Southern Indiana Newspaper – Looking for a theme

Being the HUGE WordPress fan that I am, I have been working on a project for the last few months. I have been building the next Southern Indiana Newpaper. It is going to be an online paper and it will have some unique twists that you may not be expecting! (More announcement on this later…)

What I need is a SOLID WP them for an online Newpaper environment. There have been some valiant attempts made, but none seem to be ready for prime time… if you have some ideas, PLEASE post them here.(even if they need MAJOR modification and programming changes that is OK…We can handle it at the web works!

Also, if you can tell me what you think is relevant for an online magazine / newspaper. My vision is to create it as the love child of this online newspaper and this online “living” magazine…will it work? Only time will tell!

When I look at the profitability of the newspaper companies’ website (essentially online newspaper) divisions, I somehow think that it will…

Thoughts?

Eric

Southern Indiana Web Works goes to PubCon 2007

We are headed to Vegas, baby!

I will be in Vegas at PubCon December 4-7th 2007!

While I am NOT what you call a party animal by ANY stretch of the imagination, I am looking forward to networking, sharing and learning with the best of the best in Search Engine Marketing.

I will be posting reports on this blog REGULARLY, so stay tuned and I will keep you posted.

I am looking forward to meeting many longtime acquaintances via the web in person. Many of my real estate industry friends will be atrending as well as a ton of my Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine marketing colleagues. I also looking forward to taking some time to strategize and plot the course for 2008 for the web work and our clients!

If you are there, look me up!

Follow up on Joint Ventures…

On other thought I just had on joint ventures…

Far better to start small…and build.

Why? Well, what you will find is that over time your partners in any given venture will either solidify behind you and it will be a good thing or it won’t. This is NOT based on the success of the project. It is based on the character of the individuals and their shared vision. Simple as that.

If you start small with a new partner, it is EASY to assess their character in a non threatening way. The trust level can be built to the point where it is strong enough to withstand even the toughest of circumstances. You get to a point where these folks are like family. They are battle tested friends.

While I don’t normally disclose the people that I do business with, i thought today would be a good time for an exception. And a case study…Ryan Ward, Wayne Long and I first met online via Real Estate Webmasters a while back. While I was at the RE/MAX International Convention, we met and decided to try our hand at building an online real estate investing forum.

Has it been perfect? NOPE. Far from it. Have we learned? Absolutely. As we have grown more used to how each other operates in this small, but growing, environment, we have become far more comfortable with each other to try other bigger things. While we haven’t done any of those bigger things, I think it is SAFE to say that if we did, we would do well with them.

Start small. Be patient. Build into bigger ideas. The relationships formed last much longer than one deal.

Possible ventures

What makes a good search engine marketing venture is the same thing that makes and other type of joint venture work. Mostly it consists of the following:

• Complimentary and Synergistic skills–Do have the ability to promote your product or service, but need an online “partn er” to help push the product or drive traffic to a site?
• Complimentary Values–Do you have similar business values?
• Are you willing to exchange potentially a larger sum of money in the future for a small startup cost and little to no risk in the present?
• A product or service that lends itsself to online marketing–Does your product generate enough trackable revenue that can be measure DIRECTLY from the online channel to be able to compensate the Search Engine marketer for their time and effort?

If you answer is YES to the above questions, or you’d like to explore Search Engine Marketing joint ventures further, please feel free to give me a call today.

Joint Search Engine Marketing Ventures-How they work.

Many times an entrepreneur has a product or service that is VERY well suited to being martketing over the web. Yet they are not able to do one of the following:

a) Cash flow the expense of a world class search marketing camapign as they bootstrap other expenses of R&D and basic start up.

b) Take the risk of doing an online campaign since if it doesn’t produce the results they want, they will not have the ability cashflow wise to take on a full marketing campaign in more traditional channels.

We are all about helping you with this. If we like your product or service (and you are locally based or locally focused!) we can do your entire online marketing package at NO out of pocket expense to you!  We can and do take ALL of the marketing risk in some cases and create a true partnership with you to make it happen!

It does require more effort. And we do expect to be compensated for the risk. However, this may be the perfect path for you to get your online marketing plan going right away Call us at 812 786-2053 today and leave me a message. I will be happy to discuss it with you.