It’s a question of… Making capital out of Moneyweb

Business and investment news website Moneyweb had what managing editor Ryk van Niekerk calls “an absolute sterling month: in May. The site recorded new highs for unique visitors and page views.

Van Niekerk says the site nearly hit 3.2 million page views and 334 000 unique visitors, and that he was “particularly ecstatic about the growth in the size of our community”.

The Media Online asked him more about what is helping drive Moneyweb’s success.

You are (almost) neck and neck with BDlive (which also has a print platform) and Fin24 (also with a print component and with a strong news site alongside it). Moneyweb is a standalone (with radio presence). What is Moneyweb doing right to challenge these big players the way you are doing?

Moneyweb has been a pioneer in internet news publishing. The company was founded in 1997 and has built up an excellent reputation for journalistic excellence.

Our core focus is to produce excellent financial, business and investment content. Our content is niche and focused and it is clear that it is receiving traction from a growing audience.

This strategy differs from Fin24 who follows a wire service news offering, and BDLive who has a more business and political economy emphasis.

The site has an enviable bounce rate? What’s the story there?

Moneyweb is a niche website and our visitors come here to consume our content.

We supplement our content with relevant data to offer these visitors more value and this results in prolonged visits to the site. This of course translates into a very low bounce rate.

Is Moneyweb a candidate for a paywall? Is this something you are considering? If not, why not?

No. Our business model is based on delivering audiences to advertisers. We invest in original content and then redistribute it on the various platforms we serve.

I don’t think the South African public has the appetite to pay for online news; certainly not in the numbers needed to exceed potential advertising revenue. Having said that, the model where newspapers charge a cover price on printed products, but also publish their content for free online, is certainly not sustainable.

Our business model is different. Moneyweb produce content that is reused on all our platforms, the website being only one such platform. We are also offering commercial services on the website such as an investor relationship service to listed companies and Moneyweb Jobs.

We are therefore not contemplating the implementation of a paywall.

You refer to the ‘growth’ of your ‘community’. Who is this community, and is it growing across your site and social media platforms?

Moneyweb has a very loyal community that visits our site regularly.

Approximately 70% of the community members are CEOs, directors, professionals and senior managers. They are very affluent and there is a definite bias towards the financial services industries.

This community has more than doubled during the past year and is continuing to grow quickly and consistently.

Our Twitter following is growing fast and we hit 26 000 followers today. Although we also have a significant presence on Facebook and LinkedIn, Twitter is our most successful social media platform. Our social media strategy is working really well as we are able to attract significant traffic from these platforms to our website.

You have a strong international readership. How did this develop and to what do you ascribe that success?

Moneyweb’s international audience only represents 10% of the total number of unique visitors we attract. This is lower than the comparable statistic for our competitors. This is understandable as we focus on a South African perspective of all local and international developments.

Are you using social media to drive numbers? How important is social media to the site and your readership?

We use social media aggressively and we are reaping the rewards. We push our best content via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and we usually receive an excellent response, especially with breaking news and investigative pieces.

On some articles social media accounted for up to 25% of the total traffic received. One of the reasons for this success is that time has a major influence on investment performance. Our community use social media as a news service and can therefore quickly see what relevant content is available on our various platforms.

What are Moneyweb’s innovations that keep the site attractive to readers?

Moneyweb has a clear and defined strategy to grow our community through the publication of unique and original business, financial and investment content. We are very innovative in the way we think about investment articles and we augment these articles with excellent data analyses.

We are in the process of expanding our data offerings and to offer investors or potential investors a convenient and thorough platform to evaluate investment options. This includes shares and unit trusts.

We are working towards building a hub, which all investors regard as their first port of call when they need investment information.

What is Moneyweb’s editorial positioning compared to Fin24 and BDlive?

BDLive is an impressive portal with excellent original content, mainly flowing from the journalists at Business Day. Fin24 is right at the other end of the spectrum as it mainly publishes commoditised wire copy as part of a low cost strategy.

As I have said before, Moneyweb’s editorial strategy is more niche. We focus on unique content with a definitive bias towards the investment implications of news developments.

Radio podcasts and transcriptions also enrich the site even more. Moneyweb is responsible for business programming on SAFM, RSG and Lotus FM and we publish virtually all the content from these programming on the show. This includes long in-depth interviews with the top CEOs, industry leaders and analysts, which are not broadcast in full on radio. These podcasts and transcripts are extremely popular.

 How would you describe your advertising situation right now? Has it grown, declined, stayed steady?

Moneyweb has recently established its own internal sales infrastructure.

Moneyweb’s advertising proposition is very compelling, as we offer cross platform advertising opportunities on three radio stations, several websites, newsletters, apps and events, as well as in CitiBusiness, the business section of the Citizen.

Advertising revenues are growing in all the digital platforms and I trust that Moneyweb will participate in this growth.

How powerful is your radio presence on SAfm in driving your numbers, or does it have a different audience from the site?

Moneyweb broadcasts business programming nationwide on three SABC stations: SAFM, RSG and Lotus FM.

They inform large, mass-market audiences of what is happening in their financial worlds, and this ties in with what we want to achieve through our other digital platforms. There is definitely a symbiotic relationship between listeners and visitors to the website and to our apps and we will continue to capitalise on this.

Radio and internet as a combination offers far more synergies than print and Internet. These synergies not only emanates from the immediacy of both mediums, but also from being interactive mediums and the use of multimedia.

IMAGE: www.businesstech.co.za