dh3325 - 5:16 pm on Nov 30, 2005 (gmt 0)

My reply was not meant to be directed at anyone per se but as the topic of this thread was basically about True Local I simply used it as an example. I agree that City Search has been doing a version of what I mention but in a pretty narrow scope and in a limited number of communities. I don't know what Yahoo is doing but when I look at their site I see the same problems to some degree. Which brings me back to my original question which I am hoping will get some discussion or explanation. How do the national sites plan on improving their data to the point it is useful to the end user and how do you make any money at it?

As far as selling my data, while I am open to anything, it seems that taking a dataset that I work very hard on and selling it to someone who basically wants to compete with me is not a very good business plan. Having said that I am open to offers.

Seriously, I am not trying to belittle the national sites, heck, I know what it takes to do mine. I am just curious how to make it work, as any insight I can get from the national level can only help what I do.

By the way I have been at it for 4+ years and I am in the middle of redesigning my site and site functions to improve what I offer and I can say this, I spend alot more money than I make on this but I am starting to finally see some movement on the local level. I have a couple people on the street all the time selling my print products and updating the online and we are starting to see some interest in the online as a separate advertising choice.

I will add this as a simple observation. Several years age we designed a local garage sale site. In doing it I looked at alot of sites that were national in scale just doing garage sale and I kept wondering how they planned to roll out something that simple on a national scale. When I look back now every single one of them is gone. Apparently no one figured it out.