Take A Plunge

For searches made for many small towns Topix is the number one result. It’s because Topix has been aggregating local news for six years. But the site has never garnered much attention in the startup scene because after getting a majority equity investment from three of the largest media firms in the U.S., Knight Ridder, Tribune and Gannett. In 2005, it has been focusing on getting the business to work.

From where the content has come? Mostly the community that uses the site has contributed a lot of the content. Now Topix is about to cross 100 million posts (or comments).

It gets about 125,000 comments a day now. The average monthly pageviews from 8.8 million unique visitors is 120 million.

For people from the smaller towns, Topix is a gathering spot to discuss the local news. Many of such towns may not even have a daily local newspaper or website. Topix helps them to discuss things.

Topix has to remove some 45,000 comments a month due to things like hate speech. It also gets about 10 subpoenas a week due to comments. All that happens because it’s a very active place.

The money comes from advertising and deals with several big players, including CNN. The main source is advertising.  Topix is seeing $4 eCPMs and if it remains then soon the site can become a profitable one.