The Bulletin with Steve Irwin on the cover is a sell out in less than two days according to the several newsagents I have spoken with. The challenge is to get more stock to satisfy demand for an appropriate printed keepsake. I’d expect ACP Magazines to respond as they did with the Kerry Packer issue earlier this year and print more and maybe even produce another feature. Customers aren’t thinking twice about buying this issue.
Traffic to classified ad sites increased 47 percent for the year ending July 31, according to comScore Media Metrix. Report: MediaPost. Free classified site Craigslist leads the pack. Craigslist is here in Australia but yet to make any serious move.
We were offered the range of AFL licenced calendars a few months ago. 40% off RRP. Payment 30 days on invoice. You had to take all clubs or nothing. Given the cost of real-estate we said no as the numbers didn’t’ stack up. Today, I noticed Australia Post opposite my newsagency with the AFL calendar display almost blocking its entrance along with a bunch of other AFL merchandise. I want to know what deal Australia Post negotiated which a network of 4,600 newsagents could not. Are they on more than 40%? Have they been provided longer to pay? This is another example of the calendar marketplace becoming less interesting. Australian Post strays further and further from being a postal outlet and the government doesn’t care.
I own a retail newsagency in a major shopping centre as well as Inkfast, an online ink and toner business which I advertise primarily through a Google AdWords campaign. Earlier this week I suspended my Google campaign when daily costs jumped 500% without any increase in sales. I know from recent experience that communicating with Google to discuss the situation is useless since they do not provide personal service. Responses are impersonal and not directly answering any query put. It’s the same with a landlord. Ours decided to do maintenance to the door out the front of our shop during the day, blocking the entrance and killing traffic and sales. This is despite their refusal to allow us to do any maintenance work on our shop during the day. A complaint resulted in an impersonal and irrelevant response.
Major companies like Google and shopping centre landlords need to answer questions from tenants and customers personally. They need to be transparent. They need to stop hiding behind off the shelf double speak as a means of deflecting a serious issue – in my case this week serious concern about possible click fraud.
What is interesting is that Tuesday was our first Google free day in several months. Sales were double our average for a Tuesday.
In October 2005 we averaged under 700 visits to this blog each day. Last month, the average number of daily visits was over 2,000. While I am not obsessed with such numbers, they are interesting as are comments from people reading postings here. We turned off online comments because the site was being attacked electronically. We’re currently working out how we can support reader comments nunder the Movable Type platform we use. Thanks for the private feedback.
A newspaper would never, ever mess with its masthead logo for an advertiser.
So says Steve Safran, Managing Editor of the respected The Lost Remote in a post about the ethics of advertising. He needs to see the Fairfax broadsheets, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Both have been carrying post-it type ads stuck on the front page in the middle of the masthead. Customers hate the ads and they cause litter. No upside from what I can see.
Newsagencies are like taxis, customer comments at the counter can provide an excellent pulse of community opinion.
The death of Steve Irwin on Monday afternoon provoked an outpouring at our newsagency counter today unlike any I have seen in my ten years except for the death of Princess Diana. I am sure our experience is not unique. From people old and young, the outpouring was heartfelt. Many who would not usually do so, purchased newspapers just to read about him. It says something about the man. In hindsight, it is a pity that it took his death for us to take him to out collective heart.
Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective, there is bound to be a commercial consequence of his death. Features in newspapers and magazines. Maybe once off publications. A published part work series of his TV shows. The reaction in the last 24 hours suggests any and all of these would be a winner. Crucial to any such exploitation would be to spread his message of conservation.
This is our network on newsagents who have signed up to sell online classifieds for Find It when the site goes live in several months (we’re in pre-beta right now and all ads are free). I have displayed the map out of pride of the extent of the network we have built in just eight weeks and to demonstrate the value of navigating locations by map. It is map and other flexible navigating (search) which will make print classifieds in some categories obsolete.
The Australian Financial Review today reported that News and Fairfax are talking about working together in some non-competitive areas. It is frustrating that the publishers frustrate newsagents when they seek to work this way. For years, newsagents have sought publisher approval for strategies which would increase home delivery revenue only to be blocked by publishers. For example, newsagents have wanted to include advertising on the packaging used to deliver newspapers. Publishers have rejected this. Newsagents can only make revenue from home delivery based on title cover price (often discounted) and delivery fees. In real terms, millions of dollars have been cut out of the newsagent channel since deregulation in 1999. Had newspaper publishers allowed newsagents to carry advertising and be more entrepreneurial in managing local newspaper circulation fewer newsagents would have got into financial trouble.
I support the discussions between News and Fairfax on non-competitive areas. They ought to allow newsagents to have more control over their end of the business and thereby reduce pressure on delivery fees.
Despite the fact that U.S. newspapers are enjoying a banner year in print classified real estate advertising, that train is about to run out of track, and there could be a rocky cliff below the barricades. Realtors tell us that they’re still buying print – not because it works better than other ad choices, but because sellers expect to see their listings in the local paper as proof that their agents are working for them.
This is the opening to a US$495 special report from the respected Classified Intelligence folks – they specialise in researching classified advertising trends. I have purchased from Classified Intelligence before and found their research to be thorough and conclusions insightful.
The challenge today for newspaper real-estate advertising is that there are now more advertising opportunities which provide better measurement. At realestate.com.au and other sites I can see impressions and visits by day for an ad and this is more useful than readership figures which are obtained in a way I cannot understand.
The challenge tomorrow will be for real-estate agents themselves as online businesses replace many of the services they offer and enable vendors to cut the sales commission from thousands to, maybe, hundreds.
The problem with all this is that I sell newspapers. They are vital to the traffic in my newsagency. At least by understanding that I am approaching a cliff I can try and turn before it’s too late.
Since I published this item about shoplifting here last week, Crikey.com.au has run two stories about my report the theft of a TV Guide newspaper insert in our shop and ABC 702 has run an interview with me on the subject. That’s the public stuff. Privately I’ve received emails slamming me decision to publish the footage. Not one of these correspondents has identified themselves. They say I am a “vigilante”, a “bully” and “disreputable”. They are entitled to their views.
The fact is that the woman in question stole the TV Guide, not only on the day filmed but others. The best way to stop being featured in the video footage is for her not to steal.
By publishing the image I am drawing attention to the high cost of theft in independently owned businesses like by newsagency. Hopefully this will make would be crooks think again before they steal the newspaper, magazine or greeting card. My preference is that I don’t have to resort to publicly shaming people but I’ll do it again if I get video footage of theft.
It is nonsense to label me a bully. I am reasonably protecting my business, my employees and my customers from the risks of this type of theft.
The message for all shoplifters is that more and more stores have camera systems and more business owners like me will publish faces of people caught red-handed.
Father’s Day is usually one of the softest of the major seasons in newsagencies: Christmas, Back to School, Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. This year our card sales are up 61% on last year. I’d say this is due to our moving of cards from the traditional card aisle approach you see in most newsagencies to the front of the store. Our sales data shows a flow on across other departments – all thanks to the card display.
What surprises me about Father’s Day is the lack of significant promotional activity through magazine titles. At Mother’s Day there are all manner of features. This helps sell gift packs and annual subscriptions. At Father’s Day – very little activity.
We received four copies of this title. It’s not a magazine yet some bright spark working for a magazine distributor thought we should carry it. Why not – it’s not his/her cash at risk. $19.95 is the cover price. Our GP if it sells is 25% – $4.98. This odd size publication should never have been distributed to newsagents yet it has been. Some will sell and some will be stolen. The problem is that the publisher and distributor have compliant newsagents who take the title, pay for it, carry it for a few months and, some time later, return unsold stock. In the meantime, newsagents lose shelf space and cash. It is a flaw of the magazine distribution system that a title like this gets through and wastes my money and shelf space.
This item and my earlier blog entry from today are but two of many from yesterday’s magazines deliveries which I could complain about. The magazine supply model is sick. Many titles get through and take cash and newsagent attention from the top performing titles. This disadvantages newsagents. The long tail is killing us.
We received a ton of these calendars from a magazine distributor yesterday. RRP – $9.95. Wholesale – 40% off. The trouble is that we already have stock direct from the calendar company. Wholesale – 60% off. Magazine distributors have enough trouble getting magazine supply right – they ought to not rip cash-flow out of the newsagent channel through flawed calendar scale out. The calendar company gives me longer to pay than the magazine disgtributor. The magazine distributor gives me 30 days.
[Footnote] 04/04/06 My earlier posting noted an incorrect commission and payment timing to the magazine distributor.
I’m reliably informed that Australia Post has told at least one Licenced Post Office operator that their $60.00 a month Australia Post terminal fee will jump to $1060.00 a month if the LPO operator continues to offer the services of Post BillPay competitor Bill Express from the same business.
If the small business owner gives into the Australia Post threat they will lose access to better eftpos and other rates they gain through the Bill Express relationship.
If the story put to me is true, it is another example of conflict for the Federal Government and its ownership of Australia Post. Australia Post, through its 865 corporate stores, is hurting independent small businesses Through it’s LPO network is pressures other small businesses on fees and on taking cheap stationery product imported from China.
David Kirk’s speech earlier this week to the Annual Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers Association (PANPA) conference has, as is usual for Australian newspaper executives, a bet each way. One the one hand he says their newspapers are very strong and are here to stay, on the other hand he outlines plans for further investment online. The speech has, in my view, not added much to the conversation about the future of newspapers. I found this week’s article in The Economist on a similar topic more enlightening. Kirk’s claim that Fairfax content sets the agenda is a bit of a stretch. I would like to see independent research on this given agenda setting by leading bloggers in Australia and overseas. Indeed, many stories have been broken online in the last year which newspapers either ignored or missed altogether.
Reading the Kirk speech I feel no better informed. I wish a publishing executive in this country would have the balls to tell it like it is, warts and all – but that might being mean making us too informed.
I am a retail newsagent and the success of newspapers is important to my business. I accept that publishers like Fairfax will pursue opportunities online. I wish they would include their retail network in this journey rather than cutting them out entirely as they have done. I also wish they would be more open about projections for paid newspapers in the future. Events in the US, UK and Europe suggest we’re in for a rough ride. If only similar disruption would pass this country by. The reality is it will not. Publishers and their distribution network need to work closer together on the changes to minimise impact and develop other uses for the valuable resource.
Just over an hour ago our TV Guide thief was back in the shop and stealing the TV Guide from the Herald Sun. Thanks sharp work from our team and video footage from last week we caught her. The thief paid for last week’s paper and returned the insert from today. It was clear from the discussion this is not recent activity for her. She had all sorts of excuses as to why she was taking the TV Guide. None made any sense.
You really have to wonder why people risk their reputation by stealing a newspaper insert.
Every newsagent should be on the lookout next Wednesday for this woman.
Click on the image and watch this lady walk down the card aisle with a copy of the Herald Sun, remove the TV guide and place it in her bag before returning the rest of the newspaper to the stand and walking out of the shop. This happened in our shop on Wednesday last week. We’re expecting her back today. This time we will be ready thanks to the footage from our security system. (The original we have is much better quality.)
Customer theft is a high cost problem in newsagencies so if you can catch and humiliate someone it is satisfying.
Mediaweek reports that Emap has cut staff from its US operation. The story has this telling paragraph:
Insiders say FHM has been putting more resources toward its Internet property, having recently hired four more staffers to support its Web site. At the same time the magazine has been pulling away from its fashion coverage; last year it shut down FHM Collections.
Many magazines will find ways to more valuably engage with their readers online. This will lead to bean-counter comparison of the value of an online reader versus a print copy reader. Some titles will do much better in an online only form. While, overall, I am okay with that, the magazine retail channel needs depth to be of interest to consumers. Too many titles in any category retreating to online only could kill off the category for retail.
Check out the eBay user forum to see customer responses to their price changes. It’s good eBay provides this level of transparency. It will be interesting to see if they revise their pricing. The Find It classified site which we are launching through newsagents will offer free ads to most of those affected as our pricing is product based and anything under $500 will be free.
I’ve been looking at magazine sales data from newsagencies for many years and have a few stores which act as good indicators of what is happening more widely in the channel. Based on these few stores, the category ascending is Crosswords – by between 10% and 15% same store year on year to July 31. Photography magazines are down 35% in the same period. The trouble is, new photography related titles arrive weekly.
I’m pleased to have contributed to this discussion at PBS about the old ways of doing things in media compared with the new ways being discussed/explored. The discussion came as a result of Mark Glaser’s Oldthink vs. Newthink post at his PBS Media Shift blog.
Many Australian mainstream media companies are embracing the shift in one way or another. Radio stations (led by the ABC) are aggressively playing with podcasting; newspapers are bringing more blogger content into their printed and online editions and most have reinvented their online presence; some magazines are leveraging exceptional value from their websites. TV is the slowest of the four media channels to undertake anything which could be called ‘newthink’ – announcing a link to more material at the end of a show is not ‘new’.
Newsagents are not embracing the Media Shift. While some are reinventing their businesses, the vast majority are not. They act more as servants of publishers than the entrepreneurs and business people they ought to be. The Media Shift is impacting newsagents. Newspapers are being sold in more locations, magazines are being sold in more locations, magazine subscription sales are increasing, more stationery is being purchased online.
In the spirit of Oldthink Vs. Newthink and in the context of newsagents I’d suggest, for starters:
Oldthink: Newsagents expect others to create their future.
Newthink: Newsagents take charge of their businesses.
Oldthink: Newsagents being rewarded for following publisher rules.
Newthink: Newsagents being rewarded for sales growth.
Oldthink: Newspapers at the front of the shop.
Newthink: Newspapers located where they sell the best.
Oldthink: Magazine supply being determined by magazine distributors.
Newthink: Newsagents only paying for magazines as they sell.
Oldthink: Newsagents carrying upwards of 5,000 stationery lines.
Newthink: Newsagents carry the top 750 sellers with a rapid fulfillment strategy for the long tail.
Oldthink: Newsagents let suppliers determine store layout rules.
Newthink: Newsagents take control of their own store layout.
Oldthink: Newsagents are paid for home delivery of newspapers according to publisher determined fees.
Newthink: Newsagents allowed to charge fees according to cost of service.
Oldthink: Newsagents manually process supplier accounts – costing on average 20 man-hours a month.
Newthink: Newsagents determine to only trade with suppliers who transact electronically.
The Australian Newsagents’ Federation wrote to newsagents Friday night to clarify their support for the ozjobfindit free employment classified offering. Unfortunately they created more problems for themselves and further confused newsagents. They have not explained why they are promoting the “johnny come lately” ozjobfindit while ignoring our Find It online classifieds model for the last eight to ten weeks.
The ANF statement Friday suggests that Ozjobfindit has been in development for over a year. The reality is that they registered their domain name three weeks ago in the United States. Given our registration here of www.findit.com.au we suspect a registration of such a similar name would have failed. A check of the site suggests this is a quickly thrown together site without a content acquisition plan.
The ANF statement also says that Ozjobfindit Pty Limited is a company registered in Victoria. No such company is currently registered according to ASIC.
More than 1,000 newsagents have got behind the Find It brand and the soon to publicly launch free online classifieds website. That their one national association is part of an online model which confuses other newsagents and consumers is disappointing. One has to wonder about their motivation. One also has to wonder about the quality of due diligence when you consider the lack of company registration and confusion over actual ownership of what the ANF is promoting.
Newsagents are the losers in this. The association ought to spend its time representing newsagents on more important matters rather than trying to harm my Find It initiative for newsagents.