Monetize Your Website or Blog by Offering Trade Magazines


For this post I’d like to speak directly to all you small business owners who have a website or blog and would like to make a little money with it.

As you may know, here at Small Business Trends we have a trade publications site from TradePub.com. Visitors can get B-to-B trade publications — all for free. It’s a VERY popular feature.

Well, here’s something you may be interested in. TradePub.com is recruiting website owners and bloggers as affiliates to set up trade publication storefronts. That means if you want to offer free trade publications for your own visitors, you may be able to do that.

Here’s a screenshot of what my TradePub site looks like — you could have something like this using your site’s own design:

Small and Medium Business trade magazines

Why I use TradePub

I’ve had a TradePub storefront for several years now. I don’t participate in many affiliate programs (even though I get 3 or 4 requests a week to do so). But this program I have found valuable and worth sticking with for almost 4 years. Here’s why:

  • Your visitors get valuable B2B magazines without having to pay a dime (they will appreciate that!).
  • You earn a little money every time one of your readers gets a new magazine subscription, white paper, etc. It helps subsidize the many hours you put into your blog or website.

Other Advantages

TradePub is an especially good program for blogs or forums. Blog and forum readers are usually in information mode … hungry for information. Trade magazine subscriptions and white papers give readers the extra information they desire.

As the website owner, you get two additional things with TradePub.com worth thinking about:

Low maintenance — You get a white label storefront set up following your site design. All of the content is dynamically changed and updated daily. If a publication is removed or the subscription quota temporarily filled, the site is dynamically updated and will tell visitors that. You don’t have to do a thing to maintain your storefront site.

Valuable Site Intelligence — The program comes with an awesome new online control center giving you 24/7 access to reports, called RevResponse.com. Here’s a snapshot of the RevResponse control panel:

Online control panel with reports about your trade publication storefront

The reports tell you information such as which publications are popular with your readers. For instance, here are some of the more popular publications with Small Business Trends readers: The Deal, eWeek, Employee Benefit News, Total Landscape Care, Global Finance, Packaging World, Managed Healthcare Executive, B2B Magazine, Internet Retailer, SMB Finance, Turf, Life Insurance Selling, Consulting Magazine, HR Daily Advisor, and something called Snips (covering sheet metal and HVAC). As you can see, there is a wide diversity of interests.

Every site’s readers will be different, but the point is that you get a snapshot of what YOUR visitors are interested in. That’s helpful to know, because it helps you choose subjects to discuss on your blog, among other things.

I suggest you try out the program for yourself and see how it works.

Sign up to get your own trade publication storefront over at RevResponse.com.

16 Comments ▼

Anita Campbell Anita Campbell is the Founder, CEO and Publisher of Small Business Trends and has been following trends in small businesses since 2003. She is the owner of BizSugar, a social media site for small businesses.

16 Reactions
  1. Thank you for Trade pub. I was in search of material absolutely like this.

  2. Anita,

    We have been contemplating adding this to our web as a service for our visitors.
    Thanks for the information.

  3. Anita – thank you for this information – definitely value-add. Sometimes I think you need a another blog dedicated to running a successful, profitable Web site (of course you would probably have to give up sleeping).

  4. Anita, I have two questions for you. (1) Is there a cost to set up a tradepub store front? (2) How much do you get paid?

  5. This sounds like a great resource to offer our own blog readers. Thank you for giving us a glimpse of what is involved with the service. I agree with Robert that you need a site full of your tips and tricks for creating and maintaining a popular blog.

  6. Hi Walt,

    To answer your questions:

    (1) Is there a cost to set up a tradepub store front?

    Answer: There was absolutely no cost to me when TradePub.com set up my storefront. It was risk free. That’s why it’s such a great deal for bloggers and webmasters and Website owners.

    (2) How much do you get paid?

    Answer: the lead fee you get is based on each approved subscription or download. The fee per approved subscription varies by publication. It could be $5 to $10 per subscription, or under $1 each. The metric I consider most important is the “average” earnings per subscription. The reports in the new control panel automatically calculate your average. In my own mind I set a figure that I consider acceptable as an average, and try to stay at or above that number each month.

    Walt, those are my responses, but I’ve also pinged the team at RevResponse.com to verify that I am giving you accurate information.

    Thanks,
    Anita

  7. Hi Anita – thanks for the great mention of our program.

    Walt – to answer your question, there is no cost to set up your account with RevResponse. We will create a co-branded page (storefront) for you. You will never pay us any money. You can only make money from us.

    Anita is right, every offer pays out different commissions. Some will pay out up to $20 per qualified lead. That said, you’ll never be paid less than $1.50 per subscription and often it’s much more.

    If you have any other questions, feel free to check out our site or email partnerservices@netline.com

  8. I’m going to be checking this out today. There are a multitude of publications to choose from and a nice wide variety for visitors. I’ve worked with them in the past and it’s a nice program.

  9. Great information here! You certainly can’t beat making money without all the hassle and any upfront costs. I have signed up and received free publications thru Anita’s storefront and they are good quality, with great info. Thank you for letting us know how we can sign up for our own sites.

  10. Thanks, RevResponse, for the clarifications. Wow! $20 per lead. I’d better dig in and find out which ones those are.

  11. Wow Anita, what a great tip! Thank you for sharing this with us all!

  12. I will sign up and offer it for my blog readers and visitors. Do you know if they will increase the international section later on?

  13. Hi Martin, I hope you check out RevResponse and do sign up. We’re always working to increase our offerings. We’re planning to increase the number of internationally available offers and additionally, break down the regions of availability even more in the near future.

  14. RevResponse: Thanks for your reply. I have received this email from your organization:

    “Thank you for signing up to access NetLine’s RevResponse Partner Program. I am currently reviewing your application and will contact you within 48 hours with instructions for using RevResponse.” K.S.

    I look forward to join the program!

  15. Anita
    What a wonderfully generous publisher you are. I’ve known about and considered TradePub before (and have been contemplating adding them) when i get my site renovations done on the online research work i’m doing called WebScout (and which you and i have briefly discussed on Twitter — and i’m taking your tips and you’ll see something next week). But most people would not share as openly as you and SBT. Kudos. You show how much you care when you share these details with your readers. It is part of what keeps me coming back to SmallBizTrends again and again.

    On separate note: that is a powerful post by the new blogger on Social Media. Jonathan Fields. Very very well done.
    Thanks Anita!
    TJ