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Joe Buckheit is one of the few people who figured out how to make money in online publishing.
Buckheit's company, MediaBrains, helps publishers of business-to-business print publications create online directories that bring together buyers and sellers. For example, MediaBrains created a directory for Plastics News, an industry publication that focuses on the plastic-manufacturing industry. In exchange for a link on Plastics News website, MediaBrains shares a portion of the directory advertising revenue his company sells.
Another of Buckheit's initiatives, AgingCare.com, works in a similar way but connects people who care for elderly people. Businesses that cater to these caregivers are eager to pay for access to those prospective customers.
The key to both businesses is connecting people. In the case of MediaBrains, it's connecting executives in a specific industry. “MediaBrains tends to do well where there's lots of buyers and sellers,” Buckheit says, citing manufacturing as a good example.
MediaBrains works with 4,000 advertisers who pay $1,000 to $20,000 a year to promote their wares on the directories he publishes. Currently, MediaBrains publishes 117 directories, 70% of which are for its own account and the other 30% in partnership with publishers such as Crains Communications. Creating content is relatively easy because of Internet search functions, but some publishers also provide lists for the directories.
The staff of MediaBrains sells advertising on the websites so advertising reps at the publishers can focus on the higher-margin print edition. “It's very turnkey for the publisher,” Buckheit says.
But Buckheit says there are more opportunities to partner with print publishers of business-to-business trade publications. He counts about 5,000 such publishers, so he recently hired Source Interlink's former vice president of development Missy Root to boost that part of the business. (Source Interlink, based in nearby Bonita Springs, abruptly shuttered its national magazine distribution business last month.)
The MediaBrains directories all have a similar look and function. “They're all the same so we can scale the back end,” Buckheit says. “We're pretty efficient.”
Buckheit created AgingCare after listening to his parents and in-laws talk at the kitchen table about caring for their elderly relatives. That discussion gave him the idea to start an online forum that would connect family caregivers nationwide.
With 750,000 users a month, AgingCare built a large following online since Buckheit started the site in 2008. “The audience is big,” he says.
Among the ways AgingCare.com makes money online is by selling directory listings for $1,000 to $2,000 annually to professionals such as elder-law attorneys and referrals to home-care agencies for $40 a lead.
In a sign that the lines between print and Web publishing are growing increasingly blurry, Buckheit recently launched an AgingCare glossy magazine. He mails 100,000 free copies of the quarterly magazine to doctors' offices around the country. The first issue had 16 pages, including four full-page ads that list for $10,000 each.
Much of the content in the magazine is generated by editorial contributions to the website by experts in the field of aging. “We outsourced the layout,” Buckheit says of the new magazine.
Buckheit declines to share revenues. But here's a clue to how business is going: He's spending about $1 million to move his company and 27 employees to a new location near Vanderbilt Beach Road and Airport-Pulling Road in Naples.
Follow Jean Gruss on Twitter @JeanGruss
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