Advertising, Audience Building, B2C, Contests, Memberships & Subscriptions, Newsletters

How they did it: Building the Best of the Best of Contests at Omaha Magazine

Alisa Cromer July 13, 2025

At Omaha Magazine, the number one driver of email subscribers – currently 200,000 in a DMA of just over a million – is the Best of Contest, which still gets 60,000 to 70,000 votes a year. Lemke shared his best practices developed over 42 years of running the contest.

Join for all access

Save time and grow revenues. Find practical strategies from leading niche publishers. Attend virtual roundtables, and connect with members by DM. Get ideas from top media kits, AI prompts for publishing workflows and more.

Categories: Advertising, Audience Building, B2C, Contests, Memberships & Subscriptions, Newsletters

White paper: Recent research on the value of print advertising

How should niche media, dominated by magazine brands, talk to advertisers about the value of print?

It’s a tricky issue. On the one hand, print sales continue to decline in the face of reduced advertiser demand. Media brokers place almost no value on profitable print advertising sales. This white paper shows all the research you need, with sources and links to use.

Alisa Cromer January 1, 2024

How he did it: Interview with James Cridland, founder of Podnews.net

James Cridland has built a $600,000+ one person media company that he runs part-time. Here’s how he does it.

Alisa Cromer January 6, 2024

Marketers turning to magazines: These 7 reports show why

Top reasons marketers are returning to print

Alisa Cromer October 11, 2023

The Ultimate Guide to Selling Lead Magnet Advertising

Let's get creative! We researched more than a hundred different lead magnet campaigns to find the best ideas that command top dollars from niche advertisers, and how they did it.

First, to define the terms: A lead magnet is simply gated information a publisher creates that is valuable enough to persuade the audience to leave their contact information.

Advertisers will invest 2 to 5x the cost of a major campaign and in some cases $30,000 to $50,000 - for publishers to create the content, host the lead capture page or system, and deliver the leads generated. They, too, are worried about Google Zero.

The Lead Magnet itself could be a white paper, e-book, video, podcast, or webinar — as long as there is a “hook” that attracts the audience to exchange their contact info for access.

Steal these ideas: Below is a list of the most powerful peer-shared ideas for lead magnet campaigns from case studies and research.

Alisa Cromer August 6, 2025

Newsletter Pricing: Some Publishers leave money on the table study shows

The single biggest opportunity we found in the 2026 Niche Newsletter Revenue Survey is simple: Many publishers underprice newsletter ads and sponsorships.

So how much should a B2B or B2C niche publisher charge based on list size and ad inventory? Is pricing different between B2B and B2C? And where, exactly, are publishers leaving money on the table?

Here are the metric you need to create pricing levels.

Alisa Cromer February 25, 2026

With 12 revenue models, which combinations work?

There are almost as many business models as there are media sectors, well beyond the first three most common: Advertising, Subscriptions, and Events. Many have…

Alisa Cromer January 5, 2023

Join for all access

Related Articles

Never miss a trick! Get updates on new reports weekly