As a Video Producer for DR Power Equipment, I need to find locations to highlight my company’s products. Front Porch Forum makes my job much easier and I get to meet really great folks. Thanks for your help!

I love being an FPF member. A friend recommended it to me and at first I thought, “no way, I don’t want any more emails” but it doesn’t take any time to go through the daily list.

FPF connects me to my community, makes the bond between us stronger, and personal conversations continue due to FPF postings. I look forward to reading it every night. I’m not a Facebook fan but I LOVE Front Porch Forum.

Marianne Eaton
Producer/Editor
Country Home Products

I appreciate the recent note regarding business ads.  Here is another perspective:  As a small company operating out of the Old North End, I must say that an occasional notice from us regarding new or updated services is invaluable in getting our word out.  A neighborhood, it seems to me, is a combination of people, friends and families living and working locally in support of each other.  A neighborhood is, in part, defined by local businesses.  What would our neighborhood be like without our shops, farms, services, restaurants, and bakeries,  operated by people trying to make a living locally within their communities. Many of the small businesses I’m familiar with find it difficult to pay the going rate for advertising.  I believe Front Porch Forum has done a pretty good job of reaching a practical balance in this regard.

I’m curious about others thoughts!

Mark Bromley
One Revolution, Vermont Bikes at Work

With a great portion of that flowing to Facebook…

And most of that ad money seems to be coming from small and medium-size businesses.  From Greg Sterling…

AdAge reports and rounds up some of the Facebook ad revenues data that have come out in the wake of the Goldman investment in the social network. However here’s the interesting part of the article:

[W]hat is surprising is the majority of revenue, 60% or $1.12 billion, was earned from smaller companies in 2010, those more likely to be using self-serve tools rather than work through a media agency. That’s greater than the $740 million coming from major marketers like Coke, P&G or Match.com.

Local small and medium-size businesses continue to snap up Front Porch Forum advertising space.  Many are repeat customers, eager to reach FPF’s active audience of neighbors.

U.S. newspapers are indeed in deep financial straights.  Here’s a chart from Newspaper Association of America data…

U.S. newspaper revenue from classified, local and national ads are all contracting rapidly, while their income from online ad sales is still tiny in comparison.  Total ad sales in 2006 was about $49 billion and in 2009… $27 billion.  Wow.  U.S. newspaper online ad sales has held at about $3 billion for the past four years.

However, stepping away from newspapers for a moment, online advertising overall is growing impressively.  Charts from eMarketer project U.S. digital ad spending raising steadily at 10-14% from 2009 to 2014.  Newspapers’ slice of that $25 billion pie is relatively narrow… only about $3 billion.

Will online ad spending continue to climb at this rate?  Will it come at the further expense of newspaper ad spending?  Does this Harris poll offer a clue?

People tell us they read the ads on Front Porch Forum… and our sponsors keep buying the space.  Hard to know where this is all headed… but I do know that we get lots of businesses knocking on our door.

This is thanks, in part, to e-Vermont.  Applications from other Vermont towns are welcome by Nov. 17, 2010.

But the people of Middlesex say it best.  Here’s a video clip and a recent newspaper article… both worth a quick perusal.

Small start-ups simply post to their nearby neighbors letting folks know that they are open for business.  Other companies purchase advertising.  Nonprofits often ask their supporters to post event announcements, each on his/her own FPF neighborhood forum.  Local institutions and municipalities are buying subscriptions that provide access to their area neighborhood forums.

And, of course, neighbor-to-neighborhood recommendations flow through FPF at a rapid rate… plumbers, roofers, mechanics, dentists, arborists, snow plow kings, and on and on.  People like to ask their neighbors and FPF helps that to happen easily and with lots and lots of nearby neighbors all at once.

FPF staff are available to speak with business groups about all this.  Indeed, we addressed the Burlington Referral Organization this morning.  Tomorrow we’ll be at the CEDO Winter Business Fair.  We’ve enjoyed sharing our message with several Chamber of Commerce groups, Rotary, VBSR, business school classes, leadership institutes, and more.

Here’s a note about the Feb. 11 business fair in Burlington.

We’ve seen plenty of neighbors chasing lower prices by pulling together through Front Porch Forum to form group purchases.  In Huntington, it’s propane.  Other neighborhoods in Essex, South Burlington, Burlington, and Richmond have aggregated their purchasing power to get better deals on driveway paving, trash hauling, fuel oil, house painting, tree trimming, snow removal and more.  From today’s Huntington FPF…

There was a group of folks last year who got this going, and we took advantage.  Thank you to the folks who organized it… It was with Suburban Propane.  Phone: 864-9821  Call them and ask for Tina.  Tell her you want to be part of the Front Porch Forum group plan, and I think it was about $2.67/gal last year based on our small consumption (<500 gal/yr).  This was compared to over $4/gal…

We heard from a super-techie the other day.  He was frustrated that his hometown, South Burlington, is covered by 20 FPF neighborhood forums… too many small groups he thought.  Also, he wanted more bells and whistles… catchy pseudonyms for users, avatars, a rating system for postings, etc.

Well, that’s all understandable.  And we recognize that we can’t please everyone all the time.  What we do work on everyday, though, is fulfilling our mission in our pilot service region… to help nearby neighbors connect and build community.

So in South Burlington we host 20 neighborhood forums.  On average, each one covers an area encompassing about 350 households, with 100 subscribing in each neighborhood forum so far.   We hear wonderful comments all the time from South Burlington FPF users.  Here’s one we got earlier today…

Last week I was at an educational session for reaching personal goals, offered at the South Burlington Library.  The class was filled to capacity (with more on a waiting list) and everyone in the group (approximate age range  15 to 70) said they heard about it via the library’s announcement on the various South Burlington FPF.  Keep up the good work.  -Joanne Heidkamp, MS, RD

Any resident of the 25 Vermont towns in our pilot area (Chittenden and Grand Isle Counties, plus Starksboro) can put Front Porch Forum to use too.  Sign up, then post.  Then ask your local network to do the same… each person in his/her own FPF neighborhood forum.

In a way, FPF has passed out small neighborhood-size soapboxes to 17,000 (and counting) Vermonters… anyone may reach dozens or hundreds of nearby neighbors through FPF.  Some Web 2.0 gurus who know how to manipulate mega social media (Facebook, etc.) may grow frustrated that they can’t somehow use FPF to build a huge soapbox for themselves.  So be it.

VBSR Networking Get-Together
Date: Wednesday Jan 27th, 2010
Time: 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Location: Magnolia Bistro
Address: One Lawson Lane, Burlington, VT 05401
Cost: FREE and open to the public
To Register: Please RSVP to info@vbsr.org or call 802-862-8347; RSVPs appreciated, but walk-ins also welcome
For More Info: Call 802-862-8347 or email info@vbsr.org