Every so often I will chime in on how I plan to operate 901am. I view 901am as a ‘third place‘ industry site. With this third place mentality, it allows use to do some pretty awesome things. The key thing is this:
The bottom line is still the bottom. Market share will never be our passion here. We will never worry if we are catching the other guys. We will only worry if we are doing a kick-ass job of providing the lastest blogging and new media news all the while attempting to make a decent profit while doing it.
In a recent article in The New Yorker, James Surowiecki writes about the praise of being in Third Place. In the past, I’ve worried about getting into an ‘arms race’ and attempting to hold down market share, and in the end I sailed the business down the river.
Luckily I have no worries about that today. I can focus on our core business model. And focus on it all the while making a small profit. Meanwhile, the competition focuses on market share and playing catch up on the debt load that they have now walked into. Here at 901am we can focus on winning over new readers by providing high quality content on a simple platform.
Over the next few months we will be growing our team that runs 901am. We won’t be plastering the site with a boat load of ads to pay back our debt, we won’t be talking about coconuts on our site. We will reporting solid news, and doing it with the passion that we enjoy. We will not be looking in the rear view mirror.
Thanks for reading 901am so far. It’s really been an honor to have your readership. I encourage all of you to share our site with your friends and coworkers. Word of Mouth is our advertising at this point.
Originally posted on December 7, 2006 @ 7:05 am
LOL on the coconut reference. The few businesses I’ve started I’ve always resisted taking on debt. I know I didn’t grow them as fast as I could have had I taken on the debt but I’ve been much happier and in more control as a result. Unfortunately, most of my stuff is “near last place” :-)
Thanks for stopping by Chris. Happiness is a huge part of any venture. Who wants to be unhappy. Although last place sucks. It’s all about perspective. Sometimes last place can be first place if your happy.
Nice post.
Thanks for stopping by Sir Robert. Been loving what you have going on over at Knife Gun Pen. I can’t believe its almost already Christmas.
D
This site PWNZ.
PWNZ I tell ya.
Just stay consistent and persistent, and this will be one of the best informational resources on the Web, at least as far as the blogosphere is concerned.
As for blogging news, I know that a lot of folks have their opinions on that front, and I tend to fall on the side of “who really cares anyway?”
I don’t view 901am as a blogging news site, but I do think that new media coverage is a pretty hot item. On top of that, I defy anyone to say that there is no value in a big time, no-bullshit resource that covers what’s hot on the Web.
It looks like 901 is heading in that direction, and all I can say is that it’s the first site I read every morning after I’ve purged my own comment threads :)
Very insightful post, David and I really like the way 901am is heading.
You seem to be already doing what many other blog “news” sites don’t do – focus on the latest blogging and new media news.
Keep doing what you’re doing, mate – I think you’ve struck a winner here.
Hi – big thanks (great site!).