“Is it good?” I hear this often. On just about everything. Food. Sunglasses. Cars. Shoes. My new solar panels. It’s a simple enough question, but what does it mean? When someone asks it, what do they want to hear?
Take these shoes for instance. Are they good?
Well, they’re a couple of my favorites for sure. If I’m going out for a night on the town, I definitely want my sky-high Christian Louboutins leading the way. If I’m running a 192 mile relay race with 10 other crazy friends, I want my Saucony Mirage 3s. So, if someone asks me, “Is it good?” my response is rarely, if ever, “Yes! It’s good!” Instead, I ask another question, “What’s your purpose?” (This drives my husband nuts, BTW.)
What’s your purpose?
I can’t give you a proper answer to “Is it good?” until I know what you want to achieve — because what you’re likely asking for is not my personal endorsement. I love the above shoes for their respective purposes, but you might hate them. I think what you really want to know is, “Will I like it?” or “Will it suit my purpose?”
To this point, hundreds of publishers come to Sovrn daily asking, “Is it good?” about CPMs, ad calls, fill rates, traffic, tools, earnings…and a whole slew of other things. It’s super tough to answer them without a frame of reference. Some of these publishers are brand spankin’ new, just getting started on social media, and are just considering monetizing their site. Some of them have been around the block a few times, have thousands of followers on social media, and know all there is to know about site monetization, ad chains and the like. So, what do we do?
Note your baseline and set specific goals
The first thing we at Sovrn work with you on is baselining your performance. We take a look at what tools you’re using, who your site monetization partners are, and what you’re earning with all of them. We look at how active you are on social media and using our audience analytics, we help you analyze your traffic — page views, where readers are coming from, and demographics. Once we have a baseline, we can work with you to set some goals that are good for you and suit your purpose.
Different publishers have different goals and you need to be specific about what you want to achieve and think about how you’re going to make it happen. Are you looking to monetize your site for the first time? Are you unhappy with the performance or customer service of a particular advertising partner and want to see if you can replace them? Are your CPMs low? What do you want them to be? Is your ad fill rate low? What do you want to see? What do you want to be earning? Does your traffic snapshot match who you thought your audience was? What do you want your traffic to look like? Do you need to increase your social media presence? Where? How? By how much?
Adjust your tactics and keep adjusting
We work with tens of thousands of publishers and we have access to a mountain of data, so we help you lay out specific tactics that work. While you’re busy writing spectacular content on a regular basis and building your social media following, we’re optimizing ad chain performance, aligning campaigns, and letting you know when we develop new tools or bring on new partners who can help you reach your goals.
Of course, your job is never done. And neither is ours. Publishing is a full-time business. Round-the-clock, build your audience, write new content, network with your influencers and your followers, monitor your performance, adjust, repeat. Keep going. Tweak when necessary. Use your personal Sovrn site coach to help you.
Bookmark the Sovrn pubhub as a resource
No matter what your goal is, you want to keep learning and growing. We want to make that as easy for you as possible by compiling the best information in one place to help publishers like you. That’s why we created the Sovrn pubhub.
Find out what really works, gather information that is relevant to you, learn tips and tricks from the best bloggers in our network, find all of the networking events where you can meet up with like-minded peers, catch up on industry news, and download the best tools to help you succeed.
Help me make it good…for you
The pubhub (filled with plenty of blog resources) is for you. So, to be good for you, it needs to suit your purpose. Take a look around. If you want to see something on a particular topic, let me know. If you have a question, let me know. If you have a great site and want to work with me on a spotlight or case study, let me know. If you use a particular tool religiously and you want to see it in our publisher tool directory, let me know. I am here to help you make it good…for you!
Welcome to the Sovrn pubhub! I’d love to hear from you. Contact me anytime at kkoback@sovrn.net.
Written by Sovrn’s Director of Publisher Marketing, Karinn Koback
