More tips on How to Blog More Often

I received a great comment from one of my readers in response to my last post on blogging more often, and it had so many useful tips I decided it would be better viewed as a post than as a comment, so here it is...

Great topic, Carmina. I suppose I'm on one extreme of the spectrum; I've made the time to publish 3-5 articles a day while working a full-time job, but at the sacrifice of sleep! Most days I wake up at 4am (sometimes 3:00) and work on my site over several cups of much-needed coffee until I get ready for my "real" job at 7am to be to work by 8:00. After work I usually spend 6:00pm - 11:00pm working on the site, and then am back up at 3 or 4 the next morning.

I just launched TheDailyAnchor.com - a marketing and advertising blog - at the beginning of January and it's been doing very well, but I'm not sure how much longer my body will survive on 4-5 hours of sleep a night! I'm blessed with an incredibly supportive and understanding girlfriend, but the time I dedicate to the site is most certainly unfair to our relationship.

In my case, I think there are four things that will help restore a little sanity in my life...

1. I've given up blogging on weekends. As much as I'd like to post content 7 days a week, I've found I need weekends to handle site maintenance (advertising, design, etc.) That, and I think my girlfriend would kill me if I didn't have at least some downtime.

2. I've started an editorial calendar, which is basically broken down by date and article categories (marketing, advertising, news, etc.) I use my weekends to spec-out my article ideas for the upcoming week. Sure, things pop up on a daily basis and I tend to modify the schedule on a daily basis, but having a schedule down on paper (er, Excel) helps me stay organized and focused.

3. I can't do it alone. My site is The Daily Anchor; I can't exactly get away with posting weekly or sporadically! I have big goals and high hopes for the site, so I've enlisted a few friends and colleagues of mine to help develop content. I'm still developing 80% of the content myself, but even if 1 out of 4 articles a day is by a contributing editor, that's a HUGE help and a huge time-saver. I have 4 contributing editors right now, and hope to grow this to 10 within the next month.

4. I've scaled back my expectations. Even though I knew it from the start, quality matters more than quantity, and I'd rather post 2 GREAT articles a day than bust my hump to produce

5. Last night I took a rare break from the blog to go out to dinner and a show with my girlfriend and her mom, and fell asleep as soon as we got home. I woke up at 4:00 per usual, but instead of racing to publish 4 stories I decided to write just 1, and am darn happy with how it turned out.

I'm still cutting my teeth on this blogging thing, and have yet to set a schedule that properly balances productivity, health, and "real life," but I'm learning as I go. Thanks for another great post.

All the best,

Andrew

Thanks Andrew, and keep up the good work!

Beat the Recession with Multiple Streams of Income

For Christmas I traveled south of the border, to Bogotá, Colombia. This Central American city has become quite Americanized -- Dunkin' Donuts and TGI Friday's have set up shop, and in the malls, Zara, Louis Vuitton and Paul & Shark share space with local retailers (click here to see all the photos I took).

I was there to visit my good friend Claudia, whom I've known since the mid 80's when I worked with her husband Rodrigo in Wall Street. Rodrigo is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for business, and it was fascinating to hear about his latest venture and how he got it off the ground.

From stocks to steak
In 1988, after 4 years in New York, the couple decided to move back home, where Rodrigo had plans to open his own brokerage business. His office started out with 5 people in a small room, and today it's grown to 350 employees with 8 lines of businesses. Four years ago he branched out into dining, launching a sushi restaurant at a time when raw fish was still a novelty in Bogotá. His first foray into the culinary world ended in disaster, but not one to quit easily, he took the lessons he learned and opened a steak house instead, "La Biferia" along with other investors. Bogotanos love beef but there were very few dining options to chose from, so Rodrigo and his partners came up with a totally new concept: a mid priced steak house with a modern, minimalist decor, and serving 12 different cuts of prime beef. It was a hit from the very start, and now it's grown to 3 branches.

Colombia gets "Cool"
To expand his knowledge of the wines offered at his eatery, Rodrigo took a university course on wine, and one of his instructors was Colombian oenophile Hugo Sabogal. The two became friends and Hugo later invited Rodrigo to Mendoza, the wine making region of Argentina, to the extreme west of the capital city of Buenos Aires. While there, at a wine tasting event, they came across Domaine Jean Bousquet, a 12 year old winery owned by a 3rd generation French wine maker. Frustrated with the humidity in France, Jean went in search of more ideal soil and climate conditions and finally found it in Tupungato, at the foothills of the Andes. The steady temperatures and lack of rain are perfect for growing the organic grapes they produce.

When Rodrigo visited the vineyard he was mesmerized by the crisp, clean air and beautiful countryside, as well as by the smooth, distinct flavor of the local Malbec and Torrontes grapes, along with the Cabernet Sauvignons and Merlots, which are all produced by the winery. That's where he conceived the idea for Cool Wines Global, the company he launched to distribute the Cameleon and Jean Bousquet brands. He was going from dining to wining - it was a natural extension of his restaurant. So again he found some partners, and chose a very sleek and sexy look for the website and logo, to make the wines "friendlier" and less intimidating to their target market. He sells them at his restaurants as well as retail, and sales are growing steadily. In the future he plans to expand into wines of other regions. They have started hosting wine tastings at his restaurants, a great way to cross-promote both businesses.

Colombians take a liking to wine
Until recently the most popular alcoholic drinks in Colombia were beer and "aguardiente", a strong local beverage made of sugar, but that has changed dramatically in the last few decades. According to a 2007 GAIN Report, wine consumption in Colombia has tripled in the last 5 years due to increased demand, while Old World countries like France and Italy have actually seen declines. And local wine enthusiasts are starting to congregate in Facebook, with the "Bogotá Wine Club" page attracting 791 members, "Club del Vino" 1316 and "Buenvivir" 1013. These are great places to announce events and promotions.

Wine on YouTube
I couldn't resist showing Rodrigo one of my favorite video channels, Gary Vaynerchuck's WineLibrary TV which he loved. He says he'll definitely look for ways to incorporate video into his new site.



Rodrigo watches the Wine Spectator channel which has better production values but gets much less traffic (go figure - which one do you like best?).





This empresario isn't stopping there - he has investments in other businesses as well and is looking to add more to his "portfolio". When I asked him how he's able to juggle so many balls in the air, he credits the book Rich Dad Poor Dad, which he read years ago. The economic environment may be different now from when the book first came out, but the major theme still applies and is more pressing than ever: save money and invest it in productive assets that generate income so you can get out of the "rat race", where you only work to pay your bills. Time to dust it off from my book shelf and re-read it!

Another book he recommends is Blue Ocean Strategy, which describes companies that take an existing product or service and revolutionize it by making it bigger/better/different, like Starbucks did, and Cirque de Soleil, and is what he did with his steak house.

Rodrigo saw the trend towards more wine consumption in Colombia and decided to capitalize on it. If you'd like to read more about what areas are hot here in the US, check out Entrepreneur Magazine's 2009 Trends To Watch piece, definitely a must-read.

Strategies for growth in a slowing economy

Yikes, what a mess! The havoc in the stock and financial markets made it really challenging to stay focused on my work last week. I spent 14 years of my life at Lehman Bros., so it's not only the pain of seeing the place I called "home" crumble after such a long and rich history, but through the years I also accumulated company stock, which is now, well... worthless. Ouch. Big ouch. Just the thought of opening up my account to see how much I've lost sends chills up my spine.

It still remains to be seen how the economy will be affected by the ongoing saga in the financial sector, but if history is an any indication the market has always found a way to bounce back up from past meltdowns. However, it's the negative perception that stays on consumer's minds and affects their behavior and their wallets. So how will small businesses weather the current maelstorm? Well that was the topic of a blogger's roundtable luncheon I was invited to recently. The host was Steve Strauss, small business expert and "Ask The Expert" columnist for USA Today. Other fellow bloggers included Yvonne DeVita who pens the Lipsticking blog, Jay Heyman of Porte Advertising, Peter Piazza who writes about printers and scanners for About.com, Bob Phibbs who wrote this post about the event, and Gene Marks who writes for Forbes.com and Businessweek.com.

One success story I was able to share with the group is about The Bridal Garden, a non profit boutique that sells designer wedding gowns at 75% off retail prices. My long time friend Geraldine Brower (that's her on the right), who is the shop's Director tells me that her business has grown exponentially in the past two years as more people hear about it and tell their friends. The store started out twelve years ago as way to make extra money for Sheltering Arms, a non profit organization whose mission was to help disadvantaged children and their families in the NY area. "The concept at the beginning was to get New York City girls to donate their dresses after they got married, so we stockpiled gowns for a year to have enough to open the store," explains Geraldine. But they soon had to find other ways to get inventory, so they branched out and called on stores and designers to get them to donate dresses. "Back then the Bridal Garden wasn't the only way that Sheltering Arms raised funds so I didn't take a lot of chances. We wanted to build the business slowly and steadily so it wouldn't falter," she adds.

Since then the store has changed hands and it now benefits the Brooklyn Charter School. They no longer have the backing from an umbrella organization and need to be self-supporting. That has forced them to put all their efforts into making enough money to cover the costs. "Before it was just a sideline. I was director of development and I was doing a lot of other things; now I'm dedicated to the shop full time, and we've built a strong business. We were up 20% last year and another 20% the year before," says Geraldine.

When I asked her how she did it she says it's been a combination of things:

Keep your costs down
"Our expenses are really low. For every 3 dollars that comes in, one dollar is pure profit. That's the result of growing slowly. If you have the time to invest in a business and don't want to risk money, you can do it on a shoestring."

Step up the media appearances
"Recently we were interviewed on Eyewitness News and they put us in the backs of taxicabs in NY City for two weeks. The segment we were in played over and over and was seen by 1.1 mill people, according to the networks stats. That was about 3 months ago and since then our sales are up 35%. I pitched the show a few different ideas and they ultimately liked this one, which had a "weddings on a budget" theme. We had been written up in Newsweek magazine and often TV follows print so that helped us get recognition with this story."

Embrace the internet
"The internet has been the most effective marketing tool for us because people in the marriage demographic use the internet for everything. Whenever anyone calls for an appointment we ask them how they heard about us and it's usually one of two ways: they either do a search and we come up, or they read about us in blogs where brides communicate with each other.

I made sure we had a very good site with a lot of keywords in it (like discount, wedding dresses, charity, resale store) so it comes up high in the rankings. We've also appeared in many blogs, like Wedding Bee, Junebug Weddings, Yelp.com, Citysearch, and more opportunities arise as new new sites pop up. Brides write in and start a dialogue. Brides are telling their friends about us and more designers are coming onboard. We now have name recognition and people know who we are - we're very mainstream now. It helps to have a really good product at an inexpensive price and to provide good service. Shoppers can also feel good about knowing that by buying our gowns they are helping children and contributing to a good cause."

Do you have any small business success stories or tactics to share? Please do!

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Interview with Web Entrepreneur Michelle Madhok

When Michelle Madhok, founder of shefinds.com, pitched her idea for an online shopping site to AOL, Lucky and Shop Etc. back in 2004, she got shot down by all three of them. At the time she had just ended a 5 year stint at AOL, where she spent 5 years overseeing women’s content. “AOL was a great place to find out what women wanted, with 35 million subscribers, 52% of which are women, says Michelle, who is also founder of Momfinds.com.

For Michelle, the online shopping bug started out as a pastime, doing personal shopping for colleagues and co-workers when they didn’t have time, or didn’t know what to buy. Then she graduated on to sending links of shopping sites to her friends. That’s when she got the idea to do it on a larger scale. But none of the established internet sites she contacted seemed interested, so she decided to do it on her own.

“On Craigslist I found a crazy Ukrainian to build the site. I bought the domain name “shefinds.com” from a porn site that wasn’t using it anymore (love it). AOL had given me a severance so I was bootstrapping, working out of my home with one full-time person, putting together an email newsletter and a blog. It slowly started picking up steam. We got requests from people who wanted to write for us. The more money we'd make the more people I would hire (she now has 40 writers). I then hired an editor and a web designer to produce the newsletters.”

Michelle looked for sponsors right away. She joined affiliate programs like Linkshare and cj.com. Then Bare Necessities offered to sponsor her newsletters and paid her $200 the first time - she was thrilled!

About three months later, smaller businesses like jewelry designers and handbag designers that couldn’t afford to advertise on sites with big female audiences like iVillage contacted her directly and asked to place ads.

When I asked how she promoted her site, Michelle said that she hired someone to help with SEO (search engine optimization), but word about her shopping site spread virally. Now they do weekly “ad swapping” with other sites, and they have deals with MSN, Yahoo!, Real Simple and Lifetime to syndicate their content.

Michelle started out by investing $20,000 of her own money in 2004, and last year made $400,000 in revenues. “I worked hard for it”, she says. “I wrote 600 invoices last year! But it’s nice to work for myself.”

Right now her margins are over 30% but her goal is to increase them to 55%. “We’re still ramping up to get there. I don’t go out trying to sell ads - people come to us, so I need to hire an ad sales person.”

I asked her what advice she had for others that are starting out and here’s what she had to say: “At the beginning I did everything really cheap. I didn’t touch my savings very much. Your first attempt should be a test. Try to find inexpensive legal advice. Always barter or negotiate on price – I got my head shots for free because I exchanged them for free ads.”

She also believes in making your mistakes on someone else’s time/dime. Michelle found consulting gigs through The Hired Guns at first (they place people in specialty positions). She worked on an email marketing campaign for Pfizer which really helped her with her own business.
In addition to her two sites, she's got more in the works. “We want one for brides and then one for the home, and one for food. We want to be the hip consumer reports for shopping online in different vertical markets,” explains Michelle.

That's me and Michelle chatting at a recent Forrester networking event for the new book, Groundswell (a great read for anyone interested in social media). More pictures in my Facebook page.

Small Business Summit Recap

It was the bright orange suede vest that first caught my eye, among a sea of entrepreneurs in corporate attire at the recent Small Business Summit in New York. Then came the bright blue striped bell bottomed pants. Who was the funky mama among all the "suits"? When I finally saw her face I felt a tinge of recognition. It was Laurel Touby - one of my role models, a huge inspiration to me, the type of fempreneur that I aspire to be (for more on Laurel see my post: "Mediabistro: Timeline to Success"). She looked like a hippie bohemian artist that somehow got lost on her way to Soho or the West Village and mistakenly landed instead at a conference for entrepreneurs.

There was no question - I had to go up to her and say "hi". Any shyness that I might have felt went completely out the window as I stretched out my hand and introduced myself. She was very friendly and approachable, listening as I told her about my blog, among expressive gushes of admiration. The petite blond multi-millionaire later spoke at one of the panel presentations (she's the one that stands out with the funky, boho-chic outfit above on the right) about her company's rise to success and gave a few insights as to how she made her business grow.

"Listen to your clients", was one of the first things Laurel said, which was made easier for her since she started out by giving cocktail parties for journalists. Every month she had a steady stream of followers that were very willing to tell her what they needed. They were the ones she listened to when she received her first infusion of venture capital money and was deciding how to spend it. And it worked - she sold her company for a cool $23 mil last year. That's one piece of advice I definitely will follow.

Among the familiar faces I bumped into at the show were Laura Allen from 15secondpitch who participated at one of the panels, Lena West, who writes the TechForward blog I mentioned on my last post, Stephanie Cockerl who does wonderful things to optimize blogs (www.nextsteph.com), Kevin Kennedy of Webgrrls and of Ulas Neftci of Baruch's Small Business Development Center. All in all it was a fabulous day of schmoozing, networking, meeting fantastic people and picking up a few new best practices. I was even able to get a picture with my idol!

Update: Nelly Yusupova of Webgrrls wrote a great summary of the panel entitled: “How to transform your business in 40 minutes”. Visit her blog to get all the details.

Making Sales with Facebook and Flickr

Isn't it great when things just happen unexpectedly in your favor? That's exactly what Janice Cusano (that's her on the right), recently experienced. This former professor, who left academia last year to pursue her passion for designing jewelry, ended up selling one of her pieces on none other than Facebook, the subject of my past few posts (I swear guys, I'm not getting a penny from them! I wish!). Her story had a few good tidbits, so I thought I'd share the serendipitous series of events that led to the sale.

A couple of weeks ago, Janice was looking to revamp the photos on her site (see it on Etsy). Her friend Kathleen offered to take new pictures for her, which she then posted on her Flickr account because it was easier than sending them by email (the files were pretty big). She also placed one of the pictures on her Facebook page, (the turquoise and coral piece on the left).

Later that same night, an old friend of Kathleen's from college (who wouldn't have been in contact with her if she hadn't found her on Facebook) saw the necklace and sent her a message saying she'd love to buy it, so Kathleen sent her the link to Janice's Etsy shop, and bingo--she made a sale (she bought the earrings below on the right).

Janice also noticed that there were 48 page views of the photo within an hour of Kathleen posting it on Flickr and Facebook. Pretty good exposure!

The funny thing is, Janice doesn't even have a Facebook page for herself (but thank God her friends do!). Because of her former life as a professor, Janice has had a long-standing bias against Facebook. When the site first started out it was only open to students, so there was a stigma attached to it for those in the academic field. Last year when she was still in her teaching position she did a search and found only one other professor that had a public Facebook page. In her profession, Facebook was a non-no because that's where all the students are, and "poking" wasn't exactly conducive to a professional relationship. Plus Janice likes to keep her personal life separate from her students (now former). However, she's slowly warming up to the idea, as more professionals join every day. She also sees how traffic has increased on her Etsy site because of Flickr and Facebook. (On Etsy you can check to see how many people are viewing each page and where they come from).

Janice finds other benefits from online social networks. "Not only has (Flickr) distributed my work far and wide, I have been able to build community in more specific ways that I hadn't by blog hopping. For example, I am a color fiend and symbols are important in my work. I joined the group 'Blue and Green' and met some incredibly like-minded artists who I connect with on many levels. I actually connected with one contact I had met at a show last September! Every time this happens, I feel a little less out in the cold."

That chance encounter online gave Janice the inspiration for a series of posts related to large jewelry on her Goddess Findings blog. The picture of her contact on Flickr showed her wearing a chunky necklace that Janice liked, so when she reached out to say "hi" she also complimented her on it and asked her to submit a photo and talk about what that piece means to her.

Janice adds that artists can put pictures of their studios, their work-in-progress or things that inspire them, which gives buyers a better sense of who they are. "On Esty you see what they have for sale, but the visual images on Flickr are stronger", she says. By showing people another facet of your life, you create more of a connection.

How are you using new media in your business? Please share your story with us!

Mediabistro: Time Line to Success

I've been running around left and right trying to get my little operation into high gear and as usual fretting about the future, until I read an article (The Accidental Entrepreneur) in this month's New York Enterprise Report. It was about how Laurel Touby sold her company, Mediabistro, for $23 million this past July. It took her just 13 years...but she didn't make a profit for the first 9 of them, and she didn't generate any money for the first two. That really helps to put things in perspective!

I remember going to a few of her events and have seen her company grow right before my very eyes. Her story is so inspiring to me that I wanted to piece together all the details of how she did it, so I looked up a few other articles on the sale and put together a time line:

1994 - Laurel, a struggling freelance writer, starts organizing after-work cocktail parties for journalists - 10 people showed up at the first one but within months that turns into one hundred (FYI...today that database is about 700,000) - however, she wasn't making money from it

1996 - Started an email newsletter with job listings (still no money)

1999 - Started charging HR people $100/month to post jobs - got 8 checks the first month, then 16, then 25, 35, 45 (ka-ching!) - that's when she ditched her freelance writing and decided to make this a business

2001 - Received $1 million in funding in March (a big ka-ching), then 9/11 hit (took back some of that ka-ching - read Laurel's account of how they managed to pull through after the terrorist attacks:
The Strength to Lead in the Face of Crisis, from The Huffington Post)

2002 - Laurel follows a colleague's suggestion to add courses for journalists to her list of services, and later that year launches a premium content subscription membership (ka-ching, ka-ching)

2003 - Became profitable

2006 - Got approached by buyers

2007 - Sold Mediabistro to Jupitermedia in July for $23 million, pocketing $12.4 million (she owned 62% of the company's stock) (a really big ka-ching)

Here's more related articles on the story:

-Village Voice: The $23 million Boa

-NYC TV's NYC 360 (video): Interview with Laurel Touby

-Washington Post: Journalism Morsels Make for Profitable Dish at This Bistro

As senior vice president, Laurel will still oversee Mediabistro but now she will also report to her new bosses at Jupitermeda. NY Enterprise Report asked if her life has changed now she's wealthy and her answer was "no, I still take the subway. Maybe I’m eating out a little more often. The one thing I’m going to spend the money on is a gigantic loft apartment so I can have all my journalist friends over for dinner." Sometimes the more things changes the more they stay the same...

My take home message out of this? Create a community of like-minded souls, find out what they need, and deliver it to them. It's that simple. Do that long enough and eventually the money will come.