Maybe the New York Times should rethink its strategy to charge readers for access to its website starting in 2011.

Newsday, put up a pay wall on its website back in October.

The result?

Only 35 subscribers have paid $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to its website newsday.com.

I hate to sound like a broken record, but in order to charge people for access, you have to  have  exclusive content that people find valuable enough to pay for.

That means editors and publishers need to do their homework and find out what parts of your site (if any) visitors are willing to pay for.

If they’re not willing to pay for it then you need to 1) get as many eyeballs to their site as possible (this means having good content) 2) sell online ads, and 3) make sure those ads are placed right creative enough that people will notice them and 4) use online conversion tools to convert as many of those visitors into leads for your customers.

If you can supply advertisers with a steady stream of leads and customers to their website, you can become very profitable.

Once newspapers figure this out, they’ll stop hemorrhaging red ink.

Are Super Bowl ads worth the price? After two decades of advertising during the big game, Pepsi no longer things so.

Pepsi, which has spent an estimated $254.2 million in Super Bowl ads over the past 20 years, startled the industry a few weeks ago by announcing the cola for the next generation won’t participate in America’s national football marketing extravaganza. Instead, the soft drink company will pour millions of dollars into an online project meant to build connections over time by reaching consumers through blogging, Facebook and Twitter. It plans to distribute more than $20 million in community grants, voted on by Web users.

Pepsi’s doing the right thing. 

While Super Bowl ads can be a great way to launch a new product, service, or get your company’s name out there, they’re also very risky. Unless you have the commercial that everyone’s talking about after the game and can clearly explain your product combined with a great call to action in 30 seconds or less, there’s no guarantee you’ll see a positive ROI from your ad spend. Conversions, after all, are the name of the game.

Pepsi already has name and product recognition-something Super Bowl ads can help promote. What they need is more people drinking their products and telling their friends and neighbors how good those products are.

By funneling their money into online marketing efforts, not only will Pepsi be able to connect with its customers and better determine the ROI from their ad spend.

It remains to be seen how successful Pepsi finds its online marketing efforts. But given how online adverting is becoming more targeted and companies are finding ways to funnel people into their sales pipeline, Pepsi made the right decision.

There’s a great article in the January 18 issue of The New Yorker on how entrepreneurs like Ted Turner, John Paulson, and others made their fortunes. Instead of being the risk takers, successful entrepreneurs are risk adverse. Instead of throwing stuff to the wall to see what sticks, they see a problem, do their homework, solve the problem, and make a boatload of money in the process. (Note: A free, online version of the article is unavailable. You can read a summary of it here.)

Paulson, for example, made a fortune in the housing bubble collapse by buying credit-default swaps. But he didn’t just run out there and blindly buy credit-default swaps. Instead, he had someone do research that showed that a bubble was about to burst and made his investments accordingly. The result? His company made $15 billion in profits.

So what does this have to do with filling your sales pipeline with high quality leads?

To get the most from your marketing efforts, you need the right information about your visitors and an easy way on your website for them to enter your sales pipeline. The more you know about their behavior and the more ways you have of turning them into leads, you can better target your online marketing efforts.

Instead of wasting your marketing dollars throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks, learn everything you can about your current marketing efforts and what kind of people their bringing to your website. A good conversion analytics program can give you this insight.

You may not earn $15 billion in profits, but you will see more results from your marketing efforts and a fatter bottom line.

In the latest issue of Website magazine, Peter Prestipino has a great article on the role of analytics and increasing your bottom line-something Sapha’s preached for years. Prestipino writes:

It might be the least sex of all Web Responsibilities, but analysis is arguable the most important to an online business’ success. Unfortunately, it is an area where most enterprises fail to focus their attention.

Let’s face it. If you can’t measure it, you have no way to improve what you’re doing or see if your wasting your time and money. There’s a reason Sapha packages our site-wide Fusion analytics with each HookTour we sell. Yes, we want to show you how they turn visitor into leads at an average rate of 15%, but we also want you to learn more about visitors’ behavior on your entire website. We want your sales team to have the prospect’s behavioral information (How did they arrive at your site? What did they do once there? How did they enter your sales pipeline?) before they even contact a client.

But don’t take my word for it. If you want to understand the importance of web analytics along with video analytics, social analytics, and CRM analytics read Prestipino’s article here and see for yourself how having the right information can increase your online conversion rates.

I’d hate to be in the newspaper business. Most papers are losing money. Many marquee ones are closing. Jobs are being cut right and left.

This isn’t new. The bleeding has been going on for at last decade. It’s just in the last few years that it’s gone from requiring stitches to a tourniquet in order to stop the hemorrhaging.

What’s amazing is that despite all red ink and layoffs, most newspapers haven’t been able to come up with a way to stop losing subscribers and become profitable.

The problem is simple: readers have become accustomed to free, online news and newspapers are adverse to charging them. And no one has found a way to keep these free sites profitable. (The notable exception to this is the Wall Street Journal who charges to access most, but not all, of its online content.)

This may chance now that the granddaddy of the newspaper business, The New York Times, had announced it might start charging for news. According to New York magazine:

After a year of sometimes fraught debate inside the paper, the choice for some time has been between a Wall Street Journal-type pay wall and the metered system adopted by the Financial Times, in which readers can sample a certain number of free articles before being asked to subscribe. The Times seems to have settled on the metered system.

The Times is smart to adopt some kind of pay strategy. Businesses can only bleed money for so long before they die.

But even charging readers for comments is no guarantee of success. As the article points out:

What makes the decision so agonizing for [New York Times Chairman Arthur] Sulzberger [Jr.] is that it involves not just business considerations, but ultimately a self-assessment of just what Times journalism is worth to the world.

In the end, every business has to prove its value. Newspapers are no different. If no one is willing to pay for what you have to offer, it’s time to change your offering or close the doors.

My question for the Times’ decision makers is how much they’ve examined the analytics data on their website to see if there are sections people would pay for and others that are best left free. (The Wall Street Journal, for example, has free access to its Opinion Pieces and a few select articles.) Some content might be worth charging while other content might be able to support itself using a web advertising model. 

Not everyone reads every part of a newspaper. Business readers might be more inclined to pay for content while stay-at-home moms may not have the means to access parts of the paper that, if it has enough targeted viewers, could pay for itself with online advertising. It’s an idea worth exploring so long as their websites can give them accurate analytics data. 

Whatever they do, it’s obvious that for most newspapers the free model isn’t working. To survive they’re going to have to find a way to keep the money flowing. The real question for the Times is whether they have content that people are willing to pay for and, if not, can they change their content quickly enough so that people will care.

As I wrote my last business social media tip, the ultimate factor that determines the success of your social media efforts is its ability to turn buzz into new or repeat customers.

Here are three things you can do to ensure your social media maximizes its potential to fill your sales pipeline and increase your bottom line.

1. Have a purpose

Before you enter the social media fray, decide what you want your Twitter, Facebook, or other accounts to do. Is it simply to let others know what’s going in with your organization such as a sale, press release or new product announcement? Or do you want it to talk about what’s going on within your industry or market as well as company related items? Who is the audience you’re trying to reach?

Just like the best blogs has a purpose and audience, so do the best social media efforts. If you don’t know what you want your social media efforts to accomplish, don’t be surprised when you don’t see results.

2. Content is king

Whether you’re offering linking to another site or your own be sure to give your audience something worth their time. Nothing’s more frustrating for prospects to be enticed by a good tweet or headline only do discover that the link they click on doesn’t offer them anything of value.

Before posting a blog entry, a tweet, or something you send to your Facebook fans, be sure you’re giving of them something they’ll value. Keeping your social media efforts focused on the needs of your audience not only increases your value in the eyes of customers but also encourages them to pass it along to their lists and followers.

3. Don’t forget the call to action

Since the ultimate goal of social media should be to increase your customers and revenue, don’t forget to give them a call to action either on your web pages you direct them to or on your some of posts. If you want people to know they can take advantage of a special, be sure to tell them what you want them to do and where to click to buy or to go to get more information.

As mentioned in my January Conversion Tip, 2009 was the year social media became the must do thing for businesses and marketers. Sites like Twitter and Facebook became mainstream. Businesses and marketers jumped on board hoping to ride the social media wave into profitable heights.

If done right, social media sites can be a boon for your business. They’re a great way to connect with your target audience and current customers, as well as good way to know what people think about your product or service and how many of them are repeating and spreading your message.

But marketing is more than broadcasting a message to your target audience; it’s about getting them to heed your call to action. You want them to enter your sales pipeline and become customers or for those who already have already purchased your product and service to become repeat customers.

What good are 1,000 or 10,000 or 100,000 Facebook fans or Twitter followers if they aren’t entering your sales pipeline or enticing others to do the same? Like all marketing efforts, social media success is measured by how well they turn prospects into clients or existing customers into repeat business. It’s a nice compliment when someone (re)tweets something of you wrote or posts it on their Facebook page. But it’s even better when that person buys your product or service and then uses social media to tell their friends, family, and businesses colleges how much better you’ve made their lives and they need to have the same thing too.

So what’s the best way to get increased conversions and customers from your social media efforts? I’ll discuss that in my next post. (Hint: It involves using existing online marketing best practices.)

We’ve long become accustomed to people loudly talking on the cell phones, firing off emails during a meeting, or twittering minute details of their lives, but sometimes it seems that behavior that was once considered rude is not only becoming acceptable but in many cases supersedes more personal communication.

In The Wall Street Journal Rachel Mardsen writes:

Too many people seem to be grasping for ways to connect with others while rarely actually connecting in a way that has true value or significance. What so many people end up with is something that looks like a connection from the outside as they text each other a million times a day, or sign notes with “much love.” Sadly, that’s the new standard of personal value in this technological era.

Last year there was a big push for business to use social media like Facebook and Twitter to communicate with prospects and existing customers. And, if done right, these sites can be great tools to connect with those interested in your product or service. But often when businesses use social media sites, they often mistake this form of communication for the personal touch that it often takes to get someone to enter the sales pipeline or become a customer.

To increase conversions this year, resolve to be more personal in your marketing efforts. Whether it’s picking up the phone, taking someone to lunch, or sending a personalized (not mass mailed) email, be sure your marketing and sales efforts includes efforts that let your prospects and customers know that their more than a Twitter follower or Facebook fans.

That added personal touch can go a long way to filling your sales pipeline and getting many more loyal customers.