by Larry Genkin

USA Today (the largest circulation newspaper in the US) is about to get behind blogging and pod­casting in a big way. In collaboration with Blogger & Podcaster magazine USA Today has just started publishing the Blogger & Podcaster Guide (think TV Guide™ for blogs and podcasts) from the front page of usatoday.com, and in print.

This will give Blogger & Podcaster access to 16.1 million readers, many of whom have heard of blogs or podcasts, but don’t really know how to find them. This is the great mass of people — very different from the early adopters — who’ve never even heard of Technorati, Podcast Pickle, Google Blog Search, et al.

This partnership came about because a good friend of mine at USA Today was looking for ways to open up new revenue streams that would replace (and hope­fully exceed) declining print advertising.

During our conversations I explained that: (1) There are over 100 million blog­gers and podcasters; (2) Serious bloggers and podcasters will be motivated to increase their audiences by tapping into USA Today’s massive readership; (3) Most couldn’t afford to pay anywhere near even the lowest rates USA Today offers to its largest customers.

The solution we came up with is a pay-to-play guide, where listings cost $49.95 a month, a fraction of the price USA Today typically charges. Normally,

a few thousand dollars is the price of entry for the smallest of promotions. At usatoday.com, the Blogger & Podcaster Guide will appear on the front page and be embedded within relevant content.

Every experienced industry exec I’ve spoken with agrees that being able to reach this audience for less than $50 per month is a substantial value, especially considering you can blow through 50 bucks in click-through advertising in a nanosecond. I had to laugh when I was speaking with Michael Geoghegan at Podcast and New Media Expo (where we offered a one-month trial for $24.95). At the Podcast Pickle party he remarked, “So let me get this straight. For under twenty-five hundred bucks a month I can promote on usatoday.com?” In all fairness, I’m not sure if the mispercep­tion came from the program value or the beer we were drinking at the time.

But there is a catch. This is a big risk for USA Today.

The newspaper risks pissing off advertisers in other segments who pay higher rates than Blogger & Podcaster Guide advertisers. It’s risking $42,700 a week to run our guide in print. It’s risk­ing a 24/7 franchise spot on the front page of usatoday.com. It’s risking con­textual ad inventory adjacent to many online stories, where relevant links into our guide will be promoted.

USA Today is hoping that bloggers and podcasters will get behind this effort and that volume will make this a viable venture for the newspaper. USA Today is giving us some rope, but we’ve got to take it, or collectively we’re going to lose out on the best opportunities to date to expose and involve a mainstream audience with blogs and podcasts.

How It Works

Creating a successful Blogger & Podcaster Guide requires four elements:

1. Readers can easily find content they’re interested In: The reason a guide like this is even necessary is that the average person trying to find a blog or podcast would cur­rently approach this task by going to Google, typing in a topic, and getting 237,873,011 results they’d need to sort through. The Blogger & Podcaster Guide is designed to be simple, clean, and nonintimidat­ing to a mainstream reader.

2. Quality content must bubble to the top. If readers can find the blogs and podcasts on the topics they’re interested in, but they don’t find the content useful, they probably will not return to the Blogger & Podcaster Guide over and over again. To make quality content more transparent, we’ve added features like ratings (thanks Netflix!) and comments. Readers will be able to help their peers find the content that has been valuable to them. There are also direct links to your Web sites, and for podcasts, users will be able to listen and watch the latest episode so they can judge for themselves.

3. Quantifiable results for bloggers and podcasters. To justify spending even $49.95 per month, it’s critical for you to be able to see and test how well your listings are working. To start, since we offer easy RSS subscription options (including iTunes) from your listing, you’ll know how many new subscribers you’ve added. We’re also working on a comprehensive stats package that will provide you with in­formation including podcast listens, page views, subscriptions, ratings, and click-throughs. You’ll have the ability to change every aspect of your listing so you can test which key­words and copy perform best. Finally, we believe you can count on substan­tial Google “juice.” This site should score high with search engines, making your link from the Blogger & Podcaster Guide helpful in boosting your organic search results.

4. Critical Mass. We’re off to a good start (350 listings in the first 72 hours, with promotion coming only from blog posts), but for the guide to have lasting utility for the end-user, we need critical mass. (I’d like to offer personal thanks to Wizzard Media for supporting this effort at launch by purchasing listings for many of its shows.) Our category hierarchy is designed to scale by splitting into subcategories as the volume of list­ings increases. This will make it even easier for readers to find content that is directly relevant to them. By coming into the guide you’re not only helping market your blog or show, you’re helping your peers as well. This is not a zero sum game. What’s good for us individually is even better for us collectively.

The First Month Is on Me

To help reach critical mass and to give you a chance to tap into USA Today’s massive audience, I want to offer you a free month in the Blogger & Podcaster Guide’s online edition.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to www.bloggerandpodcaster.com/usatoday.

2. Select “New User” and go through the six-step registration process.

3. In Step 2, be sure to enter “BP” in the Coupon Code box under Option.

4. Then click Option 4. If you don’t enter this code, you’ll be charged the regu­lar price.

It takes only five minutes to sign up, if you have a 400-character description, logo/album art, RSS feed address, and up to 10 keywords ready in advance.

While we hope to make a few dollars from this venture (which will certainly help offset our startup costs) making USA Today happy is the key. If we can make Blogger & Podcaster Guide worth its while, USA Today (and probably its laggard MSM brethren) will get behind our industry. This will be a beautiful thing for us all. So take advantage of the free month, and if it works for you, know that your contin­ued support will be doing more than just helping your blog or podcast.

LARRY GENKIN is the founder and publisher of Blogger & Podcaster Magazine.