Pajama Entrepreneur

So how did Microcast take Muniwireless to the next stage, from a blog to a vertically integrated media company (as I mentioned in part 6)? What is Microcast’s business model? Sam Whitmore, who runs Sam Whitmore’s Media Survey interviews Joe Panettieri of Microcast. Sam writes:

Take a look at MuniWireless.com. It’s fronted by blogger Esme Vos, recognized as an expert in the emerging field. It’s got a clean look, ample advertising, an event series or two — even a freshly posted commentary from tech industry legend Bob Frankston. The site looks like the work of a top-tier trade publisher, but MuniWireless.com is a custom web title produced by little-known Microcast Communications.

Go to Sam’s blog and listen to the podcast (6:54), short but very informative (click here).

In part 2 of this series, I mentioned that it took me a year to make money (via advertising) from my blog, Muniwireless.com. You won’t attract advertisers in the first month of blogging because you probably won’t have a lot of readers.

How many visitors do you need to attract advertisers? How do you get and keep loyal readers? How do you get the word out about your blog? How do you rise high on search engines such as Google? Continue reading »

This is the story I like to tell often because it is so unbelievable. Back in May 2005, when Muniwireless.com had already established itself as the place to go to for all things muni Wi-Fi, I was wondering, how do I take it to the next stage? Many people were asking me to hold conferences and seminars, and I thought it would be fun to have an annual meetup of wireless enthusiasts.

I happened to be in San Francisco in May 2005, staying in a friend’s apartment in the Castro District. One day, I found myself in a laundromat (Toni Cleaners and Laundry) across Cafe Flore near the corner of Noe and Castro, waiting for the dryer to finish. I was bored, so I picked up a copy of the San Francisco Examiner, a local free paper, which I never usually read. I was flipping through the pages when suddenly a tiny article on the right hand side, caught my eye. It was a press release announcing the launch of Microcast Communications. After reading the description of their business, I knew they were the partners I needed to take Muniwireless to the next stage. Continue reading »

By May 2005, I had managed to build an online portal dedicated to a very specific topic: municipal wireless broadband networks. Without any investment other than my time and web hosting costs, the site became the authority on the subject of citywide Wi-Fi. Cities and counties that were thinking of deploying these networks came to Muniwireless.com as did journalists from The Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, and other mainstream publications. Continue reading »

When I started charging vendors for advertising on Muniwireless, which by the middle of 2005 had become the online portal for news about municipal wireless broadband projects, I began running into potential advertisers who wanted me to say nice things about them in my blog posts. This is common in the publishing industry, I found out, but I was aghast at how aggressive some of them were. But I found a way to deal with them. Continue reading »

By May 2004, I was writing twice as many articles as in January 2004 and better yet, people were sending news reports directly to me. Muniwireless.com was generating a lot of interest not just among city and county officials, but also among equipment vendors.

By the time I released my first anniversary report, I realized there was a way to make money from Muniwireless: advertising. I know that it seems so obvious to anyone who has been in the publishing industry. But to me, it was a surprise. Continue reading »

During the first year of its existence, Muniwireless.com made no money. Because there were few cities setting up Wi-Fi hotzones and hardly any were deploying municipal Wi-Fi networks, posting was light. I would write three to four articles a week, but as the year went by, the number started to rise because more cities were slowly doing something with Wi-Fi.

By January 2004, six months into blogging, traffic to my site began to increase significantly. Vendors of wireless mesh nodes as well as city officials began to email me about their planned projects. There was definitely more activity by March 2004 than when I had started (June 2004). But still no income. Continue reading »