OPRAH Winfrey has been quietly beefing up her cyber-muscle.
In the last few months, TV’s reigning Daytime Queen has personally devoted hours of her own time towards drumming up interest in her Web site, Oprah.com.
Specifically, she’s volunteered two hours every Monday night since March, to appear live online in a 10-week “webinar” (a seminar conducted over the Web, get it?) with self-help guru Eckhart Tolle, whose book Winfrey has been promoting.
Altogether, those sessions have been downloaded more than 27 million times to date, according to officials at Harpo, Winfrey’s production company.
“Oprah has made a larger commitment to developing original content for the site,” a spokesman for Winfrey confirmed.
In the long run, Winfrey’s stake in the site will shift next year, when Discovery Networks, her partner in the new Oprah Winfrey Network, will take over the site – although it’s understood she will remain heavily involved.
And her efforts are not expected to be squandered. Discovery has become known throughout the media industry for devoting almost as much care and effort to its Web sites as it does to its cable TV networks.
Oprah.com, meanwhile, now regularly ranks among the most popular celebrity sites on the Internet, according to Alexa.com, the public Web information company.
To help boost traffic for the already popular Web site, starting today Winfrey will post episodes – including video and audio – of her weekly XM radio show, “Soul Series.” Until now, fans only had access to the show if they paid for a subscription to the satellite radio service.
Winfrey is also using the Web site to provide a “summer session” of the Eckhart Tolle webinar. Starting June 16, readers who are picking up the 61st Oprah’s Book Club selection “A New Earth” for the first time or continuing their studies will experience a rebroadcast of the 10-week weekly webcast series through August 18. Harpo has also been attempting to tempt registered users of Oprah.com to spend more time on the site via daily e-mails that promote various features.
It seems to be working.
So far this year, Oprah.com has averaged more than 92 million page views monthly – and averages more than 6.5 million unique visitors per month.
That’s compared to last year, when the site averaged 71 million page views monthly and approximately 4.9 million unique visitors per month.