Comments on: Backfence Suspends Operations

By: Hyperlocal: More Than News « Your Suspect

Hyperlocal: More Than News « Your Suspect — Sun, 18 May 2008 14:32:36 +0000

[...] the recent news about Backfence shutting down, there’s been an awful lot of chatter in the blogosphere about this “hyperlocal” [...]

By: Where is My Hyperlocal Welcome Wagon? » The Progress Bar

Where is My Hyperlocal Welcome Wagon? » The Progress Bar — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 22:36:34 +0000

[...] founded right here in Boston, doesn’t even have Charlestown listed as a neighborhood. Backfence expired recently burning through $3 million in the process. I or nobody I asked had heard of it until [...]

By: earlpearl

earlpearl — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:56:58 +0000

Some time ago I inquired about buying advertising for my DC region business. In contacting the sales staff the options were limited, the price was high relative to local alternatives/reach/audience, etc. The content didn’t seem to grab a significant population.

As a small business operator I still get dramatically more consumer interest simply by having high serps rankings.

Local content with high rankings that can convert to high visibility in SE’s would be the optimal type of site IMHO.

Dave

By: Ross Notes » “nobody has figured out yet how to make a successful, scalable business out of hyperlocal”, and bootstrapping the Mclean Blogosphere

Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:37:33 +0000

[...] company Backfence is shutting down it’s 13 community news sites in a few days. Check out the comprehensive write-up at Screenwerk, Terry Heaton has a great “lessons learned” post, and Scott Karp writes [...]

By: marcelo antelo

marcelo antelo — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 19:08:29 +0000

I´m already doing an hyper-local example of website (in fact since 1996) and at my experience I understand that without Google AdSense and affiliates programs there´s little room to act.

We are at Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. To list some, we have the competition of the big guys Yellow Pages, Google (others) and 3 local competitors (all of the 3 publish local printed newspapers).

The local advertisers, the business owners, are so much involved with their own business and his current problems that they simple don´t have time or, even, understanding of any kind of media (including our internet) that when they think about advertisement they generally think about YellowPages or an outdoor, period.

At this moment of my site, we have aproached the top of AdSense´s otimization, so we can´t make more money from it, without more traffic, and with it paying clicks of 1, 2, 3, 4 cents is time to change, so we starting to contact the big advertisers aproaching a list of them, mostly national advertisers.

At the other side to the small business owners we are planning to pay a visit, give’m our card and tell them that their listing is already at the site, give then the URL and ask if they are not interested in a more visible placement. Visits one by one, on a regular basis, by bike from our own salesforce.

This is will be the 3rd time we are trying to catch the local market, who knows this will be the right momment!

By: Goodbye Backfence « eNeighbors.com Blog

Goodbye Backfence « eNeighbors.com Blog — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 18:58:23 +0000

[...] might have heard — Backfence.com is shutting its doors. As expected, the industry insiders (Greg Sterling, Peter Krasilovsky, etc.) have commented most eloquently. However, Perry Evans has posted my [...]

By: Online local Monetization Challenges and Solutions - Dave Naffziger’s Blog

Online local Monetization Challenges and Solutions - Dave Naffziger’s Blog — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 19:21:50 +0000

[...] shutdown has been well covered, however wasn’t much of a surprise. Greg Sterling sums up the business model challenges in local: The business model (and specifically sales) is the fundamental challenge in local. Judy’s [...]

By: Perry

Perry — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:18:18 +0000

From what I have seen of local ad networks, the “best fit” to date seems to be what Eric Chandler is starting to create at SuperPages. It’s a fairly direct copy of AdSense, but at the “true local” level. The reach of YP is the broadest of any channel, and account & category coverage beat IAC hands down (as of today).

Two things distinguish the new SuperPages strategy - so far - one, a willingness to be mashed up with any and all, and the related approach of shared revenue. They are related because when you adopt a shared revenue model on performance based advertising you don’t need to monitor and manage the search network performance the way paid per-search models do. (thereby giving you a distribution growth model). That’s the intent behind the strategy, I’d bet.

Now, both of these points are “just price policies” so this can be easily duplicated by the other national YP networks. The advantage still goes to the fundamentals of the YP providers, and they are beginning to step up.

By: bob

bob — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 03:42:39 +0000

digital city’s 11-year-old pioneering model of member-generated content right down to the ‘hoods of some of 300 large and small cities had modest to decent success… aol is now rolling parts of that model into its search product to deliver similar in a new form. we’ll see if it works.

By: James

James — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 01:27:23 +0000

Seems that IAC may have a real opportunity in creating a locally-focussed ad network. IAC has already built up a substantial local sales force as a result of CitySearch and their other local properties.

I don’t know how much IAC is selling out CitySearch and their other local sites, but if their advertisers are demanding more inventory, creating even a small ad network with a few local sites could be a great source of revenue for them.

If IAC doesn’t do it, someone else will. But it’s much, much easier if you already have the sales force in place.