Over the years we've received a steady supply of inquiries from people wanting to start a commercial blog. They invariably want advice on which technology platform to use, and how we can work SEO magic to make their idea a fantastic success. The topics and themes of these blogs have ranged from cupcakes to climate change and everything in between. 

 

 

The Daily Galaxy (DG) is described by Val as a "daily dose of awe" and brings together an eclectic range of stories covering science, space exploration, innovation and technology. To give you a flavor here are a sample of titles from the last week:

 

 

 

It turns out lots of people care about some of the more fantastical sounding phenomena we are learning more about. In many ways DG was born and bred in Silicon Valley where Val was one of the pre-IPO team members at LookSmart -a Google and Yahoo competitor and the search directory for Microsoft MSN. According to Val, the success of DG is closely linked to the enormous and growing interest in science, technology and innovation common amongst the programmers, inventors, researchers and geeks that inhabit the tech centers around the world.

 

First, some context. The Daily Galaxy (DG) first published in March 2007 and since then has grown its monthly audience to an average of 600k visits per month and 400k unique visitors per month. It uses the Typepad Pro content management system that is a paid service, minimum fuss, low cost, and allows publishers to focus on the writing while minimizing the hassle of the things that typically go wrong in Content Management Systems (CMS). Wordpress emergency upgrades anyone? For the non-techie, Typepad is ideal because it gives you everything in a simple interface and access to the html code if you need it.

 

As we all know, geeks went mainstream and became cool over the course of the last 10 years. Val attributes the success of DG to precisely this phenomenon of increasing interest in new scientific and astronomical discoveries. The audience demographic of DG is unabashedly geek, ages ranging 25-55, 95% college graduates with a high percentage in the technology industry. A second and perhaps equally important explanation for DG’s traffic success is the parallel growth of social media; over 50% of traffic to DG comes from stumbleupon.com, facebook.com, digg.com, reddit.com, and twitter.com (72,000 followers) where the viral effect can increase traffic by as much as 6000 visits on a good day. DG also has approximately 6,000 email followers, 3200 facebook fans and 2500 users of the DG igoogle gadget (http://bit.ly/fTafzb). In short, the timing was right and the nascent social media services facilitated growth to a very big extent and still does.

 

The DG team spends around 5 hours per day publishing 5-7 articles, including weekends. The editorial mix is 90% original, 10% curated and 100% news based. This isn’t a golden rule by any means because there are a lot of other factors, but this is the publishing cycle that has worked well for DG. In terms of tone and style, The Daily Galaxy has acted as a professional publication from the very start and never went in for the personal journal style writing. Readers wanted news, facts and opinion on events that matter, and this is what DG has served for the past 3 years.

 

Pure advertising. DG tried Affiliate marketing, but it was not successful. The key is finding the right combination of ad rep networks. DG currently uses IDG Tech Network, Six Apart, Tech Media Network, AOL and Adify Elite.

 

As is common with blogs, the vast majority (>95%) of readers don’t leave comments and those that do comment on stories are usually people who are genuinely interested. That said, given the volume of readers there will always be a need to moderate comments. DG gets a lot of comments from people who go out of their way to add to the discussion. Yet others try to backlink to their sites, or point out typos, or be abusive, and this type of interaction requires constant attention. So much so that Val is currently re-evaluating the trade-off between valuable comments from readers and the time cost of moderating offensive and low-value contributions.

 

1. Grow the old fashioned way: quality content, consistent publishing rate and lots of patience.

2. Use social networks (particularly facebook and twitter) and content aggregators (digg, stumbleupon etc.) as content distribution channels. DG adds 300 new twitter followers per day, many of whom are leading authorities in their fields.

3. Topical focus, focus, focus. Find a niche and become the top 2 or 3 sites in that niche.

4. Monetization. Test to find what works. Some niches, such as credit card review sites can monetize through affiliate marketing but with other niches it isn’t so obvious. If you plan to have a viable online publication, you should consider first how you are going to make money. For most blogs, Ad revenue won’t help you quit the day job, and this is certainly true if you are just starting out.

5. Have a really professional design. Clean, simple and easy to read. Graphics are important because we live in a visual age. 

6. Build a system of alerts (eg. google alerts, yahoo pipes, RSS, Twitter saved searches) so that you get notified as soon as new stories are published that you may want to write about. First mover advantage is very valuable.

7. Know your direct and indirect competitors. They are often the best sources of inspiration and knowledge about your readership. Don’t underestimate the potential networking opportunities by reaching out to other publishers.

8. Invite feedback. Offer surveys or simply ask your friends for their opinion on your writing. Learn fast from your mistakes. 

9. Test, measure and evaluate new designs, promotional tactics, content distribution channels, writing styles and revenue sources. ‘You can’t manage what you don’t measure’ - traffic measurement is a very powerful ally on the road to success.

10. Talk to your readers, invite their contributions and feedback. They will repay this gesture with loyalty and, if you’re lucky, they will share and evangelize your site.

 

 

Final word from Val Landi about one of the hottest topics on the web: "We are right on the brink of discovering that we are not alone, and everyone knows this intuitively. By 2020 we'll have discovered there is life elsewhere."