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Changing the world by giving every community a voice.

How will you be heard?

In every community in every county all over our state there are amazing people, amazing events, amazing projects and astounding issues. Many people in your community know about them, but outside of them, who really knows?

How do you draw people to your events and attractions? How do you bring attention to the problems in your community? How do you support the good and find solutions to the bad?

Guess what, it's likely not going to happen unless you spend a bunch of money on advertising outside your area, you hire a lobbyist to raise your issues to a higher level awareness, or maybe you hire a publicist to try and get the "Big" News outlets to carry your information.

But what if you could produce it yourself? What if you could cover what isn't getting covered and know that your stories are going to be published to every other affiliated site in the State?

What if you could do it without a huge staff, without spending a pile of cash and you didn't have to do it alone?

Digital Media makes things possible.

When great video is as close as a smartphone, articles as close as your neighbors and an interview as far away as a Zoom call, the barriers to running your own digital news site vanish into the rear view mirror.  Everyone wants their business, their project, their event and their issues talked about, there just isn’t anyone willing to do it without charging them a bunch of money, or without them fitting into a narrative that’s dictated by an outside party.

When you have all these resources available, what’s the missing piece?  Usually it’s “Where do I begin?”.  AOMLocal is about solving that last mile question.  If you have the desire to give a new voice and perspective to live in your community, we’ve got the infrastructure, the training, the software and the network to show you just what to do at each step to launch and build an effective and increasingly far reaching hyperlocal digital news site.

CURATED CONTENT

Curated content is a type of aggregation.  We help you setup rss feeds from your local official sources like police, fire, ems or sports, as well as help you find, contact and source content on events, agriculture, environment, the arts, food, drink, etc. from your area that you know your community is interested in. 

From there you can set certain feeds to automatically publish, or choose what you want to publish.

ORIGINAL CONTENT

This is sometimes the most daunting aspect of running a news site – writing your own content.  We’ll let you in on a little secret:  Your local schools, non-profits, service clubs and community groups all have newsletters or newspapers that they create, usually weekly.  They all want their story told and in our experience, are eager to contribute to a quality digital news site.  Not just articles either: photos, video, commentary, interviews, you’ll be surprised.

ADVERTORIAL CONTENT

One of the things we tend to avoid is advertising.  Really.  However there is a type of advertising that is useful to your readers, useful to your local businesses and is easily the least offensive type (and most effective) of advertising there is:  Advertorials.

Take a local hardware store for example.  They produce a DIY fixit article once or twice a month that includes a link to their website and a little content about the importance of a knowledgeable hardware guy and you have a win all the way around.  That’s an advertorial.

 

Distribution is Everything

Your current local paper relies on subscribers and a physical infrastructure for distribution.  If there is a local digital news site, they count on you finding the site (they have to worry about SEO and marketing to collect eyeballs) for the content to be discovered.

We do things a little differently.  We didn’t just build a news site, we built a network.  That means content from any affiliate site can be included by any other affiliate site with minimal effort.  Currently we have more than 900,000 backlinks (Google “Discover” numbers) in our network – that means outside websites that link back to our network.  That means our content gets in front of a lot of eyeballs just by being published.

Network feed selection is also simplified – you don’t want a sports feed from a rival county?  No problem.  You don’t want an event feed from another county or from the state level, no problem.  You have a content feed you’d like to receive?  We can help with that too.  The best part is our feeds can be password protected to be sure that only the feeds you want shared to the public will get shared to the public.

Knowing that your content is going to be seen makes quite a bit of difference in how you view the value of what you will create and publish.

Content drives Revenue

Running a site costs money and time, so generating revenue isn’t an option, it’s a requirement.  So how do you make money without alienating your audience?

We’ve found a couple of ways that put coin in the coffers and serve a purpose at the same time. Those are:

Advertorials & Affiliate based Solutions.

A savvy business will go for advertorial marketing everytime over traditional options.  They get to establish their credibility, stay top of mind for their segment and associate their name with useful information for potential customers.  Sales always come out of credibility.

Affiliate marketing is when you get a small percentage or fee when someone buys something from your website.  Lots of places use Amazon or other big companies for their affiliate programs.  We recommend use your local resources unless there aren’t any.  Also, make sure they are only presented as a solution, not just an ad.

For example, much of the population has been vaccinated, many as a result of mandates from employers.  With the out of proportion side effects from the Covid19 vaccine (CDC/VAERS/WHO numbers), lots of people are worried about minimizing the risk of side effects without minimizing any potential effectiveness of the vaccine.  Offering high quality solutions that include an affiliate relationship means you are providing a service while earning revenue.

HyperLocal Economies

Here are a couple of interesting articles on revenue trends in the Hyper-Local space:

 

Advertorials

Why are advertorials important and a better solution than traditional banner advertising?  Here are some informative articles on advertorials:

 

On Digital Journalism

Big changes happen with predictable regularity.  A new breakthrough, or a world changing disaster always ushers in new behaviours, particularly in news consumption and production:

 

The Importance of Video

Attention spans have gotten shorter, demand for current information is growing exponentially.  While every picture tells a story, compelling video trumps them all:

Our goal is to see AOMLOCAL affiliates in every County, City and Unincorporated Town in Oregon.  That’s nearly 450 sites – all locally controlled and publishing local content.

FAQ

  • Are we locked into a contract?
    • No.  The only agreements or contracts that we put in place are ethics (no p0rn, no movies, etc.) if you are going to use our affiliate services and show our branding, as well as your monthly hosting & server maintenance/support agreement.  The contract only applies to those services.
  • Does the component software belong to AOM or to us?
    • It belongs to you, even if we go our separate ways.
  • Does AOM provide us advertisers?
    • No.  Because we are affiliated businesses, you have control of your site and are responsible for cultivating your own advertisers, etc. 
    • We WILL teach you and provide assistance with materials, marketing ideas, etc.
    • We also will be sending you periodic newsletters with success stories (and how to use what they learned) as well as techniques and best practices for running a highly effective site.
  • Who sets up our website?
    • We do it with you.  We teach you and we will implement the components you need to get up and running quickly.
  • How long does it take to get started?
    • It takes around 10 days for provisioning, setup and training.
    • Training is on-going by the way.
  • How many people will I need?
    • Honestly, if you are willing to put the effort in daily, it can be run by 1 person.  2 is better, but you can do it yourself.
  • How much does it cost?
    • There is a startup fee that covers your provisioning, setup and the software you will need.  This fee depends on the size of your County/City or Town but starts at $2500.
    • There is a monthly fee for AOMLOCAL hosting/server maintenance and will vary based on your readership.  It is never more than $300 per month.

If you have questions, but aren’t looking to get started yet, you can always email us at aomlocal@eugenedailynews.com.

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