Posted in Online Publishing Strategy	August 31, 2007

This beta Mequoda System is focusing on developing high quality products to retain customers

Note: This is part two of a five part series on the Mequoda Publisher of the Year nominees. You can tell us which new Mequoda System is best serving its audience by clicking here to vote.

Have you ever walked onto a plane, stopped at the first seats and gazed at the luxury of first class? The oversized leather seats are both status symbols and cozy beds on what is sure to be a bumpy ride.

If you've stared in awe at the elite seats, wondering how you could ever afford such extravagance, then you may want to check out Flight Bliss Daily.

One of the newest Mequoda Systems, Flight Bliss focuses on travelers that want to save money while riding in the business class and first class sections of the plane.

Tips are delivered daily via the website and an email newsletter, alerting travelers to clever ways to get better seats, better prices and how to leverage their way into a free upgrade.

Download our Online Publishing Secrets special report for FREE and learn the seven Internet marketing strategies that magazine and newsletter publishers are using to make money online

Website's Offerings

"We've just gone to a daily [schedule]. You're sort of catching us in a transition...We're kind of in a rocky soft launch phase," said Matthew J. Bennett, a.k.a. Mr. Upgrade, publisher of Flight Bliss and First Class Flyer.

Organization is simple at Flight Bliss because the website only offers three products.

The first is Flight Bliss' free tips, served daily on the website and in an email newsletter. Topics include "better seats," "better fares" and "upgrade strategy." Bennett's other two products are premiums.

One is First Class Flyer, an 11-year-old newsletter that gives subscribers "unpublished airfares, upgrade strategies, loyalty program loopholes, and much more," according to the website.

The other paid product is the London Flight Guide, which helps flyers score better deals when flying to the UK capital. There are plans to publish a Paris Flight Guide in the near future, and possibly other guides later on, Bennett said.

Both of the paid products have dedicated landing pages, which Bennett usually AB tests, he said. Driving traffic to those pages has not always been easy, though.

Flight Bliss has "dabbled" in PPC, and "SEO is something we've not been successful with yet," Bennett said.

The greatest generator of leads for Bennett is paid advertising, even though the campaigns usually start as a loss, he said.

"They're all day one ROI losers for the most part, but through retention and renewals through year one, and year two, and year three, we come into profitability," he said.

The retention strategy is fulfilled by "developing a world class product" that tells readers exactly what they need to know to save more money on flights and to sit in the front more often, Bennett said.

Flight Bliss is only in its beta stage online, but once its online marketing systems start pumping more website traffic, it's likely that a lot more people will discover its "world class products" and become loyal customers.