Peter Caputa poses an interesting question: why isn’t the Techmeme sponsorship model perfect? Peter, much like myself, are both running frugal startups that provide room predominantly for results-based initiatives (be they marketing, advertising or PR) when it comes to allocating our small piles of resources.

As Pete notes:

But, it’s ridiculously out of the price range of the average blogger or startup to pay for. And I’ve heard it doesn’t necessarily result in a lot of new subscribers.

[...]

Subscriber and reader acquisition is a big market. They should apply their filters to content providers willing to pay for the privilege. And that might be a scalable business model.

pc4media: Techmeme’s Sponsored Posts Program is Almost Genius

When I first heard of the arrangement at Techmeme, I must admit that the entrepreneurial cog automatically kicked in and I wondered why I shouldn’t just buy a month’s sponsorship and then “sublet” posts on my blog so that they could make it into the sponsored box on Techmeme.  My second thought, naturally, was that Gabe would already have some control exerted that prevented me from doing this – something akin to removing the tag on my mattress.

Pete’s solution is somewhat different in that it urges the creation of a literal marketplace with paid benchmarks for performance.  As Pete suggests, he’d be willing to pay for RSS subscribers and a smaller amount for site visitors.   I certainly see the value and the opportunity in this approach.  Indeed most corporations and groups that we work with are interested in the size of their audience and how to quickly, if not exponentially, grow that.

My question, of course, is whether or not Techmeme is that place.  I think it very well might have the potential to be, as Pete suggests, with the variety of “channels” it offers.  It also draws the technorati (as in the elite tech users) crowd which increases the likelihood that a subscription might precipitate.  Still, however, I think the universe is in its infancy – at least around this particular watering hole.

In contrast, I might more anticipate Google to broach this problem – maybe even Yahoo! or Microsoft.  Seemingly, the CPA model is understood, supported and innovated in at all of these companies.  They also have the ear of the small to medium-sized advertisers which is really the most critical component in the mixture.

Good call Pete.

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