For Sale: Us
Dear Minnesota Performing Arts Community,
We’ve noticed that the performing arts in Minnesota are as healthy, varied, vibrant, challenging, and optimistic right now as they have ever been. Every day, we wonder: what will happen next?
As we consider how best to use MinnesotaPlaylist.com to cover all that excitement, my co-founder Leah Cooper and myself, Alan Berks, are beginning to consider that it is time to sell this online trade publication to a person, group of people, or organization who can and will take it to another level.
We’re incredibly proud to have built Minnesota’s singular source for audition and theater-related jobs in the state AND the state’s most comprehensive, best-looking, easy-to-use theater calendar with the unique ability to sort by special events like PWYC or ASL-interpreting AND a talent database with features that can make casting more fair, efficient, and diverse AND a thoughtful, provocative magazine forum for big ideas, news, and reviews.
Each month, 18,000-19,000 users visit the site. In fact, the first 5 months of this year have been the most visited and highest revenue months on this site ever. MinnesotaPlaylist is more successful than it has ever been. And smarter people than us would hold onto this site just as its earning potential becomes most obvious, but, in reality, Leah and I enjoy building things (like our new theater company Wonderlust Productions) more than maintaining them just for the sake of maintaining them.
We didn’t follow any rules when we purchased tctheaterandfilm.org from the forward-thinking David Lind in 2008, and we don’t know if there are any rules to follow regarding selling what MinnesotaPlaylist.com has become. In 2008, we thought that this great theater scene deserved some kind of trade publication, and we knew that what he had built would help us make that happen, whatever that meant. We still believe in that idea wholeheartedly—more so now than ever.
If you have ideas for the website—and the will to make them real—we encourage you to send us a purchase proposal by June 30, 2016.
Is this the ideal next endeavor for a collective of passionate artists who love to write and want a little revenue to support their company? Or, is it a better fit for a trade publisher who can maximize its earning potential and professionalize the magazine? Perhaps a service organization should take it over, or a larger theater with access to and a desire to support the great writers, dramaturgs, and researchers in their midst? Is it the perfect opportunity for a local college to use to encourage their business and journalism students to reinvent arts coverage?
Or, maybe, again, it’s a business for a passionate, slightly crazy pair of theater artists with more ideas than they know where to put them.
We can promise whoever wants to accept the challenge that the website has been built and rebuilt (in 2015) on a robust, efficient, flexible platform via Drupal with secure automated payment handled through Paypal.
If you’re serious, you’ll probably want more information about technical specifications, site analytics, and revenue. Email us with your questions.
In the meantime, you will not notice any difference in the coverage or service you expect from MinnesotaPlaylist, and we continue to welcome any new ideas you may have for articles.
No matter what, MInnesotaPlaylist.com will continue. We’re proposing this as a way of making it even better.
