

Ask HN: A Local Media Company Wants to Use My Content, What Should I Charge Them? - starnix17

I'm not sure how relevant this is to Hacker News, but I guess it can always be deleted.<p>I'm a freshman CS major and I've been running a local web site for concert listings in the Philadelphia area as a little side project (it's a Rails app that scrapes venue web sites to aggregate events).<p>Recently, the site has become somewhat popular with local show promoters and members of local press to the point that one of the local papers contacted me about integrating my content on their site.<p>Which brings me to my question, how much should I ask for from them?
I mean they'll be making money off of my content seeing as they have ads all over their site.<p>Also would I be taking a big risk in losing traffic directly to my site if I let them use my listings? (I'd clearly want some kind of link back to my project or something on their site)
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anigbrowl
Find out how much space they propose to fill with your content - half a page,
say. Find something similar in around the same place in the paper (the advice
column or whatever), check on the advertising section of the website(or have a
friend call them) to see how much they are charging for the adverts
surrounding content of that size. ask for about 2/3 of that.

for example, you give them 1/2 page of stuff every week, and it's surrounded
by 1,5 pages of ads, which they sell for, say, $1500. They pay a 10-15%
commission to their sales person for selling the ads, and want to make a
similar level of profit for themselves. So ask for $1000.

They'll probably say no and you'll have to negotiate...so your trade-off will
be 'OK, you want to pay $500...but in return I want a 6 month commitment and
my logo/website address in the top left of the box'. Researching how much
they're getting for the surrounding space should give you a ballpark idea of
what the content is worth.

------
cn2
Your situation is interesting and complicated.

Companies that publish traditional paper media such as newspapers and
magazines are, in many cases, in the business of trying to get content in very
cheap ways, and have tried over many years to to hone their cheapassness
techniques. They might be willing to use a lot of sleazy techniques like:

\- taking advantage of many people's excessive enthusiasm about how wonderful
it is to be "in the newspaper" famous, talk to cool people it will be their
job to report on, etc. This might be a worthwhile trade for some people, but
be careful about an offer to "work for us for free or nearly free now, so you
can

get better opportunities later." The "better opportunities" might or might not
be available. Some of the people who accept the scammier versions of this kind
of deal have fifth-rate minds as you can tell by reading (crappy) stuff they
produce.

\- preference-revealing bait-and-switch (an employee of the media co. starts
negotiating a preliminary deal with you, then it turns out they don't have
deal-making authority, but the deal-making rehearsal got them useful
information that can be used to take advantage of you in later negotiations.)
Outside of media corporations, this trick is notoriously used by used-car
dealers a lot.

\- contracts (maybe "standard contracts") they want you to sign, that turn out
to have important details that take rights and opportunities away from you (or
make you liable for stuff)

\- just plain steal content or ip, and dare you to sue unless you settle out
of court for a small amount (This happened to the guy who wrote "Things My
Girlfriend and I Have Argued About" at <http://www.mil-millington.com/> )

\- Sending a cool with-it chick to negotiate with you, hiding their real
nature. :-) (Have you ever read Courtney Love's "Courtney Love Does the Math"
expose on how record companies weasel out of their nominal payments to
ecording artists? It's worth reading.)

BTW: Traditional media companies' "core competency" in getting content for a
relative pittance through exploitation is one reason that the rank-and-file
workers in many media are so in favor of national health insurance. Many media
workers are poor enough, and so poorly- or non-insured, that they really
really need the insurance. :-/

I also suggest that you consider--is your target audience more likely to read
this newspaper's website, or your own site? Can you do anything (preferably
practically cost-free) to influence that? It's possible that you're already
the market leader. Can you take steps to hold on to that position? Link
exchange is one obvious possibility, but you can probably think of others.

When it comes to trying to find 'comparable prices or rates' for content,
remember that "Dear Abby" or "Click and Clack" can provide the same content to
thousands of publications nationwide, so they can sell it very cheaply. You,
on the other hand, would be providing content that must be specific to your
geographical location. So don't be taken in by invalid comps.

It's also worth remembering that the newspaper website can at least try to
find someone who will work cheap or free for the 'fame' of having their name
in the paper and other peculiar perks of their job (like a newspaper music
reviewer here in Tucson who got drugs from bands he reviewed.) This is what
newspapers try to be good at! So you have to be ready for the _possibility_
that they will try to hand-roll their own competitor to you regardless of
whether they can realistically do it well in the long term (or if they will
end up publishing

stuff that eventually looks like the guy who did it is on drugs.)

A newspaper's blatant attempt to copy and compete with a specialty provider of
news in their geographical area doesn't necessarily kill the specialty
provider, though. Here in Tucson the print publication _Tucson Weekly_ was a
provider of arts/culture news for many years before the largest local
conventional newspaper, the _Arizona Daily Star_, created a copycattish
arts/culture weekly to compete with it. Over a few years the copycat shrunk
and wilted, but the _Tucson Weekly_ appears to be going strong.

Might I also suggest that if you want to deal with newspapers, you might want
to talk to all the newspapers or other news publishing companies (even non-
paper ones) active in your geographical area? This might give you a chance to
be the one established provider negotiating with multiple other parties who
are competing with each other.

If you decide to license (some?) content to the newspaper site, you might be
able to find ways to differentiate your website from theirs in ways that are
to your benefit. You know your topic better than I do, so I leave that
creative task up to you. :-)

Another possible idea is to gain an economy of scale by covering more metro
areas than you do now. Maybe then you could cut the cost per metro area and
maybe be able to figure out a way to make money?

I wonder if you can do (a) worthwhile affiliate deal(s) with iTunes,
Amazon.com, or some other business(es)?

Good luck, and have fun! :-)

~~~
cn2
Wow, I'm long-winded. Maybe I should write a blog. :-)

------
olefoo
Is your site currently making money? Is theirs? Are the venues going to give
you grief for scraping their sites?

You are in a very good negotiating position since you don't need to sell to
them, and they are approaching you.

The numbers you need to know to negotiate effectively are how much it costs
you to provide the listings; an estimate of what your listings are worth to
the other party and an estimate of how much it would cost them to do the same
things you are doing.

You should look at their circulation report and rate card (they do give these
out to advertisers) to derive those numbers.

You may want to consider selling the entire site to them too.

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress.

~~~
starnix17
I'm not making money, they're making some kind of revenue seeing they have
paid staff and all sorts of web and print ads.

As for venues giving grief over scraping, I haven't heard anything from larger
Livenation venues (but they have an API for event information). The smaller
venues that I scrape seem to love it. One of the well known show promoters in
the city was nice enough to shoot me an email telling me how much he likes the
site and is now testing out the iPhone version for me.

I highly doubt they'd want to buy it, I'm pretty sure the woman that runs the
site wants to integrate and didn't really talk much to upper management.

Thanks for mentioning the rate card, I'll be sure to find out what they're
charging for ads before I might them this week.

------
dbul
How much would it cost them to pay someone to research this information?
Probably it would take up a few hours a week. So maybe something like 3hrs /
week * $20 / hr * 4 weeks = ~$240/month.

And don't hesitate to give them a widget linking to your site for "more
information."

------
redorb
It depends on how much you care about this project, is it your baby? or just
something that happened? - if its your baby, you say - "You can link to my
site from yours..I'll even design you a nice big banner ;)" and thats the best
you can do.... - cause that gives little chance of losing it all - if it's
just fun and games; or you dont see yourself doing it for 2-3 more years, let
them do it for free and then release it totally opensource.....

\- you could also try to hit a home run and sell them the "tech, trademark,
domain.." for 2k-15k ,

Good luck

~~~
starnix17
At first I wouldn't call it my baby, but after seeing how much it brought me
into the local music scene here and how many contacts I've gained off of it I
would probably say I'm very attached to it.

The web site that wants to use the listings is owned by the paper but seems to
have its own management. The girl that runs the whole thing is very with it
and whatnot.

In the end I really think it might come to her wanting to somehow integrate
and the paper's IT department telling her no because she has to use their
crappy proprietary listings from the paper.

------
lsb
Most people do it by affiliations with ticket vendors, and you get a cut of
their cut.

It's tricky if you're doing it locally from small venues that only have at-
the-door sales. But if you can branch out into recorded music and merchandise,
those sell well too.

~~~
starnix17
Yeah, I do have ticket affiliate links but I make barely any money off of
that. Although all the local venues do use Ticketweb, most people buy tickets
at the door (or at the local box office depending on how popular the show is).

It doesn't help that I marketed the site to mostly broke college students who
probably go to venue box offices to avoid nasty surcharges.

