“The discussion of it is well-intentioned because there is recognition that newspapers serve our democracy,” said Paul Boyle, senior VP-public policy at the Newspaper Association of America. “But we are not asking for a specific handout, bailout, financial assistance, what have you.”

The Newspaper Revitalization Act, introduced by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) last March, would allow newspapers to operate as nonprofits and enjoy the tax benefits that come along with that status. Some newspaper publishers and editors dislike the act because papers that accepted the tax breaks for nonprofits would be barred from making political endorsements.

“While understandably applicable to most nonprofits, such restrictions would be the death of the opinion pages of newspapers and very possibly the death of newspapers themselves,” the Cape Cod Times argued.

The act wouldn’t undo the industry’s troubles in any case, according to the newspaper association. “We generally support the concept but feel that it has limited application,” Mr. Boyle said. “It would apply to a handful of markets where a newspaper might be for sale and there might be folks within the community who might want to buy it and try to get foundations and civic support around the newspaper. But for the most part newspapers are for-profit businesses.”

So the Newspaper Association of America is pursuing efforts that would benefit all kinds of for-profit businesses — including newspapers. One big goal, for example, is legislation that would let big businesses apply their net operating losses to their taxable income going back five years instead of the current two years. Businesses with revenue under $15 million got that break in the economic stimulus package, but the newspaper association and many others want the provision extended and expanded to larger businesses.

Another big issue, particularly next year, is pension relief. The stock market’s decline means companies may need to use cash reserves to meet federal funding minimums for their pension funds, the association said, instead of protecting jobs or investing in business activities.

The newspaper association said members of its board will be on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to talk about both of those issues.

We just got to witness history, folks: Alfredo Rodriguez waited an hour in the miserable New York rain for the privilege of snapping up his Sprint store’s very first retail Pre at this evening’s invite-only Premier customers event. The man paid in cold hard cash, and after a tedious 40 minute purchase process that involved a bit of activation, some nice tutorials, a quick address book sideload from his old Touch Diamond and whole lot of peripheral upsell, Alfredo was one of the world’s first satisfied Pre customers. The last time we saw him Alfredo was still playing with his new phone, and gives the device two thumbs up. He’s particularly digging the keyboard — what Touch Diamond user wouldn’t? — and the flip-up mirror. Word on the street was that there were about 80 units available at the store, but while we couldn’t squeeze an official number out of Sprint, they did confirm that they’ll have units available for the launch tomorrow as well. Be sure to let us know how your own local launch treats you!

It’s time we woke up and faced reality. Online display-ad spending will fall in 2009, probably sharply. It will probably fall again in 2010. Hundreds of startups counting on advertising as a business model will be flattened. Yahoo, CNET, AOL, and other big display-ad properties will  get hammered. Legions of me-too video sites will croak.  Ad networks, the “hey, let’s just start an Internet company!” flavor of this second dotcom boom, will get decimated.

This is why Nick Denton, the CEO of the highly profitable Gawker Media, just blew out so much of his staff. Nick’s no fool, and his only concern at this point is that he didn’t go far enough. This is why Yahoo will almost certainly fire too few employees when it announces its mass layoffs this week. This is why the value of AOL, MSN, and other second-tier properties will continue to atrophy.

How do we know online display ad spending will fall? Because by Q2 of this year it had already slowed sharply–to mid-single digit growth–and that was before things even began to get bad.

According to IAB, the growth of non-search online ad spending (display, classifieds, lead-gen) was 14% in Q1 and 5% in Q2. 5%! That’s before the horrific fall-off in consumer spending in September.  We’ll be lucky if non-search spending is up year-over-year in Q3. By Q4, it will almost certainly be negative.

How much has online display ad growth already deteriorated? Take a look at this chart from PriceWaterhouse . For the last three years, Q1 spending has been higher than Q4 of the prior year and Q2 was higher than Q1. This year, both numbers are down (see the two righthand columns). Again–that’s before things really got bad.  (And this is total spending, which includes the still-growing search).

Now, look at how Q2 revenue has behaved over the years.  See that 25% dip from 2000-2002? The coming drop probably won’t be that bad, but it will be bad. And it will last at least two years. (These numbers, by the way, are all online advertising, not just display.)

How bad will the online display ad market fare over the next couple of years? At this point, we would estimate at least a 10% drop next year and probably more. (20% is not inconceivable).  Again, the overall market fell 25% from 2000-2002.  There are many reasons why this falloff should not be be so extreme–namely, that half of online ad customers won’t go bankrupt this time. On the other hand, there are many reasons why this falloff could be worse: The general economy is going to get clobbered in this recession–something that didn’t happen last time.

So, what’s the smart amount of spending decline to plan for? We think about 10% next year and slightly more in 2010, with the possibility that things could get a lot worse. We would also plan on the decline lasting at least two years. The country isn’t going to dig itself out of this economic hole quickly.

written my compster CEO

ODELL TAYLOR

As someone who gets to spend a lot of time comparing notes with owners of search marketing firms, as well as referring a lot of people seeking SEO services, I have a somewhat strong grasp on the pricing & cost structures of the SEO business. That said, it’s a very big world out there in search, and while my knowledge comes from a few dozen companies and a couple hundred referrals, there’s no scientific or survey data contained in this post – it’s all experience and intuition.

I’m trying to save you from situations like this one

I wanted to explore the world of SEO pricing models from both sides of the issue, so let’s dive right in. First off, we’ll take a look at how SEO companies commonly price their services, then look at how businesses and organizations should expect to pay for SEO.

The 7 Most Popular SEO Pricing Models

• Hourly Consulting
  The simplest way to price a project is to charge by the hour. Rates in SEO vary with the lowest, entry level folks around $40-50, mid-tier consultants around $100-$200 and high-demand firms & people from $300-500. SEOmoz is obviously actively trying to limit our clients by going way outside the norm and charging $1000 / hour.
• Project-Based Consulting
  Many SEOs will use the business model common to web development agencies and charge a flat fee (often in several chunks over the course of a project). The total price is based on an estimate of time, effort and personel involved in the project. At SEOmoz we often charge in this fashion for a site review + keyword research + consulting time or for an on-site SEO training series.
• Contract Services
  Plenty of SEOs offer dozens of individual services, such as Debra Mastaler’s directory submission service, Eric Ward’s link building & publicity campaigns or Jessie Strichiola’s SEO assessment services. These offerings present a single price for a set amount of work, though I have little doubt that many of them are customized and have modified pricing based on the factors discussed in the next section.
• Standard Profit Sharing
  Some limited number of SEO providers offer profit sharing based compensation. These frequently include a relatively small down payment to begin work and then a percentage of revenues (usually before non-essential expenses) from sales through the website. This can be a good option for SEOs who have great confidence in their abilities and are ready to assume a significant share of risk. We at SEOmoz have tried this in the past with mixed results – one big problem is that you’ll need to ensure that the business operations, outside of the website, are running on all cylinders, which really doesn’t fit well with the job of SEO.
• Modified Profit Sharing
  As above, but modified profit sharing typically includes a clause that gives the SEO firm a cut prior to any expenses and may even set minimums of payment. Other modifications could make the deal similar to a Pay-Per-Action (PPA) or Pay-Per-Lead, the latter of which can be a better way to limit risk. Both SEOs and those seeking their services should be wary of any kind of profit-sharing deal. It’s akin to a real business partnership in many ways and shouldn’t be treated with any less weight.
• Monthly Retainer
  A few good SEO firms I know use a basic monthly retainer with a standard workload package (or several options). My friends up in Quebec modify this system so that during development, marketing & ongoing maintenance, different prices are charged as part of the retainer. This can be a very good model for companies seeking to retain clients over a long period of time, but it can also be abused by those who claim (hopefully falsely) that the site will “lose its rankings” if the customer cancels.
• Pay for Rankings
  This is one of the more interesting strategies that SEOs employ. The idea being that you pay one price for reaching, say, page 2 of a particular result, another price for position 10, 9, 8 and so on, usually with particular bonuses for #1-3 rankings. It really only makes sense for companies seeking to rank for a particular set of terms/phrases that they know converts quite highly. I suspect that searches like DUI Attorney Orange County might fit well into this system.
• Pay for Traffic
  As with pay-per-ranking, a traffic payment system treats SEO very much like PPC. I like this model in some respects, because it does measure the SEO’s work, but it can get messy as the quality of traffic isn’t measured here (of course, this usually only counts search engine traffic, but still…).

With those covered, let’s dive into the prices themselves. If you’re in the market for SEO services, there’s a lot of factors that can affect what you should expect to pay, not to mention the great number of formats an SEO contract might take (as noted above). The following can all affect the price you might pay for organic optimization consulting or hands-on services:

• Size & Complexity of Website
• Size of Brand/Organization
• Difficulty of Project / Competitiveness of Rankings
• Personality Issues (if you’re a very controlling personality, expect a generally higher price)
• Reputation, Notability & Demand for the SEO Firm

The prices themselves are all across the board, but here’s my take on the general ranges:

Service	Low End	Mid Range	High End
Site Review + Consulting	$500	$2,500	$10,000
Hands-On Editing of Pages/Code	$2,000	$10,000	$50,000
Manual Link Building Campaign	$500	$5,000	$20,000
1-Day SEO Training Seminar	$750	$4,000	$12,000
Keyword Research Package	$100	$500	$2,000
Viral Content Development + Mktg	$1,000	$7,500	$20,000
Web Design, Development + Mktg	$5,000	$25,000	$100K+
Monthly Retainer for Ongoing SEO	$2,500	$7,500	$20,000+

You might see the incredibly wide discrepancy of prices above and think, if you’re a potential client, that the prices on the high end are evil, greedy SEOs gouging customers foolish enough to fall for their machinations. Likewise, if you’re an SEO, you might look and think that some of the folks on the low end or mid range are insane to offer such valuable, time-consuming services for so little.

And thus, balance is achieved

The new-ness is underway, and Palm just debuted its long(est) awaited all-new handset, the Palm Pre. The curvy touchscreen handset has a 3.1-inch 320 x 480 multitouch display, with a silver center button down below and touch sensitivity all down the face — the lower part is for “gestures.” A full QWERTY keyboard slides out from the phone in a portrait orientation, and you can flip the phone on its side for accelerometer-sensed widescreen browsing. The phone is running Palm’s all-new webOS platform, with TI’s new OMAP CPU under the hood — which Palm claims provides laptop-style power, and which juices the phones smooth transitions, scrolling and “deck of cards” app-switching. Other internal specs include EV-DO Rev. A, 802.11b/g WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth with A2DP and 8GB of built-in flash storage. There’s a 3 megapixel camera with LED flash, mass storage-friendly microUSB plug and a good ol’ 3.5mm headphone jack, but most exciting is the wireless charger — a first for a mainstream phone. More shots are after the break, including a fancy FCC diagram depicting a removable battery. The phone is exclusive at launch for Sprint in the first half of 2009, no word on price just yet.

stay tune for more review on the palm pre from compster blog

Palm Pre Specifications

• High-speed connectivity (EVDO Rev. A or UMTS HSDPA)
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
• Integrated GPS
• Large 3.1-inch touch screen with a vibrant 24-bit color 320×480 resolution HVGA display
• Gesture area, which enables simple, intuitive gestures for navigation
• Slide-out QWERTY keyboard
• Email, including Outlook EAS (for access to corporate Microsoft Exchange servers), as well as personal email support (POP3, IMAP)
• Robust messaging support (IM, SMS and MMS capabilities)
• High-performance, desktop-class web browser
• Great multimedia experience and performance (pictures, video playback, music), featuring a 3-megapixel camera with LED flash and extended depth of field, and a standard 3.5mm headset jack
• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR with A2DP stereo Bluetooth support
• 8GB of internal user storage (~7.4GB user available)
• USB mass storage mode
• MicroUSB connector with USB 2.0 Hi-Speed
• Proximity sensor, which automatically disables the touch screen and turns off the display whenever you put the phone up to your ear
• Light sensor, which dims the display if the ambient light is dark, such as at night or in a movie theater, to reduce power usage
• Accelerometer, which automatically orients web pages and photos to your perspective
• Ringer switch, which easily silences the device with one touch
• Removable, rechargeable battery
• Dimensions: 59.57mm (W) x 100.53mm (L, closed) x 16.95mm (D) [2.35 inches (W) x 3.96 inches (L, closed) x 0.67 inches (D)]
• Weight: ~135 grams [4.76 ounces]
• [Pre Product Page at Palm]