Succesful Web Content

I wrote this arti­cle in 1997 for a pub­li­ca­tion that never saw the light of day. As a result, I am now mak­ing it avail­able to peo­ple who are inter­ested in run­ning online con­tent sites. Inter­est­ingly, those rules still hold true.

For years peo­ple have claimed that “con­tent is king.” If so, there are many things that go into the king’s proper care. Since 1992, I’ve been work­ing on prof­itable online con­tent mod­els, and, while a few failed, even­tu­ally struck gold with iWORLD (now internet.com) in 1996. In the process, I’ve learned what works and what doesn’t. Here they are for your use.

Hire Zealots

The first rule — and hard­est –is build­ing a great staff. Peo­ple who believe in what you’re doing make for the best work­ers.
If peo­ple believe in the basic idea, they’ll work harder to make sure that it suc­ceeds. This is why zealots make for the best work­ers. They want the thing to suc­ceed above any­thing else, even if it means putting in 20 hours days from time to time.

Cre­ate a Good Environment

On a con­tent site, intel­lec­tual cap­i­tal is the most impor­tant thing, so your most valu­able asset is peo­ple (no, this isn’t just an empty phrase). As a result, you need to cre­ate a fun work­ing envi­ron­ment. Allow flex­i­ble hours and atmos­phere– as long as the work gets done!
When it comes down to it, the office should be a place work­ers don’t really want to quit. Fos­ter cre­ativ­ity and try to encour­age mak­ing the office a more pleas­ant place to work in. The more pleas­ant it is, the longer your employ­ees will stay. The longer they stay, the more they’ll get used to the com­pany. The more they get used to the com­pany, the least they’ll want to leave.

Watch the Bot­tom Line

Many con­tent sites fail because they spend too much money. This is a busi­ness. Find the low­est costs every­where and instill this dis­ci­pline in every­one work­ing with you. A few dol­lars saved here and there add up to a lot.
How­ever, do not be a pinch penny when it comes to your employ­ees. Make sure that those who go above and beyond the call of duty get rewarded for it. While the wild par­ties thrown by com­pa­nies on Sil­i­con Alley and Sil­i­con Val­ley only last one night, the bonuses you put in employ­ees pock­ets get more recog­ni­tion (and usu­ally end up cost­ing you less).

Auto­mate

As part of your fis­cal con­scious­ness, always try to auto­mate. This will allow you to use your staff to its fullest instead of forc­ing them to do repet­i­tive menial tasks.

Nowa­days, with tools like Active Server Pages, Cold Fusion, PHP or Story Server, you can eas­ily cre­ate web inter­faces that allow you to dynam­i­cally gen­er­ate your pages from the web itself. Instead of try­ing to cre­ate every sin­gle page by hand, make sure you templatize.

Qual­ity AND Quantity

Peo­ple scoffed when Alan Meck­ler said we had acquired more sites than any­one in the world. We had the last laugh. Smart con­sol­i­da­tion of con­tent cre­ated higher traf­fic that we could spread across our other prop­er­ties. For every site we acquired we would look at two things: the value of the con­tent as an add-on to our offer­ings and the traf­fic num­bers. Often, after acqui­si­tion the orig­i­nal cre­ator cre­ated con­tent for us while we sold adver­tis­ing as part of a net­work package.

Inter­est­ingly, this strat­egy seems to have become more pop­u­lar nowa­days, with every­one want­ing to become a por­tal. While we didn’t call it “por­tal,” Internet.com really became the first ver­ti­cal por­tal about the net on the net.

Grass­roots Mar­ket­ing is Important

Many peo­ple were sur­prised at how much time we spent in news­groups, on mail­ing lists and on talk­ing to peo­ple who linked to our sites. This allowed us to develop a strong pres­ence on the Inter­net at a very low cost. We treated every part­ner, from large cor­po­ra­tions to one-man oper­a­tions, in the same way and in turn got a lot of loyalty.

Part­ner, Part­ner, Partner

Money fol­lows from traf­fic, and the way to get traf­fic is through part­ner­ing. We con­sid­ered any­thing that would bring even a sin­gle extra user as ben­e­fi­cial. How­ever, don’t spend too much time on con­tracts minu­tiae: they’ll lengthen the part­ner­ship process and you’ll miss cer­tain opportunities.

Be There First or Don’t Jump

By the time the two largest play­ers have been estab­lished in one arena, there is lit­tle room for any­one else. Know your field inside out and jump on new oppor­tu­ni­ties. Some may fail, but jump­ing in early means you won’t miss out on poten­tially huge rewards. If an area fails (a six-month reeval­u­a­tion cycle works), pull out.

Com­mu­nity Matters

Cre­at­ing news­groups and email lists related to your site get read­ers to come back again and again. Develop a sense of com­mu­nity around your site and you will see your traf­fic con­stantly increasing.

Trust YOUR Instincts

Lists like this are great but don’t tell the whole story. Only you know how your site should be built. Don’t take any­thing for granted, dare defy­ing com­mon con­cep­tions and change often. After all, the com­mer­cial Inter­net is still in its inception.