I first read this three months ago, and my jaw dropped. They won’t tell us how much they sold the ads for, or if they even had any long-term, repeat advertisers, but let’s be very generous and say they sold their 400 ads at $1,000/year. BackFence’s annual gross revenue was $400,000 before costs – and this from 13 entirely different properties, all with separate editorial costs, management, etc, etc. – after three years in business?

No need for tortuous academic analyses here, this is just lousy execution, plain and simple.

And from this debacle, we’re now supposed to learn something about “the importance of meaningful engagement at the local level.” If by that he means “selling ads to local businesses”, well, yes, that is pretty vital.

Hit the streets, Mr. Potts, pound the pavement, smile and dial, sell something, bring some money in the door – and then go out and do it again tomorrow, and the day after that.

No different that the 90′s, when you could be anything in PowerPoint, today, you can be anything in a Web Site (community site or otherwise). However, if you can’t effectively take it to the people, it’s no different than a 90′s PowerPoint presentation available to the masses.

I think businesses still expect the magic ‘if you build it, they will come’ from Field of Dreams to happen in reality. This is not the case and we can all learn from Mark’s comments regading the importance meaningful engagement at the local level.