Part 2 : From Hobby to Business

So what did you do to turn science.komm from a hobby into more of a business?
Well, I invested a lot of time into testing affiliate programs. It took me many months to find those that work best for my site, but an Amazon bookstore (I know everyone has one) and text links and search forms pointing at Electric Library now bring in just over US$1000 each month.

I also installed ad serving software, and put up a sponsorship kit. Most of the ads run through a third party network and earn very little. I do sell sponsorships myself though, and these work well (both for me and the sponsor).

The most important thing I did though was to simply cut down on the amount of time I was investing in the site - the absolute returns from the site are relatively low for a real business. But the return per hour of my time is quite high. I've accepted that the site will not be as up-to-date as I might like it to be, but it still knocks spots of the competition, and the economics look a lot better. Appreciating the value of your own time is a lesson I've learnt the hard way.

What about promotion and marketing?
I had a lot of luck on the promotion front, some of it earned luck though! The main strategies I used were:

1. Pay-per-click search engines. I spent a lot of time finding less common terms I could get good rankings on for 1 cent per visitor.

2. Soliciting links from other sites. I've stopped doing that recently for lack of time, but find that people are linking to me anyway - over 1200 incoming links at last count!

3. Submitting by hand to smaller, specialist search engines and directories with growth potential. I was lucky to get a large number of listings in Newhoo when it was very young - this has now become the Open Directory Project and one of the biggest suppliers of traffic to the web. When AOL and other big search sites decided to use the Open Directory listings, my traffic shot up 50%!

How does the site newsletter fit into things? Did this experience help with your work with the IBF newsletters?
I started science.komm news as a means of generating real content for the website, as opposed to just having collections of links, albeit very good ones. I also wanted a way of building some kind of "following" in the biomedical and library community.

It worked to an extent. I recently announced I was suspending publication until later this year because of a lack of time, and was inundated with messages of support and very few unsubscribes. That was very heartwarming.

It did teach me the basics of practical email publishing, which I supplemented with a lot of reading and participation in relevant online discussion lists.

I approach newsletter content on the basis of what I call the three p's of publishing: personality, professionalism and public value.

By personality I mean the avoidance of dry, marketing speak. If you talk to your readers as real people, on a one to one basis, they come to respect that. Each reader is important to me, and I don't want to talk jargon at them.

By professionalism I mean writing on subjects I am qualified to talk about. Readers are not fools - they will see through any attempts to bluff your way through. The content you provide has to be of high quality.

By public value I mean writing a newsletter with the interests of the reader at heart. Yes, a newsletter is often a commercial enterprise. But if your only objective is profit, your readers will soon get that message! Some Greek guy said altruism is enlightened self-interest. If you give people useful and timely information that they need, they will reward you for that. It's a win-win deal.

You say you suspended your newsletter - have you faced any difficulties balancing your time between your work, family and website, all the while working out of your home? What tactics have you used to optimize your time?
It's been extremely difficult. It has simply proved impossible to keep all three going. My wife is a paragon of patience, but in the last few weeks I've come to realize that you have to set priorities, and the number one priority is the family. I have a little 7 month old son, and he's only got one childhood.

I've put the science.komm newsletter, and the website itself into "maintenance mode", where I just keep things ticking over. And I've announced my willingness to sell the site. With 85,000 monthly visitors from the biomedical community, that's one hell of a resource. And I just don't have time to develop it further. As I said in the last issue of my newsletter, I used to be the driving force behind science.komm, now I'm just holding it up. I've already received a couple of inquiries, so I'm hopeful to get a sale this year. There's no hurry though!

Optimizing my time has been difficult. I recently redesigned the flat so I now have a real working area, cut off from the rest of the living space by a wall of cabinets. This has created a much better (and quieter) working environment. Writing many of the home office tips for IBF newsletter of the same name has certainly helped!

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