Va. Site Capitalizes On Comments, Curios

Look into the cockpit of many independent hyperlocal sites across the country and you’ll find refugees from legacy print media behind the wheel, but not in Arlington, Va. Scott Brodbeck, the editor and publisher of ARLNow.com, cut his teeth in broadcasting before starting the site in early 2010, and he said that television was the perfect training ground for his current work.

“I think broadcasting is a great background to come from because you’re already used to a more fast-paced working style, shorter stories and you know how to handle breaking news,” Brodbeck said, “so TV to the Web wasn’t a huge transition.”

Inspired by the ill-fated Washington, D.C., hyperlocal TBD.com, Brodbeck first launched the site on a WordPress blog after a literal all-nighter. “I was inspired to give it a try and to see if I could come up with a sustainable model for news online on my own,” he said “Arlington, where I live, happened to be ill-served online.”

With a population of approximately 210,000, this D.C. suburb has proven to be a fertile ground for ARLNow’s brand of breaking and community news, seemingly inexhaustible wellspring of reader comments, coverage of restaurant and retail happenings and the odd local curios, recently among which was an embedded video by an unlikely local rapper lamenting the demise of the incandescent light bulb.

Brodbeck said that finding advertisers for the site’s many display slots hasn’t been difficult with most businesses finding him rather than the other way around. But he’s looking to go beyond displays in the near term through a series of sponsored columns. He’s looking to follow the first column, which will be underwritten by a local wine seller, with others on healthy living and environmental issues in the near future.

While running such small independent sites can often amount to a grueling output with meager returns, Brodbeck said he’s holding steady and even looking to grow within the next year. By his account, it’s not a bad position to be in as legacy media falters around him.

“I’ve run the numbers and I’m not going to be becoming rich anytime soon on my revenue, but it’s still going to be a comfortable living,” he said. “It will pay for my one-bedroom apartment and my 2004 Chevy. At this stage in the game in terms of the digital news business, I think that’s perfectly acceptable.”

Brodbeck walked through some of ARLNow’s key characteristics.

Updates: Five days weekly (between 6-10 stories a day)

Mobile platform: Mobile optimized site

Content focus: “Topical stories that are interesting and/or noteworthy in Arlington, Va. We’ll cover the county board’s actions and we’ll cover a restaurant opening and a post on our Arlington rap guy doing a new music video.”

Geographic focus: Arlington County, Va.

Target demographic: “It’s general. We have retirees who come in all the time and we have high school students. From what I can tell, it seems to be a very broad age range. Our audience seems very much to mimic the demographic of Arlington, which isn’t a surprise.”

Annual operating budget: “I’m paying my own bills and I’m paying a freelancer.”

Annual revenue: “Our billings were about $5,000 in November, which was typical of the past couple of months. I fully expect that kind of monthly revenue to double by the end of 2012.”

Revenue streams: Display ads – 90%

Weekly sponsored columns coming and email marketing – 10%

Ad sales: ARLNow doesn’t use an ad network but uses Google AdSense for remnant sales; Brodbeck most of the selling himself, though he said most business comes to him without having to do active selling: “To this point, it has been mostly just taking orders.”

Editorial staff: One full time, one freelancer

Social media: Twitter and Facebook

Most popular features: Breaking news, restaurants and retail coverage, story comments (“If a story doesn’t get a comment at least into the teens then it’s the exception, not the rule.”)

Media partnerships: Content partnership with WTOP radio for Arlington coverage

Primary digital competition: Patch (two sites in Arlington), The Arlington Connection and The Arlington Sun-Gazette; “As of right now, all of the digital media outlets in Arlington are coexisting very nicely.”

What distinguishes it from the digital competition: “From a content perspective, the main thing differentiating ARLnow.com and Patch is that we publish more frequently than Patch, and our articles seem to attract a much more engaged readership than Patch. Look at our articles, and you'll see dozens — if not hundreds — of comments on each. Look at theirs, and you'll find that most articles don't have any comments. There's a reason for that: We produce content that's reader-focused and more in tune with what Arlington residents are actually interested in. Plus, in addition to always having the scoop about new restaurant openings and the like, we almost always break important hard news stories first, which helps drive reader loyalty.”