Local.com’s Local Connect program offers the ability to inject local search, and new content, into your website. Through the flyer that they passed out at a local conference, and their website, they promote this as a free service.
Funny thing is, according to their sales staff it isn’t free at all, at least not for everyone. “Qualified local media companies benefit from no set-up fees and no monthly fees”. So you have to be qualified. Not hard, you think? Think again. Here are the qualifications:
- Google PageRank of 5 or above
- Local site
- Alexa ranking within top 400 sites
How many local sites are there, with a Google Pagerank of 5 or above and an Alexa ranking in the top 400 ? My guess … maybe 40 ? Not to mention the inherent inaccuracies with Google PageRank and Alexa ratings (let’s just say that they provide a rough guidelines, but they certainly shouldn’t be used a “gospel”)
If you don’t qualify, it is around $250 a month to host their service, for which they’ll pay you $8 CPM. Your $250 monthly fee is applied against the $8 CPM earnings. This is far from “Zero Cost – Don’t Pay Us, We’ll Pay You” .