Kurt Boyer – The Official Website

Ultimate Road Trip Games

My fiance and I have just released our newest book after thousands of miles of driving across country and a crayon stabbing incident. If you have children and are planning a road trip within the next year, you have to check it out…

Ultimate Road Trip Games

Of course cowboys are immune to the swine flu. We take precautions just like everyone else. I clean my spurs every 15 minutes and never touch them to my nose, eyes or mouth.

When I’m riding the fences, I’ve always got my surgical mask on. It makes me feel like a bad guy. I just wish I could get one in black…

Worst Pay Per Click Ad

While viewing my Google Gmail account this morning the most odd pay per click ad came up. Somebody had actually created a Google Adwords campaign and just left all the defaults in place. I wish I had money like that to waste!

Scary Swine

On my way to work this morning, I heard a lot of radio chatter about the swine flu and quite frankly it made me a bit nervous — until I actually did some research myself.

So far there are 20 confirmed cases of the “swine flu” as of today in the United States, but none in Colorado. There have been fatalities around the world, but it is susceptable to two antiviral drugs. Get the current information from the Center of Disease Control website.

  

 

 

INDenver Times

Today, the founders of the online newspaper INDenver Times announced that they failed to meet their subscriber goal of 50,000. I believe that they successfully signed up 3,000 paying subscribers.

My questions are numerous here. First of all, I hadn’t even heard of this newspaper — did they advertise? Secondly, they started the company on March 16th of this year. How could they possibly have convinced 50,000 people to subscribe to an online newspaper?

From their site, they explain the subscriber only benefits:

• Perspective and insight pieces
• Real time conversation with the editors and journalists
• Ability to comment on stories
• Daily emails, alerts, customizable home page

Seriously? I don’t see the value here. These are all “services” that you get for free from the other Colorado online news agencies.

What exactly are “perspective and insight pieces?” How about “unbiased news?” That’s something I’d consider paying for. And real time communication? I subscribe via Twitter to all the news agencies in Denver for free. You can’t get any more real time than that.

Profit from Google Adwords

Having been layed off myself in the past (the founders are from the Rocky Mountain News), I sympathize with these writers. However, there are much better ways to monetize their web venture and I won’t just say there are better ways — I’ll give a couple of examples.

• Real time news. For example have a staff writer monitor the scanners and post the interesting things (minus personal details in some instances) that they hear. Even though they might think we don’t want to hear about the burrito being used as a missle in a Taco Bell parking lot — we do.
• Sell advertising, display it everywhere and subscribers are spared from viewing them. Yes I know there are plugins for your browser that can do this, but the average internet user has no idea.

There are also many ways to monetize a news website without having to charge the visitor a dime. Remember, that your viewers are your lifeblood. Welcome them into your house and provide them with a better service.

The backers of INDenver Times do intend to adapt to a new business model. What that model is at this point is anyone’s guess. I wish them luck and I hope they succeed.