Absolutely. The group buying things are insane - There are 28 different sites in Toronto right now for group buying, with some of them having different deals for different areas of the city. One of them actually markets themselves as a "platform" giving new deal sites the ability to literally launch in a day.
In this type of business it is basically who can get their name out there the fastest in a local area - do that and you can walk away with this 40 million...
So the question is what's the next big (local) thing?!
Why aren't newspapers throwing themselves into partnership with group-buying sites? They have an instant audience and it could easily become a new revenue stream.
WagJag in Canada has done this - they have a partnership with Metroland it seems, which owns The Toronto Star among a TON of free papers in smaller areas. Now I don't know this for sure but I'm 99% certain that they use their personal sales agents for the newspapers (who already have contacts with the local business) and use them to sell the group buying. I'm sure they also get advertising credits for the $$ they have held back from their deals too.
One interesting thing I've seen here in Australia is that people actually still seem to read those NYPost-style daily local newspapers. Am I just imagining this? If not, maybe a tool to help newspapers create their own "deals" would be a decent business.
Comments
Absolutely. The group buying things are insane - There are 28 different sites in Toronto right now for group buying, with some of them having different deals for different areas of the city. One of them actually markets themselves as a "platform" giving new deal sites the ability to literally launch in a day.
In this type of business it is basically who can get their name out there the fastest in a local area - do that and you can walk away with this 40 million...
So the question is what's the next big (local) thing?!
Why aren't newspapers throwing themselves into partnership with group-buying sites? They have an instant audience and it could easily become a new revenue stream.
WagJag in Canada has done this - they have a partnership with Metroland it seems, which owns The Toronto Star among a TON of free papers in smaller areas. Now I don't know this for sure but I'm 99% certain that they use their personal sales agents for the newspapers (who already have contacts with the local business) and use them to sell the group buying. I'm sure they also get advertising credits for the $$ they have held back from their deals too.
One interesting thing I've seen here in Australia is that people actually still seem to read those NYPost-style daily local newspapers. Am I just imagining this? If not, maybe a tool to help newspapers create their own "deals" would be a decent business.