New blog attempt
Times have gotten bad enough in the newspaper biz to force me to re-evaluate what I do with my non-newspaper time. I’ve had great fun combining hiking and blogging over the past three years … I even added some Google ads to my pages in hopes of picking up a few bucks. Well, the bucks are very, very few. It’s possible to make money blogging, but you’ll starve on daily hit counts in the hundreds. You don’t need millions, but you do need thousands, so you need a topic where thousands of eyeballs might reside.
Finding this audience vexed me to no end till last week, when just for the heck of it I decided to see if there’s a blog devoted to Caterpillar Inc., the tractor maker based in my hometown. Cat is a Dow 30 component with $46 billion in revenue and 100,000 employees worldwide. It’s the Microsoft of heavy equipment, so you’d think there’d be a blog or two covering the company. I looked: Nada.
Back when I lived in Peoria, the question “how’s Cat’s stock doing?” was pretty much on everybody’s mind. So this is my theory: Cat has 100k employees, all with an abiding interest in how the company’s doing. If I can get just a fifth of those people, I’ve got the 20k audience that’ll turn my $2 a day into $200 — a living wage even in the Bay Area.
I’ve started something at catstockblog.com. If nothing else, it’ll be interesting to the folks back home.
December 18th, 2008 at 11:47 am
Yo, Tom - what an idea! I wish I had a few of ‘em myself. Keep me posted on how lucrative / successful it is. This is how little seeds of ideas germinate into big oak trees of liquidity!
Good luck! Keep blogging from time to time on your hiking page, too! It’s always great to see you photos and read your write-ups!
December 28th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
That’s an interesting idea for a blog. It certainly is a niche topic, but looks like one with potential. I added this blog to my feedreader in the hopes that you’ll keep us posted on how it’s going.
I was checking links on my blogroll, one of which is your Two-Heeled Drive blog and saw your last post, followed the links to the Caterpillar blog and here.
I sympathize with your concerns about the newspaper business. As a retired consumer, it’s hard for us to justify getting our local paper at its price, which is going up — again. Last year, after we got home from a two month trip out west, we re-subscribed. Unfortunately, the local content really leaves a lot to be desired for the price and most of the national and international news is old by the time it reaches our place in print. We stuck with it over a year, but earlier this month, we decided to unsubscribe. We’ll probably pick up the Wednesday and Sunday editions on occasion and probably get the Little Rock paper once in a while, too.
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:04 am
Best wishes on your new venture — it sure seems like one of those “duh” ideas - but of course they aren’t “duh” ideas until someone actually makes it happen, which you have done. I suspect you’ll do well with your Cat Blog — out of my area of interest, but as a “new media” observer, I wish you the best.