How Would You "Replicate" Newsmax? (10)
Hey STM Email folks.
(I've been out of STM for a while.. but as in need of new inspiration, so back.)
Before i get blasted.. just a confession: I've "done" email marketing, but not to the extent that you guys probably have. So if I sound newbie-ish, I ask for forgiveness in advance.
My last project was in making similar to newsmax. Nothing crazy - basically a news site that aggregates content from top 20-30 news sources. I would do traffic source => opt-in => followed by daily emails, with "sponsored by" CPL/CPA advertising snuck in between organic content, as well as flat out just product pitches.
I was going for the US presidential race angle, with optin page like this:
Since I come from paid traffic world, getting single optin w/ just email field was a pretty easy task. CPL @ around $0.50 cents after a week of optimization.
NOW.. the problem
As you might imagine, since this isn't a well known news site, the un-sub rate was fairly high. If I sent them un-engaging content, un-sub was high.
Around 1-2% per blast, which meant .. since i was sending emails twice a day, in about 2 to 3 months, my list would be empty (unless I replenished).
My open rate (since not so well known) was anywhere between 16 to 18%. CTR varied, but 1-3% overall (organic content + offer links)
Monetizing to CPA offers (mostly white hat, compliant offers even GDN and FB would take) would quite impossible.
Ok, since I am not an email guru, I wanted to ask.. how would you fix this ? Or is this even a project worth continuing?
Newsmax is one of the largest buyers of native ads. I am not sure just aggregating news will work here, part of Newsmax's appeal for its audience is that it is like Fox News in the sense that it has a strong and very right wing "voice".
Let me rephrase. I'm not trying to make money from adsense / native ads nor is it a content play.
I've been on their list for a while. Their primary method of monetization, believe it or not, seems to be CPA offers:
Example.. the one that i got today:
The toxic loans link: http://www.wholesaledirectmetals.com...wsmaxSponsored
Seems like a CPL type offer. But i've also seen CPS offers that seem relevant to the age demo they are targeting: 401k, rev mort., look young supplements, etc. Not sure if the offers would run compliant on traffic sources, as they seem to make some drastic promises.
How well did those names monetize? I did 100k poll names once, and they were AWFUL. We made our money, but they destroyed our IP.
Originally Posted by cflagle
Were these optins?
Originally Posted by taewoo
I've been on their list for a while. Their primary method of monetization, believe it or not, seems to be CPA offers:
Example.. the one that i got today:
The toxic loans link: http://www.wholesaledirectmetals.com...wsmaxSponsored
Seems like a CPL type offer. But i've also seen CPS offers that seem relevant to the age demo they are targeting: 401k, rev mort., look young supplements, etc. Not sure if the offers would run compliant on traffic sources, as they seem to make some drastic promises.
You sure it's not an affiliate running native ads? see http://newsmaxfeednetwork.com
Didn't even know they had an email ad network. Thanks. Good find.
The way to make money from that list is to sell access to your list.
Find a company that acts as a broker, who will rent your list for you, like DedicatedEmails.com
They pay you base rate, rent it for some amount over that to advertisers, and pocket the difference. THAT is what Newsmax does to make money (primarily). Then they see what advertisers keep renting their lists and must be making money and they basically copy what those guys are doing and put out their own products under the newsmax brand in the health/financial markets.
Hope that helps ...
That dedicatedemails site doesnt look like a list broker.
So I'm not talking out of my ass here ...
I do this every day. They are list brokers (like many companies that do the same thing):
You go to them to rent lists to email and if that is true, how do you think they have lists to rent to you? They aren't all their lists they built. They broker other people's lists.
Newsmax is slightly different because they basically only rent their own list(s). They also built a sales team to do that. If you don't have a sales team or arent' willing to find people to rent out your "newsmax style" list yourself -- then you should use a broker to do it for you.
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