By Diana Huff
Find White Papers is a technology-focused white paper site that also accepts podcasts, webcasts, webinars, and analyst reports. The site covers more than 300 technology-related topics (see http://www.findwhitepapers.com/popular-topics/ ).With 145,000 visitors each month, Find White Papers has nearly 35,000 registered members. According to Directory Manager Vince Turk, reader demographics run the gamut from IT security and network admins to software developers and senior managers.
Find White Papers recently released its sister syndication site, “eMarketingPapers.com,” for online marketing professionals.
Since its launch in 2004, Find White Papers has updated its business model. Similar to KnowledgeStorm and Bitpipe, users can now become members and access all content, rather than registering for a white paper each time they access the site.
The company has changed its advertising policy to a flat-fee cost structure based on the number of leads generated. Advertisers can post white papers at no cost. However, for lead information, a number of options are available, with costs starting at $30 per lead. Advertisers can choose geographical, company or job title filters at additional cost.
According to Turk, Find White Papers will work with advertisers to tailor a lead generation program to a specific budget. “What we tell advertisers is that it’s the filters that make the difference. The more filters you have, the fewer leads you’ll get - but they’ll be more highly targeted. We also encourage advertisers to list more than one asset.”
White papers can be listed in the company’s various weekly e-newsletters. Newsletter (and site) topics include networking, security, software development, IT management, wireless, knowledge management, enterprise applications, platforms, storage and data management.
Find White Papers scrubs all leads “manually” (meaning a real person looks at each lead) in order to remove duplicates or bad names. In addition, the company merges leads from advertisers’ multiple campaigns to show if prospects downloaded more than one asset. “If someone downloads your white paper and webinar, then you know you have a very interested prospect,” states Turk.
Unlike the larger sites, Find White Papers does not partner with third parties. According to Turk, this is a real benefit for advertisers as campaigns are aimed at a highly targeted audience that isn’t distracted by other properties or sites.
The Find White Papers site features white papers from both large and small companies - “big” names include IBM, HP, and McAfee. Says Turk, “Although we redesigned the site with users in mind - because quite frankly, they were pretty frustrated with the old site - the redesign benefits our advertisers as well. Our new features, such as the completely redesigned abstract page, are all geared toward getting users to quickly download white papers. We anticipate download volumes going up as more people realize that once they register, they now have easy access to all of our assets.”
Bottom line: For advertisers with little or no syndication experience, Find White Papers is an ideal way to get started. The site and business model are both easy to use and understand. Although the Find White Papers site lacks the online reach of larger sites, the company provides a highly targeted, cost-effective method for reaching technology buyers
