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Dorian Benkoil
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- Dorian Benkoil
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Good points, Jane, and glad to see the discussion pushed forward like this. Big question for all on the journos wiki list -- or in the mainstream newspapers -- is what the financials are, for real. What do the books show, and is there an apparent pa…
If you charge nothing for users (viewers, readers, your community) to view your site, can you actually make a profit? Maybe. We’re going over some of the ways in our Business Assessment group and on our wiki: sell advertising, use vertical ad networ…
Seems the solution is to stop dealing with a network that violates their own promises or terms -- and let others know. No?
A very smart publisher of a local site I spoke to, Barry, told me it's important in running ads from networks to make sure you segment them carefully to specific areas of the site, AND to block categories or brands that will end up competing with wh…
This is a project to develop a local advertising assessment tool for jurnos who want to find out if a local Web-based news organization could be financially supported by local ads.
Profile Information
- What kind of org do you work for?
- news organization
- What do you do?
- journalist, businessperson, advertising/marketing professional, educator
- What strengths/expertise do you have to offer?
- business and editorial strategy, assessment, measurement
- What kind of help/insight do you hope to get from this community?
- business models - and to add my help to developing them
Dorian Benkoil's Blog
Does Your News Want to Be Free?
If you charge nothing for users (viewers, readers, your community) to view your site, can you actually make a profit? Maybe. We’re going over some of the ways in our Business Assessment group and on our wiki: sell advertising, use vertical ad networks, get people to come to events and pay and/or get the events sponsored, sell anci… Continue
Posted on July 10, 2009 at 8:50am —
Comment Wall (1 comment)
- At 3:38pm on June 10, 2009,
GP Hughes said…
- I've thought often of the kind of major sponsor model, particularly when I'm fantasizing about how to expand the model of community I created in Paulding County Georgia.
My greatest problem is that being in Paulding county Georgia, I have little access to major sponsors :)
When I started Paulding.com back in 2003, I had not seen a pure-play hyperlocal news/social network Internet startup along the lines of the online communities that initially grew up around ebay. (From 1997-2000 I was encouraging the development and sponsorhip of these communities for the Times-Mirror's Auctionuniverse.com. My efforts recorded a new member cost of under $5.00/member vs. over $30 for members acquired through other approaches. In essence, I was guerrilla marketing to folks whose primary effort was selling on ebay.)
Almost totally dependent on the audience for content, these sites organized along the lines of a forum.
Hyperlocal applications were routinely unsuccessful in the earlier days of the mile-wide/inch-tall Internet. Hyperlocal required the market penetration of the net exceed 70 percent of households and even in wired locations, that really didn't happen until about 2003. (We had a survey of high school juniors done by a community college that showed 90 percent had Internet access at home in 2003).
I found that out the hard way having initially launched paulding.com in 2000 ... I re-launched the site in 2003 and today, in a market of 130,000 residents. today we have over 18000 registered members and google analytics says we have roughly 50,000 absolute uniques a month. (Compete gives us 32,000+ absolute uniques for May). I figure our household penetration is in the 30-40 percent range.
This was done on the proverbial shoestring and smile. (I did have some news background in the market as I had been a reporter/editor for a leading weekly from 1989-97.)
The point being the forum/news/social network concept is cheap and relatively easy to replicate.
The challenge is to find the right kind of sponsor. By that, I mean a sponsor that understands this kind of effort is less proprietary and more community.
I have some ideas I would like to share in that regard. If you would like to brainstorm a bit
click here. I think it might be productive.
GP Hughes
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