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***I use CU and Columbus Foodie only because they are the ones I know mostly here in Columbus. I do NOT speak for either of them, even though I've used them as examples***
Something Jon Meyers said on the thread about RW RIP got me thinking. Why isn't the city offering to buy more websites?
Before you start calling me greedy and a whiny blogger, hear me out.
Judging purely upon Compete.com rankings (I am assuming they are equally out of whack for everyone; perhaps Cbus Foodie and Walker can shed light on how their stats are. for me, it shows about 1/5 of the actual unique visitors I get per month), Columbus Underground gets half the traffic as Experience Columbus. Columbus Foodie and I both get just over 1/3 the traffic of Experience Columbus, and we focus on only ONE topic. (see the traffic here; I only have 3 because Foodie and I are very close in rankings)
My budget is pretty much whatever extra money I happen to have lying around (which right now is practically nothing); I think Columbus Foodie's is about the same. And, although CU has quite a few advertisers these days (yay!), I am guessing the budget pretty much pays for Walker to sustain himself and his family.
In addition to those who read my site at RW, I have 1000 readers who read my site through aggregators. Experience Columbus has 78 Google subscribers (v. about 550 for Cbus Foodie and me; I have a Feedburner account which lets me see all the aggregators being used).
Experience Columbus' yearly budget is 7 million dollars. (based upon this article)
imagine if you add in sports and travel blogs.
None of us advertise (that I know of), so our traffic is nearly all viral or through search engines. We rarely print anything and don't put brochures or travel books in hotels, and we are pretty much 1 person operations.
Exp Cbus has seen 56% online growth this year, CU over 200% and RW over 110% - this could mean that we will eventually eclipse EC.
Now, an argument *could* be made that perhaps Exp. Cbus gets more "traffic" through written materials and I shouldn't be comparing the two, but I think my point is still valid. Bloggers in this city are doing tons of work voluntarily to promote our fair city. Yes, we do it for love and we'd do it for free, blah blah blah, but still, I have to ask:
Why doesn't the city buy some of our sites and pay us to keep them updated? Clearly we are doing something right, just imagine if we had a FRACTION of the budget Exp. Cbus has. I've talked to a lot of bloggers/online business owners about the huge difference 10K would make - a tiny amount in the grand scheme of things. Many of us want to do so much more but we just can't afford it. Why are they paying their people to blog (poorly, most of the time) instead of paying people who are good at it?
Instead of seeing bloggers as competition to the visitor's bureau or newspaper, why don't they help fund some of us so that we can work in tandem?
Go ahead, tell me I'm greedy. I've been called everything under the sun this week, so I'm pretty much immune by this point.
Launched in August 2010, TheMetropreneur.com is a local online resource devoted to small business development and entrepreneurship. Its aim is to tell the stories of Central Ohio's business community, foster regional economic development and assist entrepreneurs with its resource-heavy focus.