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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=602400

by starnix17 • 17 years ago

8 11 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I'm not sure how relevant this is to Hacker News, but I guess it can always be deleted.

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).

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.

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.

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)

redorb• 17 years ago

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

starnix173• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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.

starnix173• 17 years ago

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.

zgrrly• 17 years ago

That's true lsb, however, the paper's site will be marketing ads directly to those small venues and making $ directly from them, most likely. Ads are the key revenue there.

Also, starnix, you'll def have 2 be careful about overpricing like olefoo mentioned, bcuz if they think they can do it cheaper, they will.

I mistakenly bid too high when asked about something for a newspaper I work with and there was no negotiation... My contact said something about checking on it. Next thing I know, I see 'my' project done by them, albeit not as well and with mistakes, but obviously they didn't pay my price. :(

Next time I'll ask what range they're thinking of first!

olefoo• 17 years ago

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.

starnix173• 17 years ago

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• 17 years ago

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."

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

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.

cn22• 17 years ago

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! :-)

cn22• 17 years ago

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

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

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