Comments on: AOL’s Patch Aims To Quintuple In Size By Year-End http://paidcontent.org/2010/08/17/419-aols-patch-aims-to-quintuple-in-size-by-year-end/ The economics of digital content Fri, 13 Dec 2013 18:54:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Jeff Hobbs http://paidcontent.org/2010/08/17/419-aols-patch-aims-to-quintuple-in-size-by-year-end/#comment-79859 Sat, 21 Aug 2010 17:57:08 +0000 http://paidcontent.wp.gostage.it/2010/08/17/419-aols-patch-aims-to-quintuple-in-size-by-year-end/#comment-79859 The fact that they know exactly how much each of their reporters made previously strongly suggests to me that they are low-balling and paying as low as they can get away with.

]]> By: ilamont http://paidcontent.org/2010/08/17/419-aols-patch-aims-to-quintuple-in-size-by-year-end/#comment-79858 Tue, 17 Aug 2010 15:00:27 +0000 http://paidcontent.wp.gostage.it/2010/08/17/419-aols-patch-aims-to-quintuple-in-size-by-year-end/#comment-79858 “Patch does says that it costs 1/25th the amount to run a Patch site that it does to operate a daily newspaper in the same town, even when costs associated with publishing a newspaper”

That’s great, but there are still some big hurdles for Patch in terms of making the most of that cost advantage:

1) Newspaper ad teams have a better chance of having strong relationships with local businesses than AOL

2) Building those relationships doesn’t scale, and many local businesses still don’t trust online advertising or listings (even local newspapers have trouble selling online inventory to their print clients)

3) Even when local businesses are interested in online, there are so many free or cheap alternatives out there (AdSense, Twitter, self-supported websites that show up in search). What’s the value that Patch is offering local advertisers? A chance that their banner might be read by someone checking out the Little League scores?

]]> By: jseattle http://paidcontent.org/2010/08/17/419-aols-patch-aims-to-quintuple-in-size-by-year-end/#comment-79857 Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:27:12 +0000 http://paidcontent.wp.gostage.it/2010/08/17/419-aols-patch-aims-to-quintuple-in-size-by-year-end/#comment-79857 My greatest fascination with Patch (given my neighborhood site in a big city) will be watching how they deal with the big cities. Maybe they’ll always work on the edges but I doubt it. I also doubt there will ever be a Patch Capitol Hill but who knows.

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