Business Summary
The Company:
Collectic Media LLC is currently a Connecticut based Limited Liability Company.
Collectic Media LLC is currently a Connecticut based Limited Liability Company.
Intent is to convert to
a B Corporation structure.
Our contact number is
(860) 550-3483
Goal
Collectic’s plan is to
disrupt the local journalism market with a sustainable business model of
features to usurp the local newspaper and nascent local social media market. Expanding from our calendar, bulletin and
group features we provide an outlet for active individual and community group
participation. Our media platform services
provide social interaction, content tools and commerce features supporting the
journalism needs for every local community!
How
Collectic’s open
government features provided by its B corporate status connects citizens with
their government and community interest needs. Collectic seeks to build the bottom
up local to regional and state nonpartisan journalism needs and features to
interconnect community in today’s media driven world. The business of the newspaper industry we are
supplanting was not News! It was the
commerce of the community supporting News! By first providing an interactive directory of
access to local and state government participants we expand to connect and
support community groups to create our trusted journalism platform. Our directory features are interactive with
features to meet today’s communication needs. We create the ability
to further connect participants
with the content provided by their community. Our commerce features provide media services
in support of local commerce. It has
repeatedly been proven advertising alone will not sustain credible local curated
news supporting the need to provide trusted journalism to your or any
community. Collectic from its business model seeks to gain support for its
effort to bring trust to its journalism platform.
Collectic has amassed ownership
of 3000+ domain addresses to support an organic SEO effort while branding its
content into content clusters. Unique
different business models are necessary to gain significant traction required for
today’s media environment. We provide topical
niche site services or content clusters of community interests under the topic
headings of health, business, education, religion, sports, military, finance,
education, lifestyle, travel, finance, issues and community groups, politics
and government. To these independent niche
media topics, we offer group site services, directories, public service and local
commerce features. All sites and
services use Collectic as their common registration with either WCIFind.com as
directory search or WCIBuy.com as our commerce directory search. All sites aggregate the users Collectic
activity to their local Townbulletin as a news hub just as the Newspaper once
was a hub of journalism for the community.
Our features are built
to encourage trust in our journalism content. With group interaction the awareness
of user connectivity interest and community action creates a filter for curated
content to succeed. The pilot is being
developed to build our initial momentum from a basic bulletin, calendar and
group site directory feature set for town and community interests within a
framework of congressional district towns and neighborhoods. We intend to
focus our Communitycalendar.net features as the go to calendar of the community
with identity features of public group and private member access. We intend using a "Crowd Funding"
method of capitalization through services, sales and subscriptions to service
features. Our build methodology will
focus first on member feedback to build our most requested service feature. Potentials within the pilot towns and
community areas of interest encourage our initial members to provide feedback
to enhance the platform of features and help us define the most useful
government and group information services.
We intend to expand by congressional district using the initial pilot as
our model. Why? We are all supported by
one common link to our federal government a congressional representative! What our representative is doing for the
district is most important! Not what he/she is doing for an outside interests. Collectic’s core focus is to build public trust
for our government and for our journalism. Without public trust no meaningful news or
information provider can sustain itself.
All the features of Collectic both media, social or commerce are intent
on this ultimate directive!
The Service
Collectic’s eclectic platform
was assembled to create advantages for communities from the varied interests of
its membership. Collectic provides service to diverse groups or
"Communities of Purpose"SM who share common
interests of practice and purpose. Members are connected through a
common central registration our "Collectic" to a social to commerce catalogue
and directory of content and feature search. [WCIFind.com -
Wherecouldifind.com, WCIBuy.com - Wherecanibuy.com]. Tools are provided via this niche topic
network of community interest groups sites (#600) in addition to interactive topic
sites and services of government and politics (#146) community bulletins (#80),
blogs (#30), Mail (#40) and community commerce features and services (#95). Collectic impacts open government and local
internet journalism by providing these topic driven bulletin, blog, vlog, mail
and calendar features as paid packaged services!
The primary destination
of this Ven architecture of community service is the users common Town.Townbulletin.com,
as the hub for our members group content interest choices and local community
interaction. All politics is local as is our social interaction!
Although technology
connects us with the world, it often leaves us disconnected from those in our
geographic community. Through Townbulletin.com and our
many local community sourced Directory, Bulletin, Blog/vlog, Group, Mail/SMS
and content page services we offer to help our members use technology to find
what they want, communicate their ideas and offer a means to improve their
lives for their State, Town or interest Community. Collectic
brings people together from the real world through technology. Our
mission is to drive members to use the platform as a tool for change, not
just for social interaction. Collectic is the “Community of Purpose”
driven by information, news and interactivity to enable cooperation.
By actively courting
members from specific topic channels as well as active real-world community and
social groups, Collectic can mobilize members in specific markets around this
country and the world. Guests (members) will want to contribute local
news, images and video about events and their lives. All submissions will
be via our PublicNewsWorks.com service - a user generated
content management engine that will dynamically arrange itself throughout the
day based on incoming content. Each town or state market has
individual unique site addresses or urls e.g. Townbulletin,
Policebulletin, Schoolbulletin, Parentbulletin, Businessgroups, Communitygroups,
Seniorgroups, Healthgroups, Politicalgroups, Governmentgroups, Issuegroups,
Studentgroups etc…..
Townbulletin acts as the
center of the user community in a ven architecture hub structure of interaction
for local community. The links running off the user community
Townbulletin are the common urls directed at our community service features.
Additionaly the individual URLs Communitycalendar.net,
Towndirectory.net and the various bulletins and page links combine through
our Publicnewsworks.com content management service to create a
news and information hub for local community content and public information.
Much as the newspaper
serviced the community of the past the Townbulletin and our
overall bulletin features combine to service the community. Our page urls or links such as Editorialpage,
Obituarypage, Classifiedpage, Sportspages, Funnypages and our
other various news page links act to bring public interest content from the
community back to the community. Some of which will be paid content. As a
newspaper acted in the past, members gain the ability to connect their content
and commerce with their community overall.
A small localized editorial
staff within each district will be charged with vetting content and eliminating
unsavory or potentially libelous material as well as creating new content.
The best will be pushed out for the community to consume. From this
directory engine, content could be reviewed and edited for use in print
publication that could highlight the best, most useful information from the
total submissions by subject. These print editions could circulate to the
community under the Collectic brand and or from the portal topic channels as
marketing tools.
This phase of the project
seeks to allow members and students to learn - how to communicate more
effectively and better understand what is happening among their peer
groups - discover unique achievements and talents that might not normally be
spotlighted - develop a habit of seeking high quality information that has been
professionally edited: - adopt the most modern journalistic practices i.e.
citizen journalism, web based production environments, multi format reporting.
A shared revenue model should be utilized after the project has reached a
critical mass audience.
Who would want to use
it, and why? Everyone in the local community will have a need to
participate in its use. Other networks have started by focusing on the student
phase of social interaction but have failed to fully engage them in a purpose.
Our network focus is to engage all in purposeful activity.
Community is still an unfocused market. Collectic means to engage
members in purposeful interaction among established groups and resources within
our user community.
Too often parents and
teachers throw their hands in the air when asked about their teenage
children/students. This is potentially a way to get a view into their thoughts,
feelings and activities and to engage them in adult issues. Students would be
equally driven to seek out this information, as they typically don't have time
to understand what is happening in more than a small number of different social
circles. By engaging as many different divergent groups with members as
mentors to students, from a variety of interests, we would highlight the myriad
different personalities that begin to blossom during the teenage years.
This is a means to engage divergent social groups within a community to
further the “It Takes A Village” philosophy. This is certainly a
significant benefit from the project
The key to Collectic's
growth research shows action-oriented people continue to interact and invite
new entrants to their field of interest. Social networks do not hold
participants who move, change jobs, or find other interests. Motivated
Collectic members will grow and attract new followers on a long-term basis.
They inherently expand both topical interests and new members to join in their
causes. Their expanding interests are long term, not fleeting.
Collectic also plans
alternative reality games and paid features! Games and features such as Civicvillage.com
and Communitypass.com will enhance the stickiness of community sponsorship,
public volunteerism and charitable giving. Civic Village will offer civic
prizes and discount reward points via Communitypass.com to use with
participating sponsor merchants. Games for good as a strategy will be prominent
in our overall plans.
This platform includes its Social Commerce services to:
Government and Political
Networking too:
Public Service and
Advocacy Groups,
Commerce and
Business Groups,
Money and Finance
Groups,
Community Groups,
Educational Groups,
Arts and Entertainment
Groups,
Religious Groups,
Military Groups,
Health Groups,
Lifestyle Groups,
Sports, Travel and
Recreation network services … and so on.
A user of Collectic’s platform
of groups sites or member services first becomes a member of the Collectic platform
by registration, prompted in selected instances by an individual member's
or groups invitation. Collectic’s primary access point is through
our universal registration feature @ Collectic.com. Access can be through
any of our group or service applications or a participating site which may
enlist to use Collectic as their registration to our features within their
site! Site participants are enabled to
use Collectic registration under certain rules under which they participate in
the larger context of the platform administration and guidelines.
Registration process
includes selecting User Name and Password and establishing member profile for
association in and identity within the platform services and groups. The
set feature services Collectic provides its members include:
Group Topic Directory Services
Member Directory
Blue, White and Yellow Page
Directory
Sales and Purchasing
services
Contribution and funding
services
News Content and Wire
services
Advertising and
Marketing services
Email, IM, RSS/SMS/MMS
feeds,
Bulletin, Blog, Vlog and
Wiki applications
Secondary Domain name
registration
Video streaming
Web hosting and the
like.
The Market:
The State of
Connecticut's Center for Advanced Technology Grant Program and the University
of Connecticut Finance dept initiated an independent study of the market
potential and creation of a causal financial model of Collectic Media’s
potential. Three graduate students were deployed with
various disciplined backgrounds of finance, engineering and marketing
under the supervision of a Finance Dept instructor. The study found our
greatest market potential closely resembled an AOL.com initiative to service local
community news and information, PATCH.com among other like news services.
The study found Collectic to have significant enhanced
market differentiation potentials. Ask for the UConn Study materials
and corresponding causal financial model. Management see's Collectic to be a
variable of a few sites with features enhancing the overall potential of
community interactivity. These sites variations are Yelp, Facebook, Patch and Yellowpages.com/White
respectably. Collectic Media's platform
moves beyond the valuations of social networking sites like Facebook,
LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram and the like. Collectic expands services
through its Social, Political and Business end users personal
niche interests. Collectic’s community platform features
encourage interactivity through a ven architecture of local use, Cooperation
and localization of the community not just the individual. Where
others have been described as being like a social cocktail party,
Collectic offers more sophisticated curated content to engage real community
potentials. Collectic has identified 16 interest categories within those
potentials to expand our members social and commerce reach. Our platforms
opportunities are severalfold compared to a single address portal
display. Collectic facilitates the creation and inclusion of other
social network services and application features within the Collectic directory
of community services.
The following statistics
are an illustration of some of our market potential:
There are over 9000 U.S.
communities with additional equal potential worldwide with a population
demographic substantial enough to support an initiative to use our services.
There are 500,000 or so U.S. government elected officials in addition to
the political parties, community and public service groups. Our expansion
comes from the community social organizations, committee members, staff, and
the over 1,000,000 Non-Government Organizations, Political Action Committees,
Lobbyists, Business, Community and Social groups in the U.S. market
expanding globally. Recent reports estimate that over 40,000 businesses,
associations, and trade groups lobby state legislatures each year. There
are approximately 87,000 local US government entities, including 2,000 municipalities
with a population of 10,000 or more, 7,000 with over 5,000 population.
Collectic promotes the potential for technology offerings to civic,
social, political and governmental organizations in each of these, as a grass
roots vehicle for matching political and community needs. All Politics is
Local. Collectic will be available in every municipality to activate Internet
participation.
Competitive Advantage and Key Differentiation:
Collectic builds upon
itself from a scale-able viral network of individual groups
topic portals and services. Collectic's founder foresaw the need for
focused networking and content aggregation from local to state,
national and international, not the reverse, for social, political and
business communities of interest. Collectic registered 3300+ key brand
URLs (Domains) to act as external technology expansion channels or
content clusters for extending the focus and scope of the networks
search engine optimization (SEO) reach. The system invites self-expansion
where members find and create new areas of interest within topic
categories. Where Facebook and others started, we go further by
expanding our roll within community. This is accomplished by the
branded identity features and services we offer to the community and the
individual user. This allows us to promote our brands of
services to community niche interests and to further our member
features into search engines for promotional purposes SEO while we
expand this scale-able viral platform.
This we know to be a
significant differentiation in the market of community.
By actively courting members from specific topic channels as well
as active real-world community and social groups, Collectic can mobilize
members in specific markets around this country and the world. Guests
(members) will want to contribute local news, images and video about events and
their lives. All submissions will be via our PublicNewsWorks.com service
- a user generated content management engine that will dynamically arrange
itself throughout the day based on incoming content. Each town or state
market has individual unique site addresses or urls e.g. Townbulletin,
Policebulletin, Schoolbulletin, Businessgroups, Communitygroups etc…..
Townbulletin acts as the center of the user community in a ven
architecture hub structure of interaction for local community. The links
running off the user community Townbulletin are the common urls directed at our
community service features. Additionaly the individual URLs Communitycalendar.net,
Towndirectory.net and the various bulletins and page links combine through
our Publicnewswire.com news service to create a news and
information hub for local community content and public information.
Much as the newspaper serviced the community of the past.
Collectic and its Townbulletin.com and our overall bulletin
features combine to service the community as the internet continues to usurp local
news media of the past. Our page urls or links such as Editorialpage,
Obituarypage, Classifiedpage, Sportspages, Funnypages and
our other various news page links act to bring public interest content from the
community back to the community. Some of which will be paid content. As a
newspaper acted in the past, members gain the ability to connect their content
and commerce with their community overall.
A small editorial staff will be charged with vetting content and
eliminating unsavory or potentially libelous material. The best will be
pushed out for the community to consume. From this web based engine,
content could be reviewed and edited for use in print publication that could
highlight the best, most useful information from the total submissions by
subject. These print editions could circulate to the community under the
Collectic brand and or from the portal topic channels as marketing tools.
This phase of the project seeks to allow members and students to
learn - how to communicate more effectively and better understand what is
happening among their peer groups - discover unique achievements and talents
that might not normally be spotlighted - develop a habit of seeking high quality
information that has been professionally edited: - adopt the most modern
journalistic practices i.e. citizen journalism, web based production
environments, multi format reporting. A shared revenue model should be
utilized after the project has reached a critical mass audience.
Who would want to use it, and why? Everyone in the local
community should want to participate in its use. Other networks have started by
focusing on the student phase of social interaction but have failed to fully
engage them in a purpose. Our network focus is to engage all in
purposeful interactivity. Community in particular is still an unfocused
market. Collectic means to engage members in purposeful interactivity
among established groups and resources within our users community.
Too often parents and teachers throw their hands in the air when
asked about their teenage children/students. This is a way to get a view into
their thoughts, feelings and activities and to engage them in adult issues.
Students would be equally driven to seek out this information, as they
typically don't have time to understand what is happening in more than a small
number of different social circles. By engaging as many different
divergent groups with members as mentors to students, from a variety of
interests, we would highlight the myriad different personalities that begin to
blossom during the teenage years. This is a means to engage divergent
social groups within a community to further the “It Takes A Village”
philosophy. This is certainly a significant benefit from the project
The key to Collectic's growth research shows action oriented
people continue to interact, and invite new entrants to their field of
interest. Social networks do not hold participants who move, change jobs,
or find other interests. Motivated Collectic members will grow and
attract new followers on a long-term basis. They inherently expand both topical
interests and new members to join in their causes. Their expanding
interests are long term, not fleeting.
Marketing Strategy:
A major goal of any
Internet platform is to drive membership and traffic. As a first year
goal, Collectic Media plans to register 35 million members distributed among 600
interest groups and its various service categories. To this end,
Collectic will employ all available marketing tools to promote http://www.collectic.com and its registrant feature Collectic.com.
Initially we will launch the pilots group features to initiate traffic
flow then move to deploy the hub and spoke features of the network as traffic
allows. Our primary focus, or the hub of the network offering where the
users see the results of their participation is their local.Townbulletin! Its
corresponding bulletin and news page features are focused to provide
services to any municipality throught the world. After a period of time
to test our functionality and the potential is established in all 432
congressional districts an expansion outside the U.S. will occur.
Experienced marketing and public relations personnel we intend to employ,
or contract will manage these activities. Collectic will be promoted as
"Communities of Purpose", a super networking
site, or as “The Niche Network”.
Our primary approach to
build traffic is to reach out to major organizations and their local chapters within
each topic category to upgrade their listings within our search and directory
features to help build outreach within our platform. Sponsor ad revenue from publications within
each category can be addressed as a revenue stream. Publications can act as
co-marketing partners whereby trades of ad space can enable us to attract
attention within the topic category while keeping down ad costs. Publication
Subscriptions can be used as incentives to become paid members. We
will restrict traffic initially to while we establish a cashflow. It is also our intent to keep our initial
traffic to those who wish to use our platform to build a presence on the net by
bulletin, blog or groups features!
We feel a strong
reliance on niche advertising, public relations and viral email promotion from
member interest are our most appropriate means of marketing promotion.
Co-op ad networking, working with established print media, marketing niche
topic services ie: Skiing magazine to Ski groups, AARP to Senior groups etc.
This is primarily a niche topic platform with commerce and content
features to foster a news and localized engagement platform.
Click though ads, Adword
style advertisement promoting Collectic can be established once a budget can be
established and tested for results.
Although this technique
may not be used as a primary tool it should be discussed. The average cost of
adword advertisement in Google/Yahoo/MSN/Oath/Facebook is in the range of $0.25
and up. Collectic has compile a list of 5,000 or so keywords for
placement in each of
the three major search engines. If we expect 10 clicks per word and
at that rate, the adword advertisement would cost $1,000,000 annually.
Public relations
techniques in a gorilla marketing effect should be most cost
effective. This would likely bring a more controlled traffic flow to test
and build off for a steady reliable growth curve. This network's
potential has been created with the focus to be unsurpassed in its ability to
promote from niche markets. Local lawn
and temporary street sign placements for Town.Townbulletin or School.Studentbulletin,
Town.Seniorbulletin signs temporarily placed on roads and bridges. A campaign of
Public relations is
a primary means of traffic enhancement. The story is primary
as a media force. How this media network is received is
going to be the responsibility of Public relations. Keeping the
customer interested in helping us build a usable service they can rely, and
trust is essential. The story is what sells the product. How the
founder created this network, the struggle and perseverance to create
the potential to serve the community etc. The founders personal
experience will be a major aspect of selling the network. A movie
depicted the founder of Facebook as someone you would not necessarily
want to do business with, let alone trust your personal data too. The
trajectory of that network and its user base has continued to grow non-the-less.
Publicity good or bad is said to always be good
as it develops traffic.
The competition namely
MSN, Oath, Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter etc. are well established and
are also major resources of promotion. The industry has created an open
environment to work off each other as a source for traffic. We have
designed Collectic to offer a unique approach to the open government market of
social and community interactivity. Through our viral approach to
community service, which uses a niche approach to user interest, we
differentiate our offerings from the competition.
Each group url or portal
url will be offered as a resource to locate the users individual localized
group content need. Vision the 7,000 U.S. communities with population of
5,000 or more with just 50 of our 600 group topic content clusters or our
bulletin services utilizing its own subdomain url as a niche branded
service to the community. That translates to 350,000 unique
identities spider’d throughout search engines of the web. If each unique
identity created 100 unique users within a year we would be much farther along
than others had been in their first years.
Others have used niche
groups as an approach to launching their services. Linkedin to business,
Facebook to college students and faculty, Myspace to youth are a few.
Collectic sees the local community as its foundation for growth.
Using Townbulletin.com, as the hub of the content network our strongest
potential comes from our local engagement via government and politics.
In closing this section,
maximizing the use of our 1000 or so urls in what is referred to as a
“wildcard” approach whereby each url has the ability to recreate a separate
identity. Examples are: AnyTown.towngovernment.org,
AnyTown.womensgroups.net, AnyTown.towndirectory.net, AnyState.statetourism.org,
AnyTown.communitycalendar.net etc. This has a unique potential whereby
hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of urls will facilitate the growth of
Collectic’s potential.
.
Revenue Projections:
Collectic has adopted a
profit-based approach to an altruistic business model providing the public a
gateway to open government and the community interests that they serve.
Cash may flow from five potential independent sources i.e. user fees -
subscriptions to content and services, application services, development
services, advertising and marketing listing services. Each of these draws
from a wide variety of sources with diverse needs and interests. Sources
include Community, political, social, and business groups, NGO's, PAC's,
political parties, office holders and seekers and the local community.
Collectic positions itself to be the medium of choice news and
information for community involvement, government action and commerce services.
The model is flexible and responsive to the needs of users at every
level. The wild card search engine optimization dynamic we deploy
provides significant traffic promotion capability to quickly make Collectic
predictably a dominant portal destination in its categories. Collectic
Media may use revenue sharing models with groups and organizations for
advertising sales.
Revenue potentials include:
Polling services
Job posting
Site, Search and
Directory engine inclusion and positioning
Blog, mail and bulletin
enhanced features
Service provider fees –
Hosting, Domain name purchase, Optimization
Affiliate referral fees
(Dating, obituary, shopping, etc.)
Advertising Services –
Sponsored search results, pay per click or pay for performance, Banner,
contextual, RSS, SMS, email, lead generation,
AdDot.com - Campaign
services
Collectic will
typically use what is called a Freemium approach to its services.
Whereby the user is given something for free or free use of a
service then encouraged to upgrade to a more robust set of features.
Examples:
Polling services – Charges for polling services to members
by interest, activity, gender, demographic etc. Small insertion fee, plus pay
per response based fee, fee .25$ for 100 response minimum. User creates
campaign, user pays upfront for service. The 100 response feature may
be the free minimum and an upgrade would be to larger number responses.
Job posting – Charge for job posting by demographic.
Employee posts resume blog for free, Business is charged a fee for search
of potential resumes and for job posting in Job Bulletin. The Fee
typically is based on flat fee per month, per category by demographic. A
multiple category and demographic fee structure may apply. Craigslist.org
charges $75.00 per category per month. A free week or month
trial per business offer whereby a fee would be charged to give the user
the opportunity to see the effectiveness of the service may apply.
We should also offer a posting service to other free job posting
services as a part of our service to enhance our offering and traffic. We
may initially partner with an outside service to enhance this offer.
Search, Catalogue and
Directory engine inclusion -
Pay for inclusion service fees typically includes a monthly search engine
inclusion or refresh to multiple search engines. Fee includes a review of
content by editorial staff within a timely manner. Fee is annual and
starts at $299 for Yahoo. Google offers a free service, which only
includes inclusion in Google’s engine and guarantees no promise of service.
Service Provider Fees: Blog, mail and bulletin enhanced features:
Cloud services, Storage, Hosting, Domain name purchase, search engine
optimization etc. Basic free features are typical of offerings by service
providers with enhanced features on a fee basis. Enhanced features would
include additional capability to have others provide postings to blogs or
bulletins, privatization, and business member services. Mail services could
have access to both extended functionality or members.
Affiliate Referral Fees - Match.com (Dating), Amazon.com (Shopping),
Legacy.com (Obituary) all these sites and many other similar services offer a
referral fee for either listings, purchases or members. Legacy.com supplies
obituary services to the New York Times. Match.com supplies dating
services to Yahoo and many other dating services.
Collectic doesn't have to be the provider of the service just
the channels to find good services.
Advertising Services – This section is the primary source of
income for most internet services. The following ad revenue examples are
typical of most content services. Sponsored search results, pay per click
or pay for performance, Banner, contextual, rss, email, lead generation.
Pay per click better known as pay for performance is typically offered on
a bid basis, whereby advertisers offer a bid for placement with .25 cents per
click minimum.
Other options include
the following page offerings. Costs vary depending on level of service.
Homepage Big Ad - This
position provides an extremely visible, high impact format. Ideal for
special events, such as new campaigns or product launches.
Homepage Marketplace -
This static ad placement creates an enormous amount of awareness. This position
generates a high volume of impressions and valuable leads.
Homepage Day Part Module
- This fixed position ad is fully integrated with relevant content on the
Homepages of Collectic's topic pages - Ideal for building brand awareness,
promoting a time sensitive offer and generating leads based on user profiles.
Full Page Interstitial's
- Increase product and brand awareness with a Full Page Interstitial.
This advertising position provides total exclusivity and can be combined
with targeting options.
Search Sponsorship -
Become part of a user's entire search experience with prominent logo placement
on our homepages, section topic fronts, sub-channels and article. To
complete the experience, logo and banner ads are carried forward on search
results.
Site for a Day - Create
an enormous amount of awareness through a static placement on Collectic topic
pages. Site for a Day positions generate a high volume of impressions and
leads.
Text Links - Increase
awareness through a static placement on Collectic topic links. Use as a
lead generation tool or to build brand awareness alongside our topic pages and
search results.
AdDot.com – Acts as our
digital advertising agency. Developing Client campaigns will be its
primary function. AdDot.com will deploy all the ad services of the network in
addition to providers such as Yahoo, Google, AOL, Ask etc. This will also
assist in maintaining our inhouse talent pool.
Expense Projections:
Key Expenses include:
R&D Expenses
This is projected to be
of the order of $250,000 and will continue to expand as an expense year over
year as the network and revenue grows. The bulk of R&D work can
be outsourced. An in-house staff of 2 persons to manage and coordinate the
initial R&D effort can limit costs.
Initial Staffing
Expenses
· A core staff of 10
full time positions in the first months is envisioned. This includes
· Acting CEO
· Office Manager
· HR Agents (1) to
coordinate hiring of team members.
· Marketing /PR person -
outsourced
· HR Managers (2) to
manage marketing and services.
· R & D Staff (7) to
coordinate and manage the Development effort – outsourced. Will build further development team
members as project starts to scale.
· Content Managers (3)
to manage blogs and content gathering
At a loaded cost of
$70,000 per year the employee payroll expenses are projected to be less than $1,000,000.
This cost will expand significantly as expansion occurs.
The amount of staff and
other expenses is relative to the market acceptance of our services and the
extent to which we can use cash flow to self-fund operations and growth.
It has become a necessity for the project to approach the market in this
way given the economic condition of the economy. The funding market also
responds favorably to services that use a viral self-funding approach.
Concern for profit is not the primary objective it’s survival.
Cost of Acquiring the
Staff
To recruit Commissioned
Sales force, we need to advertise in Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, and
HotJobs.com or similar such websites. This adds an expense of about
$50,000. The in-house HR agents will screen the candidates and make
appropriate hiring.
Projected Roll
out Schedule;
The company has
projected an initial development cost of 50,000 for a beta pilot model.
We would then shortly thereafter have the ability to recruit sales
associates from mirroring the beta model to other congressional districts and
towns. The intent is to develop teams around the model districts in support of
journalism, sales and services. It is critical to recruit a team to begin
marketing services and sponsorship opportunities in the beta stage of the
project. Each district will be its own
beta developing acceptance into the community. Collectic intends recruit from
the Journalism, Specialty Advertising and Digital marketing industries for
personnel. All these markets offer skills which bring expertise to assist
in our growth. It is crucial to establish a cash flow from the start.
Collectic may at first restrict access to certain services or provide
access only to those who are active paid subscribers utilizing its content and
marketing services. We are considering to target a specific niche while
rolling out the full extension of services. A formal Roll out schedule
and promotional campaign will be prepared as we get closer to realizing our
funding goals.
The listed amounts below
or “Funding Request and Use of Proceeds” are for an initial roll out. The
beta launch will obviously create a truer picture of the capital demands of the
enterprise. This company has been designed and will be initiated as a
self-funding grass roots project. Created to be sustainable from the
start our intent is to roll this out in beta to a select congressional district
community. We are intent on Town Government
and State Legislature being our rollout topic as others have done to markets
such as the education community.
Collectic will offer a
paid service contribution initiative promoted to those within the initial
online trial groups. Collectic will launch an associate employment campaign
along with an advertising promotion campaign to business promoting our
potential to the community initiating a sponsor ad sales campaign from the
start.
Collectic may offer
select groups of services to the initial group for a discounted price to assist
in our capital demands. Collectic may only need a portion of the funds
listed. It is unknown what the reception will be from the public.
Initial receptions from those who we have approached that are industry
savvy and realize our uniqueness have indicated we should get significant
market share. What that market share will be is unknown. Any market
share from competitors previously mentioned will translate to significant
revenue. Some of our competitors have not been profitable in their respective
enterprises to date. This is because they went for major growth and
continual updating of technology servicing an unknown market while loosing
money. They were lucky to enter the market at a time when money was readily
available and uncaring as to the immediate results. This is not the case
for Collectic. It will be necessary to maintain a strict sense of control
to maintain costs to manage our growth. Collectic enters a market still
maturing to its potential with services anticipated but under served.
Funding Requirments:
Collectic is looking to
raise an initial $1,000,000.
Use of proceeds:
Development
R&D/consulting service 250,000
Management
expenses 100,000
Acxiom directory data
100,000
Office
expense
50,000
Office
help
70,000
URL Cost
35,000
Marketing Expenses
Collateral Materials
10,000
Recruitment services
30,000
Marketing Dir.
120,000
Marketing Support Staff
120,000
Travel
30,000
Publicist
50,000
Legal & Accounting
40,000
Cloud Server Expenses
45,00
Miscellaneous
50,000
Total
$1,000,000
Key Principals:
Terry Kelliher - Founder
Collectic Media - Terry fostered the idea for Collectic during the
dot com bubble of 2000 and nurtured the idea to its present stage of
development. He currently is principal owner of AdDot.com a digital
design and advertising agency.
Dr. Muthu Sankaran - is
a Graduate of IIT Bombay, India (receiving his master’s degree in Electronics)
and Stevens Institute of Technology (where he received his Doctorate).
Dr. Sankaran has 25 years experience in computer technology, primarily in
software development. He has worked for Philips Research Labs, Gerber
Systems Technology, CIGNA, Lincoln National and Mass Mutual. He founded
Controls and Drives Corporation (Telecommunications) and Packaged Communication
Technology (CAD/CAM software systems). He is currently a consultant to
several companies.
Appendix 1
Data Resources used Collectic:
The data resources for
Collectic’s search capability include:
- SIC (Standard Industry Code) information that is publicly available and contains business directory sorted by SIC code.
- NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) information that is publicly available and contains business directory sorted by NAICS code.
- Zipcodes database that helps localized and regional search
- Government database services – Firstgov.gov - usa.gov etc, other national and international governmental data sources where applicable.
- Lucene or Yahoo search BOSS development tools or alternative open source search directory tools.
- Axciom data- residential and business.
Collectic's interactive
platform is aimed at providing a fulfilling user experience while promoting the
formation of long-lasting and "sticky" communities. The overall
objective is ensure both new and existing members frequently revisit their
Collectic "Communities of Purpose" and remain involved for extended
periods of time.
Collectic is developed
as a trusted network where each community participant's identity is known
within the communities where the respective participant has elected to register
using his/her real name. Collectic guarantees that each member's user data is
only used within the Collectic community network to provide a better user
experience.
A. Develops low cost but
high quality/content rich web portal channels for Government, non-profit
organizations and topic specific groups connecting individual users to each
other via the internet and through the phone. The network utilizes
government and user provided information sources as content to initiate
interaction. Members source news resources such as RSS news acquisition
and blogging as examples of added content to reference as important to other
portal channel members.
B. Portals are organized
locally (district/city/state) or functionally providing strong incentive for
local or other business to sponsor and buy ads
C. Over 3300 URL
identities have been reserved to form the basis of the Collectic Network and
it's services. Individuals will form their own porta, bulletins, blogs,
groups and page sites using on screen templates and limited interaction with
Collectic personnel required. Use of common name backbone and
interconnecting links will facilitate higher search engine rankings for our
community users.
The primary emphasis is
on local community interests and activity. The level of interest expands
the member’s use to state, regional and national niche groups and services.
The following diagram illustrates the ties between local and national
associations.
Collectic Media provides
niche options of content and identity. Each portal channel is directed at
a specific group of interest or niche. Our hierarchical nature of
construction offers the user focused options of access to content. The
opportunity to keep the purpose of the discussion directed to the content of
the portal offering e.g. womensgroups.com/net to women’s interests or
healthgroups.org/net to health issues etc.
Appendix 2:
Domain Summary:
The following examples
express the path from an initial localized topic homepage for the individual
registered user. The links from each of the following pages provide local
content and can be expanded in relevant search paths of regional, state and
national content. Each portal can be accessed by its URL name e.g.
towncommittee.org etc. Each portal services a group path (seniorgroups,
womensgroups etc.) to the network to provide services.
In the context of
commercial applications Wherecouldibuy.com (WCIBuy.com) is used as a central
directory search application to access our local commercial catalogue and
service portals.
Examples:
Beautylocale.com, Dateingadvantages.com, Weddingcatalogue.com,
Thenewhomestore.com, Tagsaleonline.com etc.
From the Collectic home
page, 16 group topic categories as well as the networks service applications
can be accessed. The following examples of how the topics work in relation to
the network.
Governmentgroups home
page – is the super portal of government related sites within the Collectic
Network. This is a topic category portal accessed on the Collectic home page
along with the other 16 topic categories. Governmentgroups gives access to
International, National, State and Local government sites and are referenced
via the explore option on the page. Each of the topic categories works
similarly within the network. Each topic in the explore option is a separate
portal channel and can be accessed separately via its own url which is spidered
into search engines to create our viral market potential.
Politicalgroups - Links
political portals and state and local party websites nationally. Links to
political activity of individuals and groups. Links from here include
Republicanstateparty, Democraticstateparty, A-lincoln.org,
Jefferson-Jackson-members only portals for elected party officials,
Nationalcommittee, statecentralcommittee. Statechairman, stateexecdir,
Townchairman, Countychairman, towncommittee, countycommittee, towngovernment,
stategovernment, committeemen, Communitygroups, Politicalgroups, laborgroups,
Pacmail, politicomail, Laborleader, Unionactivist, Communityactivist,
Politicalcampaign, Politicalpolls, Democraticvoters, Republicanvoters,
Independentvoters, Politician, Politicaladvisor, Economicadvisor, Capitalvote,
Capitalreview, Campaignadvisor, Domesticpolicyissues, Stateissues,
Federallegislation, Statelegislature, executivebranch, Legislativecaucus,
Congressperson, Senatorial. All these URls act as separate portal offerings to
service each vertical niche group and the constituents or members that interact
with them.
Additional Examples of Portal Channels:
Communitygroups - The
community network offering. This is the home page to creating or finding a
community group within their town or region, state and nation. Contains a
search engine and a listing of group channels for easy access and use. Services
off this page are to create a group and the finding of groups within the
registered users community. Form a temporary group on an issue etc.
Womensgroups, Mensgroups, Churchgroups, Spiritualgroups, Seniorgroups,
Studentgroups, Collegegroups, Childrensgroups, Learninggroups, Parentgroups,
Singlesgroups, Culturalgroups, Civicgroups, Ethnicgroups, Serviceclubs, ,
Servicegroups, Veterangroups, Specialinterestgroups, Consumergroups etc. etc.
Stategovernments has two
initial pages one that indexes all states then individual state pages which has
a search engine to link the user to our state website url links with indexed
pages - key word driven. Links from our list include - stategovernor,
Executivebranch, stateattorneygeneral, statetreasurer, stateconsumerprotection,
statecomptroller, statelegislature, statelegislator, legislativecaucus,
legislators, staterepresentative, Congressperson, Senatorial, generalassembly,
freedomofinformation, secretaryofstate, registrarofvoters, Votersregistration,
statesenate, Stateboards, publicservices, communitycalendar,
statebulletin Childrensservices, stateissues, Consumeractivist,
Communityactivist, Consumertesting, Federallegislation (effecting individual
states) Domesticpolicyissues,
Towngovernment - Town
government home page - two pages - first, lists all the towns of the state or
provides a search of towns, the other is for individual towns and has a search
engine link to town related websites and information with indexed pages -
keyword driven. Links on this home page from our list include:
Wherecouldifind.com Wherecouldibuy, Communitygroups, Communitycalendar,
Childrensservices, Policebulletin, Publicservices, Politicalgroups,
Towncouncils, Townboards, Schoolcommittee, Mayorsoffice, Firstselectmen,
selectmen, townclerk, townmanager, zoningboard, planningboard,
Federalgovernment, towncommittee, Registrarofvoters, communityactivist,
Contribution2, Votersregistration, Publicauctionblock, Tagsaleonline, Iconcur,
statelegislators, stategovernment, Provides features to create a temporary
group providing forums on issues before town or state government. Links to
state representatives, congressman senators etc. Groups such as
schoolcommittee.net will offer opt-in tools to communicate to other groups
within the network.
Townbulletin – This site
offers access to over 40 different bulletin applications focused on community
information e.g. policebulletin, highschoolbulletin, churchnewsbulletin etc.
The town bulletin for each member is referenced by the users ID which brings
local content forward when the member accesses any of the links within the
network. Links on a users townbulletin include Towndirectory, Obituarypage,
Tagesaleonline, CollecticCatalogue, Editorialpage, Communitycalendar etc.
The Townbulletin page
provides notices of concern to the town, has links to other areas of the
community. Communitycalendar.net offers a calendar feature to each community,
region and state. Provides a scrolling banner of local government notices. Next
meetings features etc. All of the following page links are accessible from this
page.
Towndirectory –
Directory of town personnel, resources and links. Also could provide a street
by street directory of members profiles. Links from this page include
townbulletin, communitycalendar, publicservices etc.
Publicservices - Public
service links from town bulletin, police bulletin, and town government pages.
Search engine provides information and links to public services within a town,
region and state. Other links on this page include towndirectory,
childrenservices, communitygroups, Consumergroups. Communityservice,
Communityactivist.
Policebulletin - Similar
to town bulletin page focused on police department information with notices to
the community. Interactive features include Start a block watch group via
Blockwatchgroups.com another of our public service portal channel offerings
within your community etc.
Additional Service Descriptions:
Communitycalendar - A
notice directory to town, region, state and national events. Town and topic
events by date. Can also provide calendaring tools to other sites. Other links
on this page include community services.
Contribute2 - Provides
the ability to contribute to various charities or causes within a town, state
and national to individuals, groups and organizations. Also provides the
contribution technology to sites via a shopping cart technology offering.Other
link sites on this page are Contribute2.com, Contributions2, Contributors,
Communitygroups, Communityservices, Publicservices, Politicalgroups, etc.
Wherecouldifind
(WCIFind.com) - Search engine directory to the whole network. Searches by
town, region, congressional district, State and National - Keyword search,
blogs/vlog,catalogues,members, groups, by topic etc.
Wherecouldibuy
(WCIBuy.com) - Search by town region and state. Keyword search commerce links.
Catalogue services directory.
AsktheKnowledgeable - a
member driven service to bring knowledgeable members in contact with those who
are uninformed on topics of the groups subject topic. This service may be
expanded to include a service staff to direct service and resources to members.
Email - Civicmail.net,
Medmail.net, Salesmail.net, Politicomail.net.Votemail.net, Labormail.net,
Seniorsmail.net-org, Lobbymail.net, NGOmail.net, Pacmail.net, Busimail.net,
Posthumousmail, Email services and others are directed at specific niche
markets.
Publicauctionblock/tagesaleonline.com
- Local and regional auction and classified services. Should partner here
with existing service but maintain local/regional flavor. A piece of the
transaction fee goes to a local charity of choice. Fee based to us.
Tagsaleonline provides classified advertising features to community and has a
regional and state listings feature.
Iconcur.com - Acts as
our hub of SMS, RSS to Mail and IM client services. Should
integrate with mail services, polling etc.
Moneyadvice - List
resources for financial counseling and tax services, local brokerage resources,
financial news feed etc. Links also include investmentgroups,
Moneyadvisor, IRSfiling, Newsfeed, Stockquotes.
Page options -
Editorialpage, Sportspages, Funnypages, etc Example: Obituarypages.info/
Memorialsite.org - Notices of local obituaries with a memorial site section for
permanent blog placement. This can be offset from advertising from Mortuaries,
burial services, cemeteries, churches etc.
Shoppingadvantages.com -
shopping notices and search for sales. This may be a partnered site.
Dating advantages.com -
This site aggregates the online dating options available. These sites offer a
cut of the fee for bringing clients. Match.com etc. We may just partner with
one provider as AOL does.
Travelobjective.com -
Travel site which may aggregate other sites or act in partnership with Expedia
or other like service.
Thenewhomestore.com -
Has links to home sales and services other links provided here are canibuy.com,
bankownedhomes, realtor.com, local real estate links.
Addot.com - Provides
site services and consulting to clients from marketing and advertising to web
development.