Pajama Entrepreneur

Businessweek has posted a long article on how technology has changed the way people work on a daily basis, how goods are produced and services delivered. Laptops, the Blackberry, the iPhone, Skype, instant messaging, cheap data storage, broadband and video conferencing have allowed people to work remotely. The article fails to note, however, how large numbers of people have managed to never work for a boss again — entrepreneurs who start their own businesses precisely because the cost of setting up a business is much lower and they can now serve clients around the world.

If I were to write a piece on this new way of working, I would call it “The End of Office Politics” and talk about the freedom that people have working for themselves.

Marc Andreessen regrets he did not start blogging years ago and among his observations is this:

Writing a blog is way easier than writing a magazine article, a published paper, or a book — but provides many of the same benefits. I think it’s an application of the 80/20 rule — for 20% of the effort (writing a blog post but not editing and refining it the quality level required of a magazine article, a published paper, or a book), you get 80% of the benefit (your thoughts are made available to interested people very broadly). Arguably blogging is better because the distribution of a blog can be even broader than a magazine article, a published paper, or a book, at least in cases where the article/paper/book is restricted by a publisher to a limited readership base. This of course assumes that you’re not trying to make a living writing magazine articles or books, or you’re not trying to get tenure as a professor by publishing peer-reviewed research papers. However, at least in the former case, even the money part is changing fast. There are now a meaningful number of bloggers making a reasonable, even great, living by blogging, in some cases substantially more money than they would writing for a magazine or a book publisher.

I am one of those bloggers who not only make a living via my blog but who managed, with good business partners, to turn it into a media company.

Here’s an article in Wired about Michael Arrington’s rise from blogger to mini-media empire. When he started Techcrunch, he had no idea it would turn out to be one of the most influential technology blogs. Unlike boring tech websites run by large media companies, Techcrunch has personality (like its founder) and passion. It’s not written by a machine. There’s a strong voice behind it. Michael does not make apologies about who he is and how he writes. There are a lot of people who don’t like him and what he’s done, but he goes on anyway.

The flipside of success: saying no to advertisers

I also started my blog, Muniwireless.com, without thinking that it would turn into an operation with conferences, seminars and a quarterly magazine. But it did after 2 years of blogging.

The challenge for me (and I suspect every blogger who succeeds in creating a small media enterprise) is this: how do you keep writing passionately without offending your big advertisers? The answer is you can’t. At some point, something you write will piss them off, they’ll threaten to stop advertising and sponsoring your events. What I learned is that you just need to keep writing with passion and serving your readers.

If you start tempering your opinions and writing things to please the advertisers, you won’t have a audience much longer and your advertisers will flee, too. Besides, the tech business is volatile. One of the advertisers on Muniwireless decided to advertise less after a story I had written pissed them off. It was a convenient excuse; their business was not going well. I remember being very upset about their decision, but looking back now, I should have just told them to jump off a cliff. I had to be more diplomatic because Muniwireless was not just about me. There are other people working in the company.

That’s another challenge. When there are others working in your organization, you can’t throw as many temper tantrums as you used to, although if Muniwireless were still a one-person operation, I would have banished that particular advertiser to my 9th Circle of Hell.

At the DLD conference in Munich last January 2007, I spoke to the CEO of a media company about my experiences with advertisers and he said: “The most powerful word in this business is NO. No, I won’t shut up because you want me to. No, I won’t retract my post because I think I’m right.”

The New York Times has an article called Can Blogs Become a Big Source of Jobs which talks about bloggers who get paid to write articles on global blog networks such as b5media (based in Toronto) and those who use blogs to get more business. Consultants and entrepreneurs can attract new business using blogs. Indeed, startups today have blogs to communicate with their users.

The NYT article has not hit on anything new. Many people are already familiar with WeblogsInc (which Jason Calacanis sold to AOL for $25 million) and the fact that they pay bloggers to write about particular subjects. Weblogsinc is an aggregation of blogs on topics ranging from automobiles to gadgets. I am a long-time reader of Engadget and the guy who writes it, Pete Rojas, is well-known in tech circles.

B5media is similar to WeblogsInc because they cover a wide range of topics and run ads across them. The bloggers get a bonus based upon the number of people who read their articles.

While being paid by someone to write a blog is a way to make money from blogging, I did things differently with Muniwireless.com. I set up my own blog and in the beginning, got advertisers for the site myself. Two years ago, I partnered with Microcast Communications to take Muniwireless.com to the next level: conferences, seminars, webinars and a magazine. I went beyond just blogging and with partners, created a small media company.

In all the articles I have read about the business of blogging or bloggers making a living, they never talk about this option. It’s a viable one.

Read my series on how to turn your blog into a media company.

The path I have chosen is not for everyone. It takes a lot of time to set up a blog and maintain it, especially if you host it yourself. Most bloggers go with Blogger.com, Wordpress.com or Typepad. Getting advertising is also not for everyone. It’s time consuming and most people don’t even know where to start. Signing up with a blog network such as B5Media or Weblogsinc may be the best way to make a living through blogging.

Here are the first eight chapters on turning your blog into a media company. They are based on my experience as the founder of Muniwireless.com.

Part 1: birth of Muniwireless

Part 2: first year of Muniwireless

Part 3: finding a business model

Part 4: the Ninth Circle of Hell

Part 5: becoming a niche online publisher

Part 6: miracles happen in laundromats

Part 7: getting readers, rising high on search engines

Part 8: Microcast tells how to grow a blog into a media company

I will be posting more in the next few weeks. If you have questions, please post in the comments section below.

I am in London Gatwick waiting for my flight back to Amsterdam. So I decided to log onto the BT OpenZone network. I am on the second level at Pip having coffee. The results were almost the same as KPN’s hotspot in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, just as pathetic. A true race to the bottom. Web pages load very slowly. I tried uploading a photo to Flickr and it was so sloooowwww. I gave up.

Here’s what you get at Gatwick from the BT network: 1.6 Mbps downstream, 211 Kbps upstream. In my earlier post from Schiphol, I used Speedtest as well and I was getting 1.4 Mbps down, 205 Kbps up.

I decided to test The Cloud’s network in the same airport. I am getting 3 Mbps down and 540 Kbps upstream sitting in the same place!

Did you ever think that anyone writing a food blog could get published and end up on the Today Show? Clotilde Dusoulier, the woman behind the blog Chocolate and Zucchini, the best food blog in the world (in my opinion) recently published her first book and is now on a book tour in the US and Europe. Her blog is read by thousands of food enthusiasts all over the world. Read the press coverage here from Elle Eten Netherlands, Paris Match, Der Spiegel, Le Figaro and many others.

Clotilde, a software engineer, began her blog in 2003 upon returning to Paris from Silicon Valley after the dotcom crash. What’s an unemployed software engineer to do anyway? Her blog has become one of the most popular consumer blogs and it’s no surprise that she landed a book contract and a spot on the Today Show (an American morning TV programme).

Chocolate and Zucchini is mostly about recipes so if you hate cooking, the site is not for you. But Clotilde also has tips on where to eat in cities and towns that she visits when she goes on holiday and of course, she writes about gourmet shops in Paris. She writes posts about different types of butter, cheeses, charcuterie, etc.

If you have a blog that attracts a large audience, it is much easier for you to get a book published because it’s easier for the publisher to market your book. You will also get magazines to ask you to write articles for them.

So what makes Clotilde successful?

• Food is her obsession.
• She writes well for her audience, many of whom are in the US. Her writing style is friendly and approachable.
• She’s young, pretty, French and therefore, very “media-genic”, and she speaks English well with hardly any accent.
• Her blog has become a community, not because she purposely designed it that way but because she focuses on on topic and does it well.

Her prospects for the future

She could be the next Martha Stewart. She has a loyal audience and a book. Next up, hosting her own TV show and organizing upscale cooking holidays in the Provence. She can branch off into lifestyle-related topics such as interior design, entertaining, etc.

Leaving aside the hardcore group of foodies, what drives much of Chocolate and Zucchini’s success is aspirational (like Martha Stewart’s publications and her fans’ devotion to Martha herself) — a lot of women fancy themselves having Clotilde’s lifestyle: living in the Montmartre district in Paris, eating macaroons at Laduree, baking bread, sampling artisanal cheeses in a fromagerie in the Marais and dining at El Bulli outside Barcelona.

I see Clotilde going from blog to published author to media company (not unlike Martha Stewart’s empire).

Other famous food bloggers

Heidi Swanson

Heidi’s blog, 101cookbooks.com, is filled with recipes for vegetarian organic dishes. Like Clotilde Dusoulier, Heidi started her blog in 2003. She’s also a photographer and designer. Her recent book, Super Natural Cooking, has received excellent reviews. The book’s artwork and photos are all hers. I have the book and it’s a great resource for simple, delicious vegetarian recipes. My favorite is the homemade granola.

Claire Chapoutot

Claire’s blog, Clea Cuisine, features an eclectic mix of Japanese and organic food recipes. Her book, Agar Agar, was published early this year in France and is also available from Amazon.fr.

Pascal Weeks

Pascal is the author of C’est moi qui l’ai fait, a French food blog. Her book came out in 2006 and is available on Amazon.fr.

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To see a list of my favorite food blogs, go to my article on Rosecantine.com.