Information Entrepreneurs: I’ve Got the Horse Right Here

Nice piece in the sports section of the New York Times last week about the Daily Racing Form, still thriving as a daily paper at $6/copy, with a growing online business. Think this is a weird anomaly, based on a unique hybrid of sports and gambling, with no lessons for other information companies? I would disagree.

Many people want to build Web news and information businesses these days based on minimal people costs, scraped or user-generated content, and tons of automated technology. That model can work, of course. But there are also still plenty of vertical businesses (based on specific industries, hobbies, etc.) that can be built based more on the unglamorous, often low-tech slog of collecting and packaging specialized news and data, and then charging for it. Take BidClerk.com, a Chicago publisher of construction project opportunities, selling memberships for the market-disrupting price of $50/month. Aggregating all those projects isn’t glamorous work, I’m sure, but it’s information that helps people make money – and therefore, information that they’ll pay for. Just like at the race track.