Alisa Cromer is a local media entrepreneur covering local media service providers for local media companies. She launched Local Media Insider in March to solve a basic problem she was personally experiencing, which is how so many entrepreneurs get started.
“As a publisher, I discovered it was very difficult to find information on technology partners. There was no directory,” Cromer told me this week. “If you were looking for a new CMS, you’d have to gather contacts hither and dither.”
What launched as New Media Hub in 2009 has been completely retooled and launched as Local Media Insider in March. It’s a combination of news, analysis, research and directory for local publishers, be they daily or weekly newspapers, or broadcast stations. Some of the content is free, but Cromer keeps the best stuff behind a pay wall and is hoping that she will generate enough revenue from subscriptions to make ends meet.
Cromer, who did surveys to see who would buy subscriptions, points to sites like marketingprofs.com and marketingsherpa.com, which charge for premium content. “You’re not going to get fabulously weathly, but there is a business model to support one or two people,” Cromer says. “Maybe we do some ads, a webinar or two …”
Her initial plan to assemble a directory of technology service providers for local media publishers became just a starting point when she realized she had to get some traffic to it. She started adding industry news and quickly discovered “there were already lots and lots of news sites, but there wasn’t a site of practical, usable tips for working executives.”
Cromer’s new model is research-oriented instead of news oriented content. Each month she focuses on one topic and explores it in-depth.The first month’s topic was paid content (which was really helpful for her own site), then she did contests and is now working on all kinds of sales force issues. She partnered with ItzBelden, an offshoot of Belden & Associates, a well-known research and marketing firm in local media circles that is now led by Greg Harmon, and the two parties co-own the research which ItzBelden repackages and sells. (Correction: this post originally stated that Belden & Associates was the partner.)
An introductory subscription is free for the first three months (plus a chance to win an iPad) while a regular subscription costs $96 per year.
Cromer says there are a number of media associations interested in partnering with her on a white label version of the directory, which will have almost 400 listings soon. Categories include CMS, ad networks, mobile and video.
Cromer is encouraged by the 1-2 new subscribers that sign up every day, and by the feedback she is receiving on the site’s content. Following her roundup of all the new technology offerings at the NAA MediaXchange conference, she received an email from a big city media exec, thanking her for providing the insight he needed into a conference he couldn’t personally attend.