Jim answers questions from fellow Drillers
(More questions with answers here, Work Overview here, Index of concepts here)
Topic Overview
Hi again folks, Jim Novo here.
How do we make money on a content site? Free? Pay? Some combination of both? There’s been a lot of guessing and testing by the big media guys on how to work this, but how do the the small segments / little guys make this work, what can be measured to help? What about newer platforms like Substack, how do you measure optimization? On with the Drillin’ …
Jim’s Note: If you don’t know what Recency and Frequency are they are explained here, and RFM is covered here. “Intensity” is Views per Session, in this case a “proxy” for visitor value.
Q: Hi Jim,
Should we use:
RFI – Recency, Frequency, Intensity
RFM – Recency, Frequency, and Monetary
or
RF – Recency, Frequency
to measure visitor value, and what should these terms ideally mean? Total Sessions, Total page views, etc. Also, when you measure Frequency, do you only include the Frequency during a specific period of time (i.e. one month, or one week), or do you include total lifetime activity per user?
A: On the advertising side of the business, I think the page views/session stat is probably the best to use. The reality of the ad-based business is it doesn’t matter if they come back, you are selling impressions, not people. I don’t think you have to overcomplicate it with formulas like RF or RFM, because you are primarily dealing with audiences, not individuals. RF and RFM are about predicting if individuals will come back.