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June 27, 2007
Advise to a New Media Entrepreneur:
Since my post last week, “To Be An Entrepreneur…It Ain’t Always Easy:, I’ve received a few emails from other New Media Entrepreneurs including the following:
“Hi,
I am slowly growing my business as new media entrepreneur. Besides the productions (and I have some news here too) I am working on revamping my blog as an industry resource on online video, indie content creators, social media and internet TV. The focus is on internet TV still, but it seems to me you can't separate social media from internet TV so I have to cover them all.
I am thinking about opening a sister site focused on personal broadband broadcasting. I wrote quite a lot about it, and I think this is a trend that will grow. As it is a niche in internet TV applications, I believe I can create a market position in covering it.
What's your opinion? Is it a smart move? What can kill it? What can make it a huge success?”
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FOCUS – Focus – focus…comes to my mind.
Also a quote from my junior high school principal from 8th grade graduation: “If you can’t be a tree be a bush. If you can’t be a bush be a blade of grass. But be the best damm blade of grass that ever was.” – These are words that I have learned to live by.
Those who know me may be laughing right now when they see I’ve used the word “focus” multiple times in one blog post. But, I think focus is exactly what is needed for my friend who is a budding new media entrepreneur.
Before considering launching a sister site, focus on delivering your audience to your primary site. The last thing you want to do is to split your audience before you have enough traffic on your primary site to support a secondary site. Done incorrectly, both sites will suffer. And most of the time, you will end up favoring one site over the other and you will still wonder where the traffic is.
Yes, we may all know some very amazing people who have been quite successful in building traffic to multiple blogs, but this is the exception and not the rule. It is possible that if you were to ask Liz Strauss, she might suggest “going for it” because she knows the secret to supporting multiple blogs and building traffic to each of them. But for mere mortals, my advice is to focus on building traffic to one site and then when you feel you are ready, use your blog to launch another blog.
Tags: Entrepreneurship, Liz Strauss, Jeff Pulver
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Posted by jeff on June 27, 2007 09:03 AM | Permalink
Additional resources: Watch PrimeTime TV Shows | Watch the Jeff Pulver Show | Jeff's Qik Videos
Comments
If you were to ask Liz Strauss, she'd echo your words exactly. Mere mortal that she is, she knows exactly how much work it takes to serve an audience of readers and "showing up" is what it's about. Just like you said.
Thank you, Mr. Pulver. I only hope to one deserve the comments. :)
Posted by: Liz Strauss at June 29, 2007 12:12 AM
Focus you say? ;)
Posted by: David Kowarsky at June 27, 2007 02:19 PM