cc
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Walker, I think CU is great. If I were describe it to others I would say it was more an interactive columbus community blog which feeds on local stories. This probably has to do with the layout.
When I think of hyperlocal news this comes to mind:
I guess there is overlap and when people start speaking buzzwords like 'hyperlocal news' it probably is limiting as we probably don't need to put name tags on everything.
gramarye
In Exile
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I also wouldn't classify CU as "hyperlocal" for a different reason: Its purview is at least as broad as the Metro section of the Dispatch (or whatever they're calling it these days). The focus might be on downtown, but I've seen things from the surrounding six counties popping up from time to time.
CU doesn't try to be a national or international media source, but I think that model--a newspaper trying to cover local, state, national, and international news all at once--might be the real casualty of the ongoing media revolution we're experiencing. It's just so hard for one organization to be all of those things--and so easy for consumers to shift from one media source to another in the age of the Internet. In two clicks, I could be reading international news from basically any country I want. It's not like in the old days where I'd have to really put in some serious effort to get my hands on a copy of the London Times, and I'd basically never see an English-language media source from India or Japan unless I had access to a major library or university.
Columbusite
Minneapolis
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As much as I can't stand the local news, they do cover parts of Columbus that are never mentioned here and for which there is no hyperlocal news alternative. Unfortunately with the local news as their only outlet it's most often a shooting at a bar of some sort on streets like Lockbourne or way down E 5th Ave. Most locals in these hoods that are trying improve them are just way out of touch with no grasp of how to utilize the internet to effectively get their news out there and establish communications with the rest of the city. I have no problem tooting my own horn, since I've single-handedly provided a narrative for these places where they would otherwise have just been forgotten altogether.
JonMyers
HCMC ✈
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GBKS wrote >> JonMyers, do you think a local ad network would do the job to fund local sites? Something like The Deck but for Columbus only? I've been thinking about this a bit recently, since I'm running a local site (Now in Columbus), and it just seems like a generic solution like AdSense won't do the trick.
I'm honestly not sure. A few things that make ad networks like The Deck work are that it's a selective network targeted at designers, in tech, and that the network is heavily curated.
There's a certain aesthetic focused on UX with sites in their network carrying those ads and there's a certain aesthetic with those advertising on there.
I usually click on their ads just to see what the design of the advertiser's site is like.
Fusion Ads are another ad network I click on their ads just to see the sites.
Anyhow, unless you design all the ads and are extremely selective, my guess is that it would be tough to make a network like that work for hyper local sites.
I agree, Adsense is a waste of time unless you're getting at least 100,000 unique visitors a month. Even then, in that case you'll likely only get somewhere between $1,000 - $4,000 a month depending on how the site is optimized for CTRs and the type of content you're serving.
In most cases if a site owner with some traffic is lucky they might get a hundred bucks a month. If they're lucky.
Honestly, if you want to make money with a site, the number one thing you can do is - get those email addresses, double opt-in verify them and build a relationship with that list by giving them good bits of content. Train the list to expect your email, just like tuning into your favorite show at exactly 8PM every Monday night.
Send good stuff and live and die by consistency.
People forget the power of email. Email use was up about 30% in 2009. A lot of that increase is attributed to smart phones. For some reason people don't mind reading email on their smart phones, whereas they might find it annoying on their laptops, home computers, and may choose to skip it.
With any site you should have a diversified approach to generating revenue and you should have a diversified traffic strategy.
With monetizing a hyper local site, I would consider who is going there, why are they going there - and always have the user's intention at the forefront of my mind. What's their intent? To socialize, are they looking for a specific piece of information and if I help them while focusing on their intentions is their an opportunity to create a win win for everyone.
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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cc wrote >>
Walker, I think CU is great. If I were describe it to others I would say it was more an interactive columbus community blog which feeds on local stories. This probably has to do with the layout.
I wasn't trying to describe CU as a hyperlocal news site... just saying that there is a consistent stream of in-house new content that makes it more than just a "news aggregator" as you and Jon were labeling it. I do try to shy away from labels (when people call it a "blog" I sometimes cringe a bit) but I think "news aggregator" is just as misleading. If anything CU is an open online community forum that serves different purposes to different people. I'd like to think that the news content we produce is high enough quality for some folks to see the site as being a hyperlocal news site if that's what they're looking for.
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