Content production costs, also variable. why not?

I very much like the idea developed now by outside.in. In fact, I made a very similar business plan three years ago that I unfortunatelly could not develop (so, if need partners in Spanish get in touch with me ). That is the reason I looked so much at what Peter Kafka exposed yesterday. There is an spreadsheet that shows figures for a sustainable local online media business.

Figures are too optimistic revenue side, although it is compensated because they are also generous in the cost side. What I like the most on this is discussing on a model that could work healthy no matter the size. I would change this:

1. With so many software as a service, I do not really think future media will run on many fixed technological costs (as stated in this model). I see it more like getting capabilities as you grow. Therefore, being all variable (or nearly), we are in a totally different way of thinking about it.

2. Same applies to content production costs. Salaries are not 70K$ multiplied by the number of employees. Salaries are a low base, plus a variable based on KPI from our scorecard that always give positive margins to the organization. Our organization could be more a marketplace let’s say, journalist to consumer, than a b2c (news organization to consumer). So our news organization is a kind of content marketplace like eBay.

3. Finally, IT costs are, from my view, too expensive at 0,95$. And CPMs overestimated.

Of course, all these are questions in which we may have different opinions.