Jobs.com.au hit our TV screens a few months ago with a loud colourful ad promoting its new employment website. After spending what I suspect is a million or two on TV and outdoor media I read in today’s Australian Financial Review (p20) that administrators have been appointed. It was always going to be tough for jobs.com.au as they were playing in a crowded marketplace with some very successful operators, especially Seek. Jobs’ mistake was that they did not offer a point of difference, they brought online an expensive offline model.
What’s this got to do with newsagents? Our Find It online classifieds model is close to coming out of beta. Unlike Jobs, we’re horizontal, mainly free and providing a point of difference to traditional classifieds. Our retail partners are newsagents and here is the rub. Most newsagents are not engaging with us. Few have loaded their free business ad. Fewer have promoted the site. So, the T intersection I face requires a choice – to continue to develop Find It to provide, in part, a revenue stream for newsagents, or to ignore them and develop without them. Based on the 11,000 ads so far, newsagents are not crucial to the model. In the next two weeks I will decide which turn at the T intersection we will take.
That Find It has 11,000 ads and is growing pageviews daily is healthy for us.
Mark,
It would dissappoint me if you had to take the alternate route to make ‘Find It’ a success. We have been actively promoting ‘Find It’ since day one, with all the free giveaways for our customers. The free business add is still a success. ‘Google search’ for Beechworth Newsagency still produces our ‘Find it’ site as the first option. ‘Yahoo’ is even better, type in newagency and it shows Beechworth Newsagency on ‘Find It’as your first option. I am not sure of the penetration of our advertising and its success, however we are only 3000 strong in a small country town. Newsagents need to make this work, otherwise it will be another income stream and another opportunity lost.
I fear that if the turn you take is away from newsagents, the backlash from the same towards yourself will be unjustified and unwarranted.
I have a very small basic ad but I find it impossible to edit.
I have just tried a few searches they took a long time and none came up with anything.
I searched for a dog in Qld
Real estate in or near Redcliffe
a couple of other searchs said the server was playing up
David – go through the feedback o=contact at the site as the team will help with any issue. With 11,000 ads we know things are working well so it may be a local sett8ing issue.
Vaughan – newsagents need to show that they want this. I have offered profit share and generous commissions and less than 30 are actively engaged.