We launched Marktd, our ‘marketing news by marketers for marketers’ site, about a year ago. It’s built on a Digg like system where stories get voted on and the popular ones rise to the top.
The site now has 4,200 user submitted links on all aspects of marketing and advertising. And traffic is ok. But we’re thinking about killing it because:
* In the real world, people don’t seem to be compelled by the status of being top ‘Digger’. Maybe it’s something about already having perceived real world status.
* It’s not useful enough. Jack Cheng and I spent some time trying to make it more of a bookmark site by rebuilding the site in Ruby - a site where articles are ranked on how many other people have bookmarked an article rather than voted for it. But we realized we didn’t have the skills or time to build a system.
* The system is getting spammed by battery resellers in China and played by Google Rank consultants. There’s too much crap being submitted these days.
* We’ll say this publicly: Federated Media do a crap job at selling ads on the PSFK network. So no cash, no hiring of someone full time to edit the site. FM tell us that they still have to educate the market, we just don’t know an alternative to take our business to.
Would love to hear your thoughts on what we should do - in the comments section.
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Piers,
I totally agree with your thought track there. So many peer nominated sites, most of which piggyback off another. Plus i think your popular stories box will filter most of the more interesting reads. I find myself contributing more to marktd than reading it.
I would love to see the environmental section come back up. Redesign looks excellent btw.
ross
June 28th, 2007 at 8:52 am
Oops, the link to the environmental section disappeared from the sidebar. Fixed now.
June 28th, 2007 at 9:24 am
perhaps look into Gorilla Nation?
June 28th, 2007 at 11:13 am
Hello Piers.
I feel your pain, especially on the sales front. We’ve tried using sales houses to sell our inventory and it’s never worked. The only way to get proper value from a niche site has been to sell directly, and more importantly build direct relationships with advertisers/sponsors who understand what they’re buying into.
If you think it’s bad in the US, the situation in smaller markets like the UK is even worse.
If you find the magic solution, do share!
June 28th, 2007 at 1:04 pm
Please don’t kill Martkd! Despite the spam, there is good information there and it is good to encourage link contributions since comments are more likely to be more opinions.
June 29th, 2007 at 7:17 am
Please keep it - it’s one of the most reliable sources of interesting stuff to read around.
July 5th, 2007 at 7:09 am
Kill it… it’s getting sloppy.
July 6th, 2007 at 4:31 am