Judy's Book Evolution: Avoiding quick sand and lay offs

This article about insider pages, one of our former direct competitors, illustrates the kind of press and organization upheaval that we avoided when we decided to make the strategic evolution from local reviews into local deals. 

The evolution we're undertaking isn't easy but it is becoming clearer and clearer that we're on a much better path to a sustainable business -- i.e revenue and profit than we were when we were simply a user generated yellow pages with reviews (community directory).  We will have a significantly revised site by the end of the first quarter. I'm looking forward to it....I hope you are too.

I want to be clear here -- I like what Stu McFarlan (sp?) and the folks at Insider Pages attempted to do.  In fact, I liked it so much that I competed with them (we started at the same time). Moreover, you should know that in some instances, Insider Pages out-executed us. They did a good job and are good smart people.  I wish they had succeeded. That said, the management at Insider Pages spent money much faster than us. And as my management team and I concluded -- there was not a realistic revenue model underlying the sites that we both were creating. Based upon this article in Tech Crunch, I'm assuming that this got them in organizational quick sand. Fortunately, we at Judy's Book are evolving to a happy, firmer, and hopefully more profitable place.

I'm going to write more about Insider Pages, Yelp, and some of the lessons that people and entrepreneurs can take away from watching our space. 

Comments

[Michelle]

Oh man, Insider Pages still owes me a t-shirt from a phone interview I did with them back in August or so. Doubt that I'll ever see that t-shirt now...

[Ginzo Jeff]

Since signing on as a writer/reviewer at JB,I find the potential to be unlimited.I think a big step in the right direction is to demand some time and thought out of the reviews written at JB by the members writing them. In my opinion,there are too many useless reviews floating about the site.Demanding a standard of quality will greatly improve the potential for respect and financial gain of/at JB

[Mark]

Hi Andy,

Firstly, great blog!

I'm watching with interest the changes that are taking place at Judy's Book (especially the shift from local reviews to local deals). The results from a local deal model are definitely more quantifiable and it certainly seems that you have made the right changes to the company, with regards to the demise of Insider Pages.

Using our site as an example- we certainly doesn't have the sheer manpower that a site like say, Yelp has (especially in terms of getting people to promote the site on the street), therefore we are reliant on seeing a short return on our online marketing investment.

We have found that small businesses (especially bricks & mortar types) understand coupon-type promotions, but they don't necessarily appreciate relying on word of mouth alone to bring people through the door.

Mark
www.raveaboutit.com.au