Attendees heard our message loud and clear. Run your website like your newspaper….profit must come first.

Key take-aways that seemed to resonate the most:

• Whoever acts as Web general manager, VP Interactive/content, editor, etc….must have their compensation tied to digital profitability and local market share….NOT page views or other soft metrics.
• CPM selling at the local level is no longer effective, and is only getting worse.
• Ad units and page layout need to be cleaner and more advertiser friendly. ( just like the newspaper )
• Reliance on 3rd party ad or remnant networks need to be reduced or eliminated.
• Newspapers need better awareness of the new, digital competitors like Groupon, Patch, Reach Local, etc.
• Patch may not be a newspaper killer, but they do execute local tactics that newspapers should adopt.
• Compensation, management structure and work flow must be re-aligned to embrace a digital first culture.
• Let’s stop talking about, or over-researching the problem. Let’s put sales & business 101 into action.
• Print is never going away. Yet digital will be the one tool that helps our industry the most.

INLAND PRESS: New Digital Competitors 3.18.11

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It was called: The  New Business Models for News  conference.

I was invited to do a session focused on helping hyper-local web publishers, build realistic business models in order to grow revenue. Here’s the actual presentation:

cuny preso 1.10FINAL

Related posts:

1. Potts, Jarvis, CUNY. Hyper Local Revenue? Back in 2009, J-school professor; Jeff Jarvis, and Mark Potts of BackFence fame asked me to contribute some online sales expertise to their ongoing research in hyper-local business models for...
2. 7 Habits of Profitable, Hyper Local News Still no sustainable business model for online news? That's crazy talk! Quite often, we read reports of online editorial success and greater activity in the hyper-local space. Far too many...
3. Starting Hyper-Local News and Ad Networks Whether you’re a big media company, or an indie-journalist/content creator…. participating in or forming your own Hyper-Local Advertising & Content Network could be critical to your online success. FACT #1: Small businesses are quickly moving...