquisitions… we’ll be launching an M&A center fairly soon to fill that gap, so contact me if you want to be listed as  a buyer, seller or advisor!

<li> Although execs are not that interested in trying to turn free content into a paid site (a tactic that has worked well in the past and we’re building the Case Study Library to prove it), I suspect paid ebook properties will provoke a different answer.

<li> Launches, launches, launches.  Well, your first site is always the hardest.  Once you’ve got the tech, content, and marketing nuts cracked to your satisfaction, why not cookie cutter your systems and processes out over additional sites?  It’s a very normal business model for offline subscription newsletter publishers.   So I expect to see a lot more of that too, with typical site publishers owning multiple titles.

What’s your take?  Let me know below….

In my experience having both bought and sold media properties, and worked for a company that was a heavy grow-by-acquisition player,  in a genuine M&A process the length of courtship is generally decided far more by the seller, than the buyer.    When a seller is truly ready to sell, they sell.  Sometimes it’s prompted by bucketloads of money, but if the seller is also the founder, usually money isn’t the main motivator.  They’re just ready to sell, that’s all.   It’s like a guy hitting that moment when he’s ready to get married, he wasn’t before and now, bang he is.  Once he is, the wedding happens pretty quickly, even if he hadn’t been dating anyone shortly before, or even if the current girl isn’t as great as  a past one had been.

On the media company buyer’s side, sincere courtship can take a much longer time.  You’re schmoozing the properties you want to buy in hopes that someday when they hit that “want to sell NOW” wall, you’ll be on the shortlist of people they call first.  You may even be able to seal a deal before it hits the open market and the price possibly goes up.  I’ve known  media company buyers who spent literally decades  making friends with the people whose companies they wanted to buy, keeping in touch every quarter with a call, a note, and perhaps an annual lunch.

But the key is the word “sincere”.  You don’t waste your time schmoozing a property you’d not really interested in.  If you’re not ready to act,  why bloat your calendar with all those lunches and dinners?  Unless perhaps you’re a professional Romeo and who loves the pursuit but not the marriage.

If a buyer is sincere, they’ll be ready to act fairly quickly, and sign an initial offer letter within a matter of weeks.  The due diligence may take longer, often dictated by what shape your records are in (and for smaller publishers, usually they’re in somewhat bad shape.)  But even due diligence should not take longer than three-six months max.   If a dealmaker is dragging his or feet longer than that, either their access to cash isn’t as easy as they made out, or they’re enjoying the courtship far too much.  Get out of the relationship.  If you’re ready to get married, don’t waste your time and emotional energy by sticking with a guy who really only wants to date you.