Ideal Candidates
After five years of fine tuning the business model, I’ve found the following personality profiles to be the best candidates for a community portal partnership. Do one of these profiles sound like you or someone you know?
- Mayor of your Town: Not that you have been elected to an office, but everyone seems to know you and you seem to know everyone else. You’ve been involved in your community for a long time, you’ve served in various volunteer capacities, and your annual holiday card list is quite lengthy.
- Newspaper or Radio Ad Salesperson: If you have had to sell print advertising or radio, selling advertising with our model will be a piece of cake. You’ll finally have a good story to tell and your advertisers will actually get results like they’ve never seen before.
- Seasoned Entrepreneur: You’ve had start-up businesses before, all of them somehow related to either the publishing business or Internet/e-commerce business. You are good at conveying concepts to people and they already trust you.
- Chamber of Commerce: If you are the Executive Director, past Director, or board member of the local Chamber of Commerce, you already know the most important side of the equation: the local businesses. Connecting them to the community at large will be second nature to you and your mental Rolodex of names will give you a head start. We have a program especially for Chambers which does not involve an entry fee, click here.
For this position, you’ll need to focus on advertising sales. Even though your secondary responsibility is to manage the editorial for your area, with our help and training, this will come easily. If the idea of seeing your stories in print and being the “Ted Baxter” of your town is your driving force, this probably won’t be a good fit for either of us.