We combined an analysis of Google Analytics data and a survey (being on a low budget we used Survey Monkey so were limited to 10 questions). We actually got quite a bit out of that and published the results on Talk of the Sound along with our rate card (under the advertise link on our home page).

There’s a lot you can do on a small budget. Quantcast.com can give you demographic data on your readers. CrowdScience.com can really take it to the next level. In the magazine world. BPA and ABC are both doing a ton of digital audits. Having said that, I think trend in purchasing is that’s being done is through exchanges. Audits seems like less of a concern, as they can test data/inventory and see how it performs.

Thanks for the shoutout, eMedia Vitals. Crowd Science offers free tools to help online publishers better understand their online audience. Our free WHO tool (http://crowdscience.com/free_tools/who) uses questions created by the experts on our market research team, so you’ll get better results than writing your own questions through something like SurveyMonkey. The questions cover age, gender, education, income, country, household landscape (kids, relationship status, etc.), plus up to 3 interest-based questions and an option for site feedback. We also use statistical sampling to invite site visitors to the survey, so you’re not bugging every visitor on your site with a survey. As eMedia Vitals says, you can take it to the next level with our paid products, but WHO is a great way to get your feet wet for no cost.

From our perspective our stories carry their own audience — for example we recently wrote an article about the new medical director at Kaiser Permanente in Oregon — it’s virtually gone viral because of its content — which concerned the future of nurse practitioners and physican assistants — that story has generated more readers virtually on its own. I believe that stories such as this can create a larger untapped audience — and have lasting appeal — because those same people will now look at our site for what else we produce. Getting the right stories out there — talking about issues that remain unexplored by other media is the real answer

By design, we launched in 2008 with absolutely zero promotion. We just started posting stories and waiting to see how people would react. Given their sometimes explosive nature it was not long before people were forwarding around links and sharing, mostly via Facebook. That got us going from a standing start. From there I began to attend every community meeting I could find — neighborhood associations, civic groups, government meetings. I also began walking a great deal in our downtown, meeting people, stopping in stores, introducing myself, handing out my card. Not only did I make a lot of contacts and build readership but I lost weight too

A lot. We’re trying to lock down a location for our anniversary party before Friday. It’s called piecampbham. We ask that folks bring a pie or make a donation to a local charity on March 14. Last year we pulled it off in about four days; this year we’re going to spend a couple of weeks getting ready. We’re about to relaunch our #bhamchat hashtag in some interesting ways and push for a monthly happy hour-type event. We’ve seen the largest bumps in our traffic leading up to the event and sustained increases in followers and supporters – currently much more than what we see in terms of an increase in advertisers. I’m hoping I’ll be able to demonstrate to potential advertisers/supporters the type of community that surrounds the site by letting them see who shows up to the events.

Andre – piecamp! that sounds fun and yummy!

From some work we’ve done, the key to monetizing deep content is to own the master narrative. That is, become the voice of authority (through your coverage, of course) on a subject matter – and work diligently to hone that subject matter so that it isn’t too horizontal. Deep coverage is vertical. Readers and underwriters appreciate the focus – and that helps weed out who is NOT your audience or underwriter community.

I feel that we always need to “feed the beast” with new content, all the time. Not dealing with the issue of publishing once a month I can’t speak from that experience however…

Maybe after publishing there can be follow on updates with greater detail on a particular story — for example, publishing reporter notes, recordings of interviews, links to source material. I would imagine there is a ton of content gathered to complete a story, rolling out the background material in stages might help.

Having reporters actively engage in comments every day in the weeks after publication.

I used to use Google Reader to mark shared items in my the many hundreds of feeds I follow and then display a block on the site with “Elsewhere on the Web” items, links from other sources relevant to a topic. Since Google got rid of that I switched over to the new Delicious which works for this purpose.

Once we start publishing comments about a particular story — especially if it’s controversial — more readers tune in to see what other people are saying — it’s another great way of driving up readership