Today, most would-be travelers start their journeys online by researching destinations, carrier schedules, accommodations and free web mapping services.

In order to compete with travel agencies and agents, travel information publishers, who traditionally published books, magazines and newsletters, have migrated to the Internet and become online publishers. Some have created retail websites whose primary objective is to sell traditional hard-copy books. Others are focused on publishing travel reviews on their sites, and derive revenue from advertising and affiliate links.

Still others, such as Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz and Priceline, are Internet travel agencies that place a high value on creating comparisons of prices and schedules. We chose not to review them as part of the top ten because they are retail websites, not media websites.

We make this distinction: The primary goal of a media website is to inform; the primary goal of a retail website is to sell. Similarly, if we were reviewing literature websites, we would not include Amazon.com, which is a retail website whose primary goal is to sell books, not review them.

We did an in-depth examination of 10 most popular travel information websites and evaluated them against 14 criteria—our famous Mequoda website design guidelines. Of the 10 websites, none was perfect, but most were very good and two or three were excellent.

International Living came in as #3, and we'll tell you why.

The Accounts Payable Network describes itself as the most comprehensive, specialized resource available for accounts payable professionals by providing—in one convenient, online location—current solutions for AP strategy, technology, people and processes. That's a big promise, especially considering that the membership website was launched less than three years ago (at the time of this writing) by Financial Operations Networks LLC and its founder, Phil Binkow. But The Accounts Payable Network doesn't disappoint; it overwhelms the AP professional with valuable tools and content. Using the Mequoda Website Scorecard™, The Accounts Payable Network does an exemplary job of implementing effective design practices. They are a prime example of a successful Mequoda Membership Website™.

This review is part of a handbook titled Membership Website Publishing.

• Handbook: Membership Website Publishing
• Chapter 17: TheAccountsPayableNetwork.com Membership Website Review

TheBookStandard.com describes itself as "the all-inclusive online destination for publishers, retailers, librarians, agents, authors, distributors, studio executives, screenwriters, publicists, book groups and more!" It's an accurate description. VNU Business Media, publisher of The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Computing, and other trade titles, launched TheBookStandard.com, its first solely online publication, in January of 2005. It brings together in one online membership website every aspect of the book publishing industry: Nielsen BookScan-powered data, charts, and analysis; news and investigative reporting; industry resources, tools, and commentary—plus reviews powered by Kirkus. TheBookStandard.com succeeds on many levels as measured by the Mequoda Website Scorecard™. When measured against the 14 Mequoda best practices, TheBookStandard.com scores a solid "B." Learn what makes this website work and where it could use some adjustments.

This review is part of a handbook titled Membership Website Publishing.

• Handbook: Membership Website Publishing
• Chapter 19: TheBookStandard.com Membership Website Review

Credit Today is a print newsletter that describes itself as "the premier publication for trade credit professionals." For US $279 annually, subscribers receive 12 issues of Credit Today, and get full access to CreditToday.net, its companion website. The CreditToday.net mission statement is precise: "To give you the tools and insights that will empower you to excel in credit, customer service and business, while providing a forum for the best thinking in the field." Using the Mequoda Website Scorecard, CreditToday.net earns an A and, except for one glaring omission and a single graphic design inconsistency, is a good example of a well engineered B-to-B website. Read this Membership Website Review to get a better understanding of what constitutes effective Membership Website design.

This review is part of a handbook titled Membership Website Publishing.

• Handbook: Membership Website Publishing
• Chapter 22: CreditToday.net Membership Website Review

Providing news and information on how to comply with Federal laws and international banking regulations is the niche addressed by this membership website. Moneylaundering.com Premium is produced by the editors of Moneylaundering Alert, a print newsletter providing information on money laundering in the US and around the world. Moneylaundering.com Premium calls itself the world's leading authority on money laundering news, guidance and analysis, but does its website meet basic standards of website usability and design? This Membership Website Review outlines where Moneylaundering.com does well and where it could use some improvements.

This review is part of a handbook titled Membership Website Publishing.

• Handbook: Membership Website Publishing
• Chapter 24: Moneylaundering.com Membership Website Review

Mequoda uses the term "archetype" to help understand and categorize kinds of sites. An archetype is a pattern or design upon which all other similar things are patterned. The Mequoda Research Team has analyzed more than 2,000 media websites and concluded there are seven primary archetypes. Each of these seven archetypes has many sub archetypes that represent significant variations in information architecture on the primary theme.

Another common media platform to better understand the concept of a media archetype is television. Television is a media platform that was born in the 1940s. Early television shows were based on media archetypes borrowed from stage, film and radio.

Today, TV producers draw on a rich array of television archetypes that include situation comedies, reality shows, dramas and news magazines. Each archetype can be represented best by an actual show or a collection of shows that are best practice examples for the format, and the same can be done for websites.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Chapter 1 : Using Website Archetypes to Optimize the User Experience

A membership website is a user driven, content-based website satellite that generates the majority of its revenues from user access fees.

B2B publishers often convert loose-leaf information services and their monthly updates into membership websites for ease of updating and easy user access. B2C publishers often convert their back issues into a special-interest library categorized by topic.

Membership websites are used as reference tools by users who seek a trustworthy answer to a specific question—often as part of an immediate decision-making process. We’ve profiled two Mequoda best practice websites, the B2C site, Consumer Reports and the B2B site, The Accounts Payable Network in this chapter.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Chapter 3 : The Membership Website Archetype

Every Retail Media Website has two business goals. First, the website must allow users to buy products. Second, the website must begin a user relationship with both buyers and non-buyers that will lead to future sales.

There are two information architecture strategies that can be used to balance these two goals. Both strategies require two things: a product to sell and free information to give away, usually in the form of periodic email communications (aka: a free email newsletter).

The user has three goals in mind when visiting a Retail Website; find a product that meets their immediate need, discern whether the product meets their need at an acceptable price and purchase the product and ensure its successful delivery. In this chapter, we will discuss the three Retail Sub-Archetypes we’ve identified to date; Retail Catalog Website, Retail Product Website and Retail Subscription Website.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Chapter 4: The Retail Media Website Archetype

Classified websites generate revenue by facilitating commercial transactions between buyers and sellers of products or services. There are at least four major variations of the Classified Website Archetype; Classified Retail Websites, Classified Directory Websites, Classified Employment Websites and Classified Service Websites, all of which we will discuss in this chapter.

The user goals when visiting a Classified Website include: find a product or offer that meets their immediate need, discern whether the offer meets their need at an acceptable price, complete the transaction and ensure its successful delivery.

Classified websites generate revenue from listings fees and commissions for facilitating transactions between parties.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Chapter 5: The Classified Website Archetype

Lead Generation Websites generate revenue by providing sponsors with qualified leads.

Users shop for products and services in an effort to save time and money, while the seller pays for content creation and co-branding value. Plus, the seller pays a transaction fee for each qualified lead.

In this chapter, we profile two very different lead-generation sites: Lending Tree in the B2C financial space and Computerworld, a B2B technology website network that provides leads for technology companies hoping to sell to information systems executives.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Chapter 6: The Lead Generation Archetype

Hybrid Websites come in many variations as they successfully and often unsuccessfully merge functionality from two or more of the other website archetypes and sub archetypes into a single (often confusing) user interface.

Magazine and newspaper companies often build Hub, Retail Subscription and Membership functionality into a single user interface. The lack of a dedicated, open architecture, content rich, search engine optimized Internet Hub sometimes limits their overall website traffic and revenue generation capability.

In this chapter, we profile both B2B Hybrid Websites and B2C Hybrid websites.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Chapter 8: The Hybrid Website Archetype

This Mequoda review of successful publishers, best practices, and the seven predominant models for designing media websites is comprehensive but not final.

Just as advances in technology have produced new media and spawned new strategies for disseminating information, we expect to see additional media archetypes evolve.

Whatever the future holds, whatever new business models emerge, the Mequoda Group will continue to help publishers master the Internet.

This handbook draws heavily on the more than 450 research reports contained in the Mequoda Library, a membership website. This chapter of the book lists all the references.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Conclusion: Generating Website Revenue Conclusion & References

How do you introduce a topic that is redefining the publishing industry in ways that most of us do not fully comprehend?

For those of us not yet ready to retire, new thinking is required. We must redefine ourselves as media professionals and redefine the way we meet the information needs of our audience. Instead of publishing a single magazine or newsletter, we need to offer users information and entertainment on a variety of platforms using a variety of business models and marketing channels.

The Web is key to this strategy as it represents the 24/7 nexus for all the information and entertainment we have to offer. And whether the user’s media experience will be virtual or physical, online or offline, the user expects to find current information about the experience on the World Wide Web any time, day or night.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Preface: Redefining the Special-Interest Media User Experience

Mequoda views Internet Hubs as one of the most important website archetypes available to a publisher. Without a well-designed, well-marketed Internet Hub, an online publisher is forced to rely on other websites and other media to drive targeted website traffic.

An Internet Hub is very robust, offering tons of useful information for free. It is designed to maximize online advertising inventory. State-of-the-art Internet Hubs offer users email newsletters, blogs, email alerts and RSS feeds that are all designed to directly and indirectly generate more page views and website revenue.

Internet Hubs generate value from both the users and the sponsors. The user pays with time and information. They spend time viewing web pages, emails and RSS feeds thus creating advertising inventory that can be used to sell the publisher’s products and/or that can be sold to third party sponsors.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Chapter 2 : The Internet Hub Archetype

Brand Websites are used by all manner of non-online product and service organizations to build brand preference for the organization’s offline products and services. Brand Websites exist to alert consumers to online and brick and mortar retailers where purchases can occur.

On Brand Websites, users get product or service information and the revenue model is to increase retail spending, similar to other non-direct response advertising.

Brand websites, while not transaction based, are still essential for any company hoping to establish credibility and preference with its customers. A B2B and a B2C brand website are profiled in this section.

This chapter is part of a handbook titled Generating Website Revenue 2007.

• Handbook: Generating Website Revenue 2007.
• Chapter 7: The Brand Archetype

For individuals with money to invest, the search for undervalued growth stocks now leads to Asia, spawning a brace of new investment advisory newsletters.

China Investment Report by Business Financial Publishing, LLC may be a worthy publication, but its sales letter landing page makes our reviewer's head hurt.

This site is unattractive, lacks a compelling headline, looks out of date, and sells your email address to its confederates without your explicit consent. It's a poster child for bad online marketing practices.

Learn the three biggest mistakes this landing page makes and easy steps it could take to see immediate improvements.

Understand how even the tiniest of oversights can have the most dramatic impact on the success and conversion rate of your sales letter landing page.

Choosing & Using the Right Information Architecture For Your Media Website Network

Gas stations, supermarkets and bookstores are all retail businesses, yet the specifics of their business model and their physical infrastructure are very different. Building the right infrastructure supports higher revenue, lower operating costs and happier customers.

Online publishing also supports different business models and each business model requires specific infrastructure to optimize the user experience, maximize revenue and keep costs low. Unlike a physical gas station or bookstore operator, the successful online publisher interacts with their customer in a virtual infrastructure. The nexus of this virtual infrastructure is called a website and is defined by its information architecture.

In this report, we’ll consider the ways in which you can design media websites that will best encourage users to interact with your media brand, develop a trusted relationship, and generate website revenue for your organization in the process.

FDAnews is the premier provider of domestic and international regulatory, legislative and business news and information for executives in industries regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

There are numerous "80/20 rules" that business people quote to explain the relationship between effort and results. One 80/20 rule says that 80 percent of your sales are derived from 20 percent of your customers. Another says that 80 percent of your revenue is derived from 20 percent of your products.

In a brand and audience focusing exercise, FDAnews president Cynthia Carter launched FDAnews.com when she recognized, immediately and intuitively, that the FDA information at her new employer's publishing company was a small portion—perhaps 20 percent of the entire content—but accounted for 80 percent of revenues.

That was in 2000. Today, FDAnews has in excess of 75,000 unique names in its marketing file. Each of these is a subscriber to at least one of seven free email newsletters and is worth an average of $65. In the past six years, the publishing company has increased revenues four-fold, aggregating 80 percent of its new business from online marketing.

The Gray Lady has been tweaking its online subscription model incessantly over the past few years. With its latest version, TimesSelect, casual visitors can't get access to the vast online library of past articles without making a $4.95 to $49.95 purchase.

The TimesSelect access challenge landing page is one of the best we have seen. And it's clearly working, generating more than a half million new subscribers in its first 12 months and adding more than $6 million in revenue to the New York Times bottom line since January 2006.

The Internet is a constantly evolving medium. Websites get redesigned, either owing to new graphics, new content, or because the essential architecture is inadequate to serve the site visitors.

If the human factors haven't been properly addressed—if visitors can't easily find what they're looking for or can't order your product easily—you've got insurmountable problems that mandate you to re-engineer your website.

That was not the case with the publishers of the Andrew Harper's Hideaway Report. Their previous landing page design was not totally dysfunctional; but it needed more pizzazz to sell its fine, upscale niche newsletter.

In the time since we first published a review of the AndrewHarperTravel.com landing page some 18 months ago, a number of website design elements have changed for the better. Unfortunately, some other elements have gotten worse. There is still plenty of room for improvement.

When you publish under the aegis of Harvard University, your primary objective is not simply to make money; it's to improve the health and quality of life for the general public. And protecting Harvard's brand is of utmost importance.

An informative interview with Ed Coburn, Publishing Director, Harvard Health Publications, provided valuable insights into a profitable business model whose highest priority isn't profits.

• The Harvard Health Publications mission has always been to improve the health and quality of life for the general public.
• About 10 years ago, Harvard Health Publications expanded into mass market book publishing.
• A portion of their content is now available as a premium access, membership library at health.harvard.edu under the rubric "Harvard Medical School Online Health Information Library Premium Access."
• About 35 percent of the website traffic is driven by organic search and about 35 percent from licensed content syndication sites.
• As Mr. Coburn says, "Online, it's all about brand. I'm loving being at Harvard in an era when it's increasingly about brand."

The Mequoda Group estimates that the Agora Financial Network will post top-line revenues for 2006 of $55 million, with $41 million being generated online. This makes each of its 500,000 domestic subscribers worth about $82.

Like all Mequoda Marketing Systems, the Agora Financial Network offers both the Daily Reckoning website and email newsletter absolutely free. The organization makes all that money by selling print newsletters, books and events to the Daily Reckoning website visitors and email subscribers.