“We have 10,000 published writers that have so far published over 350,000 articles on the site; a number that grows by more than 500 every day…”

Interview by Mike Sullivan of Sully’s Blog

____________________________________________________________

This Interview was made possible by our friends at

Domain name registration, premium domain auctions, and domain monetization services

____________________________________________________________

Peter Berger, President and CEO, Suite101.com Media Inc. as well as a German national living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Prior to running Suite101, Berger was a business strategy consultant for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). He holds a Masters degree in International Relations and Scandinavian Literature from University of Munich, 2001, and has completed Studies of Norwegian Petroleum Politics, University of Oslo, 1999. His current research involves using algorithms to identify what people are searching for online, and determining which topics they want to read about in online content.

Peter took over the lead of online magazine Suite101.com in 2006 and has since grown the company from three staff to 30, and from two million unique visitors to over 29 million visitors. Suite101.com is now Canada’s largest online content website and ranks as a top 100 online destination in North America. A German site was launched in 2008, and sites in France and Spain were launched in September 2009.

MO:
Suite101.com is a leading content publishing platform with contributions from freelance writers. I understand you have a rigorous selection process for the writers. Tell me how this works and what the result is for Suite101 and the writers who are selected.

Peter:
Freelance writers and topic experts apply at Suite101, submitting two sample articles for review. One of our editorial team members reviews (typically within 12 hours) and will decline or accept, based entirely on displayed expertise and writing skills. We concentrate on hiring and working with people whose writing material is above a set editorial quality threshold. While we encourage people to apply, we normally accept only 20-25% of the applicants. Accepted writers will experience a high quality environment of equally skilled peers, and our editorial team is able to engage in mutually rewarding partnerships with our contributors.

MO:
The site has diverse content spanning everything from entertainment to politics. How much content is available on the site and from how many unique writers?

Peter:
We have 10,000 published writers that have so far published over 350,000 articles on the site; a number that grows by more than 500 every day. Most of our English language writers live in the US, UK and Canada, but we accept writers worldwide writing in English, German, Spanish and French.

MO:
The content on Suite101.com is free to readers, yet the site is profitable and you are able to share revenue with the writers. Is online advertising the exclusive source of revenue?

Peter:
Yes. Because our articles tend to be very specific, evergreen, often advice-type content, our writers and Suite101 as a company benefit from the growing performance advertising environment.

MO:
The site receives over 20 million unique viewers per month and you also have sites French, Spanish and German sites as well. What is the impact of this type of volume and diversity having to the traditional print media? Is the fate of print media sealed at this point?

Peter:
It is important to differentiate “print media”. In general, it has become very clear that print isn’t a growth space anymore. News publications were the first to feel this, because due to online distribution models as competition, it has become very hard to provide added value beyond the preferences of traditionally minded audiences in print. The content is identical and distribution is much more efficient online.

Suite101 competes much more with non-fiction publishing which has so far been less affected from the overall move to online. Non-fiction readers and advice seekers are still used to finding the most thorough advice offline. This is changing now as the quality level of online content is constantly improving, and enhanced online monetization models make it increasingly lucrative for content creators to move online too. We are still at the beginning of this shift (it is not yet lucrative to offer typical advice books online only), but traditional non-fiction publishing is starting to fall behind.

MO:
How much of your business is search engine optimization (SEO)? Is important to manipulate the content to be favored by the major search engines or is it enough just to have quality content on the site?

Peter:
Search engines have made important progress over the past decade to more reliably identify the most relevant content for given search queries and user characteristics. Suite101’s core “SEO” strategy is to reliably publish the content search engines want to show to their users — everything else would be fighting an uphill battle – one that is not very rewarding for anyone involved. But it is of course important to classify and describe content in a machine readable way so search engines can analyze that content effectively. Suite101 is providing writers with a world class environment that makes sure their articles reach large audiences.

MO:
You’re a German national living in North America and running business in both North America and Europe. What have been some of the challenges you have faced running businesses internationally? What benefits have you gained from doing so?

Peter:
A model like Suite101 is much more culturally sensitive than many people might realize. This is why we are not content simply running translated sites out of North America, but built u offices right in the heart of our three other language areas. We have offices in Berlin, Madrid and Paris, staffed with highly experienced local publishing professionals.

An example of a challenge would be the basic notion of what a “freelance writer” is and does. In the German language there isn’t a good translation for it, (some Germans simply use the English word for it). European writing culture is more professionalized than in North America, which on the one hand means that self-identified European writers tend to start with great writing out of the box, but on the other hand it also means that we had to do quite a bit of market education to introduce our model. We were the first writing site to launch in German, French, and Spanish languages and thus received a lot of attention from media, writers and the general public – combined with our decidedly localized staff, a big market advantage.