Full Spectrum Marketing

Aaron Rutledge has an ISP marketing idea so good he's ready to patent and franchise it.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [January 14, 2005]

Aaron Rutledge, co-founder and co-owner of Grass Valley, Calif.-based mom-and-pop ISP Full Spectrum Internet Access had a simple and elegant idea for rural USA. "The majority of the population here subscribes to the newspaper, so we partnered with the local newspaper to sell Internet subscriptions," he explains.

The newspaper makes ads for the package deal a "house ad" meaning the ads are free and run only in spaces that the newspaper did not sell. The package includes a full price newspaper subscription ($8 per month) plus a discounted dialup subscription ($6.95, discounted from a regular price of $9.95 monthly or $8.25 for annual prepaid).

Rutledge moved to California with his wife after graduating from college in Florida and they founded the business in March of 2001.

She's local, he's not. Neither had a contact at the local paper. "We just walked in and started talking to someone. We talked to their webmaster first. She passed us up to her managers. We talked to the circulation manager and the publisher of the paper. It took a few months to get all the wrinkles smoothed."

It took more than diplomacy to build a system that works. Newspapers provide lists of subscribers that are audited by an accounting firm (one that's under an NDA). The accounting firm, in turn, tells advertisers how many subscribers the newspaper has. Full Spectrum, the ISP, has become part of this process.

"They get a list from us saying we're providing a package to customers with a list of customers, when they started, and whether they're a current customer," explains Rutledge.

Process makes perfect
Rutledge feels he understands the process well enough to teach it to fellow ISPs. "We've been doing this for 15 or 16 months now, and we've been developing our database and reports. We could save other ISPs a lot of time."

He filed for a patent in August of last year, and hopes to license the idea for below $1 per subscriber. "I don't want to just charge for an idea," Rutledge tells us. "I want to sell a service."

ISPs, he thinks, will not be against the idea of working with someone who owns a patent. "The ISP CEO session at ISPCON in November was not against it," he says.

It's easy for ISPs to find the money. "We reduce ad costs and replace those costs with a licensing fee."

—End