ST. LOUIS – Associated Cities has interviewed SantaFe.com founders Michael and Pat French about the importance of original content, rapid growth in a very short period of time, what it’s like running a GeoDomain when it’s helmed by a husband and his wife along with how the company plans to grow in the coming years.
Associated Cities: How were you first introduced to SanteFe.com?
Pat/Michael French: Six or seven years ago when we were owners and managers of a Santa Fe real estate company, one of our agents had a friend who owned the parked URL SantaFe.com. We negotiated a price with the gentleman over coffee. It seemed like an opportune investment, but because we were too busy with real estate, we didn’t do much with the site until we sold our real estate company.
About a year ago while browsing the Web, we discovered Associated Cities and zoned in on cities comparable to Santa Fe. David and Michael Castello were generous with their ideas and time as were other members. We kept honing our own concept and finally hired a programmer to kick things off. He’s worked with a designer to create what we feel is an aesthetically pleasing and highly navigable site (though there’s lots of work still to be done). Everything is always a work in progress.
Associated Cities: What is your biggest initiative for 2008?
P/MF: As we’re a young site, our goals are modest. To be in the black by the end of the year would be nice. Our biggest ambition is to triple our traffic by creating a site that has value for both visitors (Santa Fe gets about 2 million a year) and locals. This means amping up the content by partnering with print media and hiring a number of talented freelancers (of which Santa Fe has no shortage).
The founding managing editor of People writes for us as does its former senior editor. The founder of Fast Company magazine also writes for us along with the former editor of the Harvard Business Review.
Associated Cities: What are the advantages and challenges of operating within a network like Associated Cities?
P/MF: The advantages of being with Associated Cities became obvious when we attended its San Francisco conference in 2007. We met a lot of innovative owners and managers (particularly from Scottsdale, San Diego, Chicago and New York City) who are a lot further down the road than we are. It was great sharing ideas and getting inspired. As our background is in real estate, we’re planning something special with that component.
This is something we’d like to share at the next Associated Cities meeting. Another bonus of the Associated Cities network is the access to talent. We hired out current president (Bob Shaffer) from Richmond.com. He told us he was ready for a change and he has been a gem to work with.
Associated Cities: What are your day-to-day responsibilities? How much of your energy is devoted to sales and marketing versus content and production?
P/MF: At this moment, our full-time staff is small: eight including the two of us. Pat and I do everything from marketing and selling ads to writing content and implementing growth strategies.
The eight of us work well together. In terms of specialization, Pat has been in sales and marketing for 30 years. That was the engine that drove our real estate company. I’ve published 20 novels and have written a business and real estate column for the last 10 years. Writing and editing come easily to me.
Associated Cities: What are SanteFe.com’s primary sources of revenue?
P/MF: We’re about to add restaurant, hotel and gallery modules to our site. While this is pretty standard stuff, in a town dependent on tourism these are valuable entry points to revenues. We have real estate property tour pages as well and are seeking sponsors for our topic pages. While we’ve been up for only a month, the response so far has been terrific. For the future, we have other revenue ideas we think will be unique.
Associated Cities: Please describe your relationship and/or competition with local media Web sites.
P/MF: We’ve created an alliance with the Albuquerque Journal, which prints Journal Santa Fe, by providing the latter with all their real estate copy for the Sunday edition. This includes putting up our property tours. In turn, we have daily access to their hard news and features for SantaFe.com.
We also have alliances with three local magazines and the largest local independent radio station. As for competing Web sites, it would have to be that of The New Mexican, which is the city’s largest daily. Also, we compete with SantaFe.org, which is increasingly acting less like a CVB site (which it officially was) and more like a commercial site. Though they’ve been up for a decade and have good numbers, we believe with innovation we can close the gap.
Associated Cities: How do you see your web site evolving over the next five years?
P/MF: We don’t plan on expanding beyond SantaFe.com. For the next five years, our goal is to make SantaFe.com an inclusive and comprehensive site embracing everything from local non-profits to astrology columns to politics to outdoor recreation.
Blogs and video obviously will play a part and who knows what new technology lies ahead. We want revenue models that don’t clutter the site or turn off the user. It’s all about gaining the respect of the community, which we’ll have to earn with fresh content that minimizes advertorial. Richmond.com has had a terrific growth curve the last five years. That would have to be one of our models.
Associated Cities: What do you do for fun outside of your Internet work?
P/MF: We have a beach house in Santa Barbara that makes an easy and quick escape. We also travel whenever we can and will be in the Middle East next month.
SantaFe.com is our third husband/wife business that we’ve started from scratch. The first was a day-care center in Brooklyn Heights, New York that is still going strong. When we moved to Santa Fe in 1979, we knew nobody but thought we would try our hand at real estate, which is a highly social business. French & French became the largest real estate company in northern New Mexico and it sold to Sotheby’s International Realty in 2004.
Our dynamic is not to step on each other’s toes. We each have our areas of strength and specialization. If one of us needs help, we ask. If not, we take pride in our individuality. We allow each other to make mistakes but try to learn from them, too. It’s never competitive between us. We have a huge amount of respect for each other’s work ethic and ideas. Also, so much is habit like both of us waking up at 3 a.m. with ideas to bat around.
Associated Cities, a Worldwide Metropolitan Network, consists of the most intuitive and compelling city.com brands online. As a result, Associated Cities has built an extensive network that reaches 6,000,000 monthly unique visitors delivering 60,000,000 impressions.
