news:rewired Making Money Dos and Don'ts
SoGlos.com – James Fryer
Launched the week of the floods in 2007. Founded by two journalists from the county.
**Do:**
1. **Be great!** – Niche websites work, they can capture audiences. All of our content is exclusively written by professional journalists – it’s about high-quality content.
2. **Search engine optimise** – 5,395 pages – 75% of traffic comes from Google.
3. **Know your market and products** – make sure you know who your advertisers will be and target them with research, clear suite of products. Keep clear differentiation between ad and ed.
4. **Establish a clear sales strategy** – Either divide your role to focus on sales some of the time, or get a professional. Make the process as easy as possible – and provide great reporting.
5. **Forge partnerships** – work with radio and print. Syndicate your content in a controlled fashion – but cash is almost always better than a contra deal.
**Don’t**
1. **Compromise your model** – stick to the plan
2. **Be afraid to stand up for yourself** – lots and lots of problems with plagiarism. 25 organisations have plagiarised 200 individual infringement.
3. **Spend all your time on Twitter** – make sure your social media activity is bringing you an audience and money.
4. **Rely on UGC** – think this decade will see a resurgence in professional journalism
5. **Stop moving forwards** – Redesign coming, iPhone app, franchise model for sites…
And this is their most popular video:
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