
Seth Godin: Shoestring opportunity - jcwentz
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/shoestring_oppo.html
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Alex3917
So the idea is that for every subject area, there is an opportunity for
someone to aggregate news and blogs and make money off it.

I have to disagree with Seth this time. There are already plenty of people
doing this, and the reason more aren't doing it is because the ones who are
aren't making any money.

Look at row2k.com, the most popular news site for rowers. Ed Hewitt is
spending like 18 hours a day on that site, but only because he loves the sport
so much, because pretty much the only income they get is from donations. The
ads seem to barely cover the server expenses.

For any given blog subject matter there is a blog carnival that aggregates the
best posts each week, and none of those seem to be making any money either.

It makes sense. Think about it. If even the biggest news aggregators like Digg
and Reddit, which aggregate all stories, can't make any money, then what are
the chances that a news aggregator that collects only a tiny slice of stories
will be hugely profitable. Especially since Seth is talking about setting up
ads. It simply isn't realistic.

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far33d
Demographic data is what drives solid ad revenue. In this way, a niche site
could actually generate better and more profitable advertising than one like
Digg, which are less focused but have bigger numbers.

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Alex3917
I'd agree with this is theory. But how many demographics really have a higher
discretionary income than web-savvy rowers? The people-who-light-cigars-
with-100-dollar-bills society? :-)

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far33d
Touche.

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dpapathanasiou
I'm skeptical.

This sounds more like a request to the Lazyweb -- <http://lazyweb.org/> \--
because it's something he'd like to use, rather than a business opportunity.

If he really thought it was the latter, he would probably just go ahead and do
it himself.

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ryan
We'll he's basically doing this with <http://www.squidoo.com/> right?

Although that site seems so spammy to me - I can't believe it's #628 on Alexa.

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AF
Those are called blogs, no?

