A blog on issues affecting Australia's newsagents, media and small business generally. More ...

Author: Mark Fletcher

Australia Post Optus surcharge benefit

I talked with a customer over the weekend who wanted to pay two Optus bills. She was explaining that she came to our store because we did not charge a surcharge on Optus bill payment like the Government owned Australia Post retail outlet opposite my shop. Given that one bill was 55 cents, the payment surcharge from Australia Post is more than the bill.

I hope that Optus consider how newsagents are helping their customers save money when they make the final decision on whether to cut the commission they pay us for mobile phone recharge. The talk is that they will cut us from 8% to 5%. If that happens newsagents are less like to to support taking Optus bill payments for no surcharge.

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Australia Post

Confusing newsagency brands

There is some confusion among newsagents, would-be newsagents and even suppliers about newsagency brands. Until recently there was Newspower, newsXpress and Nextra.

Confusion has arisen from Nextra’s launch of two sub brands – Nextra express and News extra. I’m particularly suspicious about their choice of Nextra express as it is very close in name to newsXpress of which I am a Director and shareholder. I would have preferred the Nextra experts demonstrate their skill by coming up with a more unique name.

For the record, newsXpress has nothing to do with Nextra express or indeed any of the other groups. Our stores are called newsXpress and nothing else.

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Newsagency challenges

Ink and toner sales boost

Our Ink and Toner promotion – 20,000 flyers in letterboxes around our centre – is generating excellent sales. The success of the promotion certainly reinforces the importance of promotion outside your four walls. The campaign has been so successful that we’re going to relay our ink offering to broaden our offering beyond what we have today:

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This space is generating a better return than our more traditional stationery offering thanks to the promotion.

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Stationery

Trading cards – good habit based product

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While a tiny category, trading cards are a great habit based product for newsagency who play in the space. In my store our trading card range brings regulars back. We know from sales data that they produce efficient, deeper basket, sales. That we have the product on consignment is even better from a cash flow perspective.

Habit based product is important to newsagents as we deal with the challenges of falling newspaper and flat magazine sales.

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Uncategorized

Free footy tipping competition – AFL and NRL

Tower Systems is hosting a free footy tipping competition again this year and you’re welcome to join in. To join the NRL competition click here. To join the AFL competition click here. First prize is $300, second prize is $150 and third prize is $50. Results are accessible weekly so a boost to your pride is the real reward.

Gavin Williams, the exalted Grand Poobah of the Tower Systems Footy Competition Committee has decreed the following rules:

1. Tips must be in by 5:30pm EST on the evening before the first game of the round, either Friday’s or Thursday’s. (No late tips will be accepted this year, no exceptions)

2. Failure to enter you tips will see you get the lowest score of the round minus 1 tip. (So if the lowest score tipped for the round was a 0 you will receive a score of -1 for the round)

3. You must be a Newsagent, work at a newsagency, or be a friend of Tower to be eligible to register.

4. All eligible users must register before the start of the season (the first game is on Friday 30th March).

5. Have fun.

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Uncategorized

Computerworld reports on our RSVP SEO search result complaint

Liz Tay has written a good story for Computerworld about the manipulation of Google results in favour of Fairfax’s RSVP dating site using our 3loves brand. Tay looks at all sides and has been successful in getting comments from most of those involved. I am happy with how she has covered the story.

Fairfax and Commission Monster, the Affiliate marketing company contracted by Fairfax / RSVP, claim to be victims of a rogue affiliate. I don’t know if that is true. All I know is that the campaign was running for at least two months before I outed it here and that Commission Monster and their trading partners ought to have discovered it themselves and stopped it.

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Blogging

Brain Awareness Week support from Puzzler

puzzler.JPGIt’s good to see the Puzzler folk to run a special offer which supports Brain Awareness Week this week. Crossword and puzzle titles are ideal for promoting brain awareness issues.

Brain Awareness Week is an international effort organized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives.

We embrace every awareness week opportunity through the year which has a connection with our range. While there is a business value in the promotion our support also demonstrates a community connection which you don’t see as often at our competitors such as Coles, Woolworths and Australia Post.

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magazines

Newsagent attacks in Newcastle

Click on the picture to watch a video a newsagent has loaded to YouTube of two people suspected of involvement in a spate of robberies on newsagencies around Newcastle in the last week.

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All police stations in the Newcastle area are aware of the spate of attacks and would welcome any information which could assist.

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Newsagency challenges

Health and fitness magazines strong

DSC00502.JPGOur decision to create a new health / healthy living area between food and home magazines is paying off. Sales for the titles in this new space are up significantly over the last month. While that may in part due to a more prominent position in our busiest magazine aisle, based on the browsing we see I’d say it has more to do with a more appropriate adjacency.

In creating this new space, we merges titles from two locations into a third single location.

I see the location of magazine categories as fluid. That is, location is determined by changes in the marketplace. They provide a sense that the business is moving forward. While some customers don’t want change, these same customers will turn off the business at some point because it doesn’t change.

While the change is outside the MPA magazine layout guidelines, we take them as a guide onlyin the absence of a mroe appropriate layout – as we have now found.

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magazines

News Corp cuts newsagent margin, ignores fairness

advertiser.JPGTom and June Carter have run Glenside Newsagency in Adelaide for twenty years. It’s a strong home delivery and retail business with over 2,000 home delivery customers, 19 sub agents and two substantial retail outlets. Tom and June have been faithful agents for Advertiser Newspapers, the local arm of News Corp., actively marketing their product in an effort to grow retail and home delivery sales of the Adelaide Advertiser and the Sunday Mail.

A News representative last week advised Tom and June that the supply arrangement they had personally cultivated with Jackson Motor Inn was to be replaced by a corporate arrangement between a company called IPG and Jackson Motor Inn. The current arrangement provides Tom and June 25% of the cover price. The new arrangement will provide them with 10%. They have been told to continue delivering newspapers but for less money. To be fair the News representative said there would be less work because there would not be any returns. The few minutes saves each week do not warrant a chang to the financial arrangements.

This decision by News cuts Tom and June’s margin by 60% for that customer. Tom and June deliver to seven other motels which could be next in this move by News to cut their margin.

While I understand the obligation of News is to drive the share price, it has an obligation to its trading partners of long standing as well as to the community in which it exists. Taking money from small businesses like this, forcing them to carry the cost of a corporate deal, is poor form by News. This is not the Aussie fair go News touts in their pages. This action is unjust and socially irresponsible.

Tom and June cannot pass on the revenue cut forced on them since their costs for delivering newspapers to the motel have not changed.

Newsagencies are finely balanced businesses, relying on many small transactions everyday. Chipping away at the revenue base by publishers, such ads this move by News, devalues the channel. It will make selling newsagencies harder. It will also force newsagents to work longer hours and, as a result, put their health at greater risk.

News ought to revisit their arrangements with IPG. The money that this partnership is taking out of the newsagency channel is hurting many small businesses.

On a side issue, given that News says there will be no returns, does this mean that unused copies are treated as sales in circulation data and therefore possibly overstate circulation data? It’s a valid question given that this IPG company is responsible for similar hotel arrangements in other states.

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Newsagency challenges

Notebook move works, sells out

We moved Notebook magazine three weeks to next to our weeklies, along with Real Living and Better Homes and Gardens. While all three have benefited from the move, Notebook has benefited the most. We sold out. These three titles challenge location guidelines – hence our decision to try them across with the weeklies. Our shopping basket data suggested this is where they belonged.

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magazines

Windows XP Ultimate Guide old hat

winxp-guide.JPGThis magazine ought never have been released. No one wants to get started with Windows XP now. It’s old had. Years old hat in fact. The 8 copies sent to my newsagency with a price tag of $19.95 is a waste of my cash. We did not even put them on the shelf. We currently have sufficient titles covering XP and don’t need new stock.

If we (newsagents) were organised and had a magazine czar controlling what titles we permitted into our network the magazine distributors could not send through something like this Ultimate Guide to Windows XP.

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magazines

Why would Fairfax / RSVP target my business?

I have been thinking about why Fairfax would allow an affiliate marketing campaign to run which specifically targets my 3loves free online dating website. (3loves is one of several sites we have launched to provide, in part, newsagents with access to some revenue from online advertising.)

While it is possible that Fairfax would not have known that an affiliate of Commission Monster – the affiliate services provider engaged by Fairfax – was running such a campaign, they ought to have known. Any business would want to know how their brand is represented in an advertising mix. Or, they ought to.

Anyway, why would Fairfax let this happen because it did happen, for at least two months? Not just to us but to a range of other tiny and not so tiny online dating sites. All these competitors of RSVP were targeted in a marketing campaign which was designed to move traffic to Fairfax’s RSVP site.

Profit is the answer. RSVP is highly profitable for Fairfax. It’s Australia’s largest online dating / personals site. Based on membership numbers and the charges for using some services on the site I’d suggest it is likely to be among the most profitable and therefore important to the Fairfax bottom line.

3loves is free. What RSVP charges for we offer free. We will always be free. 3loves exists to provide is a platform at which we can advertise Find It, our online classifieds site.

Even though 3loves is minuscule compared to RSVP, it must pose a risk. Why else would someone, either inside Fairfax, inside Commission Monster or elsewhere, specifically target 3loves? There is no reason other than a view that we, at some point, are a threat to RSVP.

What the last week has proven is the scams than are being used in the name of major brands, with their knowledge or without, in an effort to screw with Google, Yahoo and other search results. Some activities are outright scams. Others are done under the name of Search Engine Optimisation or as one could call it – Scam Everyone Online.

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Ethics

Newsagents hit by armed robbery wave

Five newsagents in the Newcastle area (NSW) have been faced armed robberies in the last seven days. There appear to be two men involved. The first is a male wearing a dark hooded jumper under a jacket with stripes on the sleeve. He has a thin moustache and brandishes a large blade knife. He appears to have a bald or shaven head. The second is a male, a big chap. with a bald or shaven head. Newsagents in the area are working with the police.

I’m hearing about more attacks on newsagents than I can recall. The police in each state provide training for retailers to ensure they understand how to respond and what they need to do to facilitate catching the perpetrator. It would be timely for newsagents to review their security arrangements.

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Newsagency challenges

Cross depatment magazine merchandising award

At the Magazine Publishers of America Awards this week, retailer Wegmans received an Award for cross department promotion. Here’s what the MPA press release says:

In the promotion/cross-merchandising category, Wegmans was the Best Practices Award recipient, for implementing and supporting creative cross-merchandising opportunities across various departments, and for having a definitive cross-merchandising and promotion calendar

It’s essential that we promote magazines outside the traditional magazine retail space in our stores. Likewise it’s critical we promote other products and services within the magazine space.

Wegmans is a great business – a wonderful place to shop. Their website gives an indication of how ahead of their game they are.

I’ve talked here before about the importance of co-location. It is a very effective way for newsagents to drive sales of weekly titles. We know from sales data that these are affected by a steep decay in many newsagencies. I see some stores where 70% of sales for New Idea and Woman’s Day occur on a Monday – making what you do for the titles the other six days of minimal relevance.

It’s good to see the US publishers association reward in-store promotion in such a specific way.

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magazines

Denial of service attack continues

We now know that the people behind the denial of service attack against this blog earlier today are also behind a denial of service attack against our Find It free online classifieds website today. Find It is hosted on a different server in a different state. That the same party is attacking two seeming externally unrelated but under common ownership sites is evidence that the attacked are targeted against us specifically and not the result of random internet crime.

UPDATE: (14:24) We have reported the matter to the Australian Federal Police and to the Australian High Tech Crime Centre. We have also been in contact with the Panama based company which issues the IP address to someone claiming to be in St Petersberg Russia from where the attack aparently came.

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Uncategorized

The punishment of a magazine distributor

My newsagency has been trading with Network Services for more than eleven years. Our accounts record is good. Our sales record is excellent – considerably above industry average. We received our February statement on February 7. This came with a due date of February 20. Our accounts office received a call March 5 from Network to remind us the statement had not been paid. This is the first and only reminder we received. The reminder came after Network had stopped supply to us. We paid the account by electronic transfer immediately after the call from Network. We did not receive any Network product Wednesday (March 6). We’re told it will take up to two weeks for supply to get back on track.

It is disappointing that Network act so aggressively and swiftly against a trading partner of eleven years standing. They had no reason to believe from our trading history with them that they would not be paid.

That they called us after they had implemented their economic harm against us is disappointing. A phone call prior to doing this would have seen us fix our mistake immediately. It’s as if they did not want this done before they gave us a lash and inflicted pain.

There is no excuse for our late payment but that does not give Network the right to deliberately harm our business this way. They have never been out of pocket from us. There is no reason for them to suspect that we will not pay. As events showed, the non payment was an accounting oversight which was immediately corrected.

Through my software company I am involved in the Just In Time trial with ACP / Network. I have personally so far invested more than $10,000 in this trial by allocating staff time to work with the 80+ of my clients involved in the trial. This investment is for the benefit of ACP / Network and the newsagents involved. I am glad to be involved.

I look at my relationship with ACP / Network holistically. I wish they would do the same.

Footnote. To add pain to the wound from Network, the March statement which has just arrived is missing between $3,000 and $4,000 in credits. We will call them to get these missing credits reinstated.

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magazines

Denial of service attack takes us down

Our blog has been down for seven hours today as a result of a sustained denial of service attack. This malicious attack took down all websites on the server on which we are hosted. The attacks were in the form of thousands of accesses per minute against the comment script for the blog. Until we resolve this we have disabled comments. I apologise for this and hope to have comments live again within the next week.

The attack was apparently out of Russia. However, it is possible to ‘spoof’ the IP address to hide where the real attck is from.

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Uncategorized

Does this IP address out a Fairfax insider?

My earlier post about the manipulation of Google results in a way which benefited Fairfax’s RSVP resulted in some aggressive comments. Especially by one seopro. They have been silent since I claimed they placing their comments from within Fairfax. Here’s what we know about the IP address from which the comments were posted:

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Seems like from inside Fairfax to me. Maybe that’s why seopro has gone quiet.

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Ethics

US newspaper real estate bubble to burst?

Chicago Business reports that US newspapers are reporting single digit declines in real estate advertising. Publishers say the downturn is cyclical. Industry observers say the downturn reflects a long term change by vendors and real estate agents.

This space is hotter in Australia than ever with PBL now in the space pushing their MyHome offering, News Ltd strong with realestate.com.au and Fairfax pushing their strong Domain. Across at the independent end is zeroagents – for vendors who want to really change the way they sell their proiperty.

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Newsagency challenges

Stuck on newspaper ads hide the news

afr-mar7.JPGToday’s Australian Financial Review has a red stuck on ad on the front page – covering part of the story about Australians who perished in the Garuda plane crash in Indonesia. As the photo shows it’s a bold ad which pulls focus above anything else on page one. The advertiser would be happy.

I’d be interested to hear from editors and journalists about this ad being placed in front of a page one story. I’m certain they would be unhappy, especially when they lift the ad off and it takes part of the paper with it as I have seen happen several times.

At least this ad is not across the masthead as Fairfax tends to do when running the ads on The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Back in 2004, I was involved in informal discussions with News Ltd and Fairfax and whether newsagents could run ads on plastic bags used in the home delivery of newspapers. Their position at the time was an emphatic no. One argument put was that they could not have such advertising detracting from their product. Every time I see one of these intrusive litter causing post it note type ads I am reminded of their 2004 position.

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Newsagency challenges

Fairfax launches Brisbane ‘paper’

Fairfax launched Brisbane Times today. This is a copy of other successful Fairfax sites connected with The Age and Sydney Morning Herald except and that it has no local newspaper driving traffic. The site design and navigation are excellent – typical Fairfax in terms of their online news offerings. Their launch video is particularly interesting in that it pitches hard on the theme of a “new perspective” – in a long term one paper town it’s message I’d expect to resonate.

This move makes for interesting times in Brisbane – a new daily website from Fairfax and the soon to launch mX from News Limited. The question is which cityn is next on both fronts?

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Media disruption
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