Month: June 2005

I’ve been slacking on posting to this blog, but not at work. Dumping my sales tasks and jumping to marketing has taken longer than I had hoped. I’ve really wanted to get a more in-depth review of the status of Thomas Publishing Company (TPC) now that we know the Green Books are dead.

First off, the Books aren’t dead yet. The announcement was that the 2006 edition (yet to be published) would be the last. TPC is promoting the longevity of this last edition, which I think is just an attempt to keep print advertisers from jumping ship. Yes, they will last longer, but will anyone look at them—As Linda Rigano of TPC admits, “All of our buyers are online.” Even still, they have about 6,000 print advertisers in the 2005 issue.

Published court documents regarding the ownership of TPC document the change in revenue sources between 1993 and 2002. Its surprising how their income continued to grow until 2001. What is most important for advertisers is that their subscription income (from businesses, colleges, etc.) dropped from 17M to 1M in a span of 5 years. Even at a low $50 a subscription, that would be just 20,000 sets of Green Books in 2002.

So, we can all agree that the print directory deserves the death it faces. But what about TPC? Can they survive selling their online directory? The gossipy types can listen to buzz and snipes, but it doesn’t really prove anything. Overall, I think that each online directory/service has its own major flaws, and Thomas has now escaped their biggest one—but they now have to sharply address how their other flaws before their business quickly shrinks. What other flaws: The god-awful number of product categories and their lack of direct control of listings, for a start.

I personally think that TPC’s greatest opportunity is to develop websites for their clients. A lot of these smaller industrial companies are still so clueless about running a website. But TPC isn’t geared for doing this, as far as I can tell. Ms. Rigano’s comments alludes to this need, too: “If a client doesn’t have a good Web site, it won’t do us any good to sell them a traffic-based program.”

Mike Boyink explains the root cause why church websites suck…because the church doesn’t have to pay for them. I think as web-geeks, we’ve all been asked (or volunteered) to do a pro-bono website, probably with poor results. Mike’s nailed it on the head.

“I’m seeing a pattern here, and it angers me. It angers me that, as the church, we can always find the time and motivation to re-implement a site on a different backend, or change the site architecture, or implement new navigational widgets.

But try…just try…to find someone to invest that same effort in writing interesting, valuable content. “

Read more: Church Webmasters – Stop Working for Free
And church website guru Mean Dean’s reaction

Every so often I wonder why I haven’t posted my two rules for fixing things. This is a theory that I’ve proven over and over to myself. If you are the go-to guy when something doesn’t work, these will make you look smart (or embarrass the requester, depending on your style).

1. Jiggle the wires.
2. Check for gas.

Probably this is as much as the typical tech-support guy knows how to do, but its surprising how often that is all you need.

Interesting reading if you sell to engineering types, but nothing particularly earth-shattering:
“A new Test & Measurement World reader survey shows how the Internet continues to transform the work lives of engineers”

The accompanying article How leading vendors lure website vistors is much more interesting to us marketers. This is a glimpse into the world of four top engineering websites. Their trend-setting will certainly raise the expectations of engineers from other websites, like this from Agilent: “The company also has significantly increased Web content for older products, including manuals and application notes, to help customers get more value out of existing assets.”

Thomas Register Print Edition Nixed

“It has been our strategy for the last 10 years to eventually eliminate the print properties. It was just a matter of how long it would take.”

Gee, what a surprise! Thanks Mike for getting this to me first.