Demand in the Home Service Categories

Some anecdotal evidence about the big-revenue home services categories the local business depends on so much. During the Kelsey get-together in No Cal, some industry people have indicated that because the home services companies are now less busy (because of decreasing home equity withdrawals to fund improvements), they're looking for more lead sources (although they also mention those lead costs are decreasing)...

Kelsey Group Blogs » Insigthts from Home Services Heavyweights

Yelp Stats

Some great stats from Yelp. 15MM users a month is nothing to sneeze at, and if they start to trust Yelp for Restaurants, etc, it's only a matter of time before they start using it for high-revenue categories too...

Kelsey Group Blogs » Yelp Traffic Stats Suggests Broad Local Usage

Free Print Ad with Online?

It's only for jobs and only for a test period, but the NYTimes is offering their online job advertisers free print ads when they buy an online one. This is going to become more and more frequent as print advertising degrades to such a level (especially in classifieds categories) that, by itself, it wouldnt provide enough content for print readers. So, to fill in content in print and retain any readers it has, print publications will have to go in this direction. A first shot over the bow perhaps?

Print in Crisis: NYTimes Gives Ads Free Paper

MLS going direct to consumers

Trying to build a real estate site (a huge local category) one of the problems has always been where to get the data. Working with MLSs is the best way to get data, but they're all regional and not all that easy to work with. To get national coverage, you need to do a lot of deals, and as you can see from sites like Redfin, Trulia, etc, its just not that feasible. A new site called HomesDatabase has been created by an MLS in the mid-Atlantic part of the country and is one example of MLSs trying to expand their business model. Their goal is to go national, but we'll see if they have any more luck than the rest. At the very least, though, if local MLSs all over the country do this and allow sharing of their data, aggregator sites will have some good stuff to work with.

MLS Tired of Zillow, Trulia: Goes Direct To Consumers

Writeup of 15 Local iPhone Apps

Yelp is still the best in my view, though the Google Earth one is pretty sweet as well...

15+ FREE iPhone Apps to Navigate Your World

Financial Discussion of YP Companies

Interesting summary of a financial article on the state of the Yellow Pages business...

Dense ‘Deal’ Piece on YP « Screenwerk