August 19, 2002
IFRA is inviting deep pocketed online executives to listen to two days of Initiatives for profit at its October Beyond the Printed World conference in Barcelona. It has taken conference organizers 10 years and 10 conferences to come to terms with the business logic: "Above all, if publications are to thrive in the long term, we cannot afford to abuse our cash cows - the printed products - to cross-subsidise online operations for very much longer."

As far as we at Pressflex are concerned the road to a real ROI on online operations is simple, and does not require a pilgrimage to the IFRA/WAN/FIPP event in Barcelona:

1. Do not hire dedicated online staff.
2. Regularly add real content to the site from the printed magazine.
3. Optimize for Google.
4. Place prominent print subscription buttons on the site.

Visitors who find your content in search engines will take care of the rest: Enough of them will subscribe to your printed magazine to ensure a healthy ROI.

In this new MagBlog we will be watching online magazine trends closely and direct you to interesting novelties, articles or commentary.

Agree? Disagree? Have an idea? Send it to: salesATpressflex.com