For decades they were called the river of gold. Not any more thanks to more advertisers migrating classified ad spend online. The Myhome property site launched late last week by PBL will put newspapers under further pressure, Saturday newspapers especially. Myhome is a good looking site with some nice features. But it’s not that different to the Fairfax Domain and News realestate.com.au sites. What Myhome achieves is a seat at the online property classified ad table. It also dilutes interest in the print classifieds and this is the challenge for newsagents.
Newsagents have no national strategy for accessing online revenue. The best opportunity so far is the Find It website I launched last year and which is still in beta (free) release. Unfortunately, newsagents seem uninterested in making Find It a success and thereby tapping into online revenue. Newsagents can still sign up here. It’s free.
Well I wonder what age group and type of person you are interviewing ? Most of the pictures you display of your staff show them as appearing to be in their late teens – the prime age for University study. Do you really expect people with university aspirations to consider a career as an assistant in a newsagency in any way comparable ?
Equally you can’t expect students in need of funds to support themselves through their studies to be up-front about the fact that they will take any job (your job) until something more suitable comes up. Welcome to the real world of low unemployment !
Fred, Not sure what your comment has to do with this post.
You might have meant it for the post about the challenges finding employees. None of the team members in photos posted here are in their teens. Indeed we have two team members in their teens, one 40+, one 30+ and the rest between 21 and 30.
What we are looking for is someone keen for a career in retail or IT or both since we have a career path to offer across 50+ positions in our businesses. Someone who has not been put to sleep working at a major retailer.
Mark
Does online real estate advertising really divert from newspapers? I thought the online ads were so cheap, and so many people were still using the newspaper for open house times, that they were only a small part of the advertising budget. It’s yet another real estate site that doesn’t disrupt the industry.
Vincent, I was just reading the other day (I can’t find it now but will have a look) that 80% of people now use the internet as their primary means of house hunting. It is true people still use newspapers for open time research, mainly because the functionality to do so on the main web sites don’t quite work well yet. Newspapers are a minor partner in real estate advertising now.