Shortly after Rick Schwartz announced that his JointVentures.com project was effectively being put on hold, I was asked by a friend if I planned to write about it, and my answer was “no.” I had not participated in it, had only written one article about it (4 in total that mentioned it before today), and Rick had already written an extensive article about the situation, in addition to sending an email to the participants. I didn’t see how writing an article would be beneficial to anyone, and I didn’t think it would serve a useful purpose.
In light of that, I thought I would share insight into what I write about on my blog to give you a better idea of what you can expect to read here. I assume you know the gist of it, but I’ll shed some light on my decision making when it comes to blogging. Since I am the publisher, the criteria I discuss below isn’t firm but it should be more of a guideline.
- Advice – Insight that I believe will be helpful to readers who are investing in domain names.
- Industry topics of personal interest – I think something is interesting in the domain industry and I want to give my opinion or feedback.
- Industry news that will impact my business – This can be specific to a company or general news that will somehow impact my business either directly or indirectly because it impacts the entire space.
- Product or service launch of interest – If a new company is launched or an existing company launches a service, I will write about it if I believe it’s going to make waves in the business.
- Domain investor does something that will impact the industry – If someone in the domain space starts a company, joins a company, or is doing something that I think is notable, I may write about it.
- Issue or problem that should be noted – If there’s something I learn that I would want to know about, I’ll write about it as long as I can get factual information about it.
- Other interesting topics – These may be related or unrelated to the domain business.
- Exclusive tip – When I learn about something exclusively, I might write about it if it’s going to be of interest to readers.
I have absolutely no interest in researching or laboriously writing an article about a topic or product that isn’t interesting to me or won’t impact my business. I also have no interest in writing about company failures or screw ups that either won’t impact my business or are limited in scope.
I have found that it’s far more effective to communicate about a problem directly with a company rather than blogging about it. Yes, you might get a quick response if you post a scathing thread on a public forum about an issue, but I believe it’s better to discuss the issue with the company first and give them the chance to resolve it before posting about it. This doesn’t include problems related to security or warnings about issues that haven’t been or can’t be resolved.
I don’t accept paid posts, and when something is written by someone else, you can see the author byline won’t have my name (or it will clearly indicate that it’s a guest post, especially in the case of posts written before I added the custom byline). I tend to write more about companies with whom I do business as well as industry friends, and that’s likely due to the fact that I get all marketing and PR emails from them, and in the case of friends, I may have been consulted (for free) before they launched.
I particularly enjoy writing articles that offer advice or insight based on things I’ve learned. I also enjoy writing about topics that generate a good discussions. I am always thinking about my business, and I enjoy sharing and learning. Writing posts that encourage comments helps me learn, and I hope they help you as well.
The general litmus test I use to determine what I write about is whether I would be interested in reading the article if I wasn’t writing it.
