• you edit a Web site with a specific content: tourism, education ...

• you agree to have Capricorn as the sole advertising agency.

We can give you advertising revenues.

"On the Web most consumers aren't willing to pay for things," Carl Marbach believes. But, he's convinced that advertisers are. Within six months of its launch, Marbach's web site, Avweb, drew revenues of a few thousand dollars per month from 12 different advertisers and through linking fees from other aviation-related web sites. By writing articles for pilots, Marbach draws enough qualified readers to the site to sell advertising and links, and he plans to claim a percentage of his advertisers' online sales.

With a background in publishing trade magazines, Marbach has had experience with the publishing industry's controlled-circulation model: Subscriptions are handed out for free, but in return subscribers must fill out a detailed form giving information about themselves. The controlled-circulation publisher therefore has more information about subscribers than a paid circulation publisher does, and it uses those statistics to sell advertising to pay for the printing and circulation costs. Marbach applies the same model to Avweb. "Avweb is a magazine," he says. "It just happens to be published electronically."

Marbach chose this model because he believes that all web sites will be like his one day. "Most will migrate toward having some editorial content to attract people on a regular basis," he says. Some of those sites will also offer their own products for sale. Others will be advertiser-sponsored or offer the sponsor's products for sale - both of which apply to Avweb.

Marbach notes that the information gathered from registered visitors is more useful when dealing with advertisers than is traditional site tracking information. "If you're selling ads to Proctor and Gamble and you start talking about hit rates and domains, they'd look at you like you were from Mars. You need to talk in traditional terms, about people. It's much more meaningful." Advertisers want to know what they're getting for their money. "Not only can I tell you how many subscribers I have," Marbach says, "but I know who they are. I can give you more information than a print magazine can."

At Avweb visitors must fill out a one-page survey before they can access the site. Based on that survey, Marbach knows, for example, that 32% of his readers own their own airplanes. As competition for web advertisers heats up, this type of information will become a differentiator. "If you can't give it to advertisers they'll go to a competitor who can." Other web sites and industry publications are competing with Avweb for advertising dollars, but Marbach thinks there is still room for his company to make money. "Most successful markets have more than one publication. The advertiser gets twice the exposure advertising in more than one place."

Because its published electronically, Avweb can offer readers elements that a print magazine can't, such as live discussion groups, e-mail to editors and writers, and easily accessible archived stories from previous issues. It's also updated more frequently than a print magazine - often weekly, Marbach says. "We have no publishing schedules, no deadlines, and no copy fitting problems." Marbach can run as many articles as he wants and cover breaking news stories that many magazines normally leave to newspapers. Marbach also notes that his publishing costs are much lower than if he had to buy paper and mail it out. "If I have 100,000 readers instead of 30,000, my costs don't go up at all."

Marbach expects to increase his revenue once advertisers begin offering products for sale at his site. "The foremost goal in publishing on the web is building traffic," he says. As that traffic increases, Marbach will have enough muscle to ask advertisers for commissions on their sales.

Unlike a print magazine, Avweb's software can easily track when a customer makes an online purchase from one of the advertisers in the site's store section. Since the magazine can demonstrate that it brought that customer to the advertiser, Marbach can claim a percentage of the sale. Avweb also offers visitors an internal search engine that sorts through advertisements by keyword, which creates another revenue source. Marbach can charge classified advertisers to list their ads in the search engine, so that consumers can type in "Cessna" and find all Cessna aircraft for sale. He also charges $500 per month for links to other aviation sites.

"The barrier to entry to creating a web site is small," Marbach says. "The difference between sites is that some are properly capitalized and run as proper businesses sticking it out for the long term." Following some type of successful business model is key, he says. "Just putting something up on the web isn't good enough."

From "Tips & Tactics for Marketing on the Internet," edited by Bradford W. Ketchum, Jr.,
published by Inc. Copyright@1997 by Goldhirsh Group, Inc. Boston, Mass.  All rights reserved.

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