Hook readers with free content, then sell them something, says Rodale CEO

Rodale Publishing (Men's Health, Prevention) is riding out the recession because of the strength of its free online content is selling its paid books, according to a story in Forbes magazine.

Chief executive Steven Murphy said in an interview that, though the magazine's ad pages were down 5% last year (compared with the industry average 12%) that approximately 42% of their subscribers have bought something else from them in the past 12 months.

"Are we a magazine company? Are we a book company? Are we an online company? I think we're a health wellness and well-being content company that has great brands. That's not new for us. That's something we've been doing for six or seven years and formalized structurally about three years ago and put the brands in charge of sales and editorial across all formats. The editor-in-chief of Prevention is in charge of Prevention online, and Prevention books and Prevention events."

He also reiterated that he thought the publishing business would turn around in two years.

There are a few more shoes to drop, I'm sure. Meanwhile, just enough time has passed so that the tweaks of economic recovery are starting to show up. They're not making up for the problems right now, but they're starting to show up like the forsythia in the back yard. We're seeing some light come out of some dark tunnels in the advertising sectors. Our online book sales in the month of March exceeded last year's March sales. Is all this making up for the bad news? No, not yet. But we're starting to see some life.

Rodale is also aggressively marketing the fact that well over 80% of its web traffic is "natural" -- that is readers coming directly and deliberately to their sites.

I believe, down the road, that's going to be an incredibly important metric for advertisers, as it should be. I would want to know if I was advertising what the direct load is of the site. People who actually chose to open up a laptop and type in the address of a site has to be a viable customer.