thanks for that very terse but incredibly descriptive journey. How telling.

Very thoughtful piece with terrific references to insightful other articles. As you said that there is “so much truth referenced to the following article “it hurts”: http://www.crashdev.com/2012/01/top-three-reasons-not-to-do-local.html

How true, that is an incredibly insightful article.

I saw a thread from redditt in the DC subsection. It was started by a laid off LS (livingsocial) employee. A part of the thread describes the processes and pressures on the inside about sales: http://www.reddit.com/r/washingtondc/comments/140hoq/laid_off_from_livingsocial_ama/

Holy crow its expensive and daunting to try and create revenues…and with all those expenses its no wonder LS hit the cash crunch wall.

I tend to think of “Local” as almost too big a description covering so many topics. That in its own right suggests opportunities to branch into specialties within this huge world or to focus on verticals, especially one’s that are big money. Additionally while they are both “local” the buying process for deciding where to dine out versus choosing medical or legal professional services is dramatically different.

So I met with a rep of a business that represents “smbs” in one of the largest verticals around. One little thing that stunned me….more than 75% of their leads were coming from google.

Ooof that leaves 25% for every other entity, specialty, affiliate. Not a big chunk.

Google is big. Everyone else is small.

thanks for your insights, perspectives and article references.