It’s been just over a month since we launched Medacity, and although it’s still very early days, I thought I’d share some thoughts on how we are going so far.
As per the headline, there is still a bloody long road ahead for the site.
I won’t give specific figures but I’m confident we’ll come in at 20-25k pv for this month at our current rate.
I’m really only counting this month vs the launch month due to something that happened at home that I won’t discuss, only that it was significant enough for me basically to be away from the site for several weeks: the timing was horrible, but it wasn’t in my control. That situation is partially ongoing, but it’s passed to the point that not only am I writing again f/t, but I’m also active daily in working out ways to drive more traffic to the site.
The team is going well, and we also added Steven Hodson to the lineup at the beginning of the month, bringing the writing team to four (including myself.) Bringing in Steven means that we have a constant stream of opinion writing as well as the general new media news.
If the lineup sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same lineup as the three key writers at The Inquisitr (note, I haven’t poached them, as far as I know they are still all writing there.)
But this is a completely new focus for all of them, after working with all of them for the better part of two years (Steven might have been 2.5 yrs, but I know Kim and James came in early in the second year on Inq) I have complete faith in each of them as writers. The best sign of any writer is their ability to write about anything, and The Inquisitr was always a perfect test with its broad range of topic coverage.
My general feeling is that we’re getting the content mix right, but unlike when we launched The Inquisitr, we simply don’t have the same profile I had back then at launch, and hence we didn’t have a huge attention boost at launch. Couple that with the fact that we are writing very specific niche content that doesn’t have that broad range of appeal the content at The Inquisitr had.
Given the narrow content stream I think we’re going ok.
20k pv doesn’t pay the bills, and we’re running Adsense ads at the moment as well as we won’t qualify for any major ad network yet. But even on the few clicks we get, the idea that by running premium niche content is proving itself true: I’m not sure if Google allows me to talk about CPM rates but lets just say that I’ve never once seen higher CPM’s from Adsense before, and we’re doing rates 10-20x higher on Adsense than The Inquisitr ever did.
The only key now is to find the traffic.
I’ve said many times in the past that it takes a good 9 months to prove whether a blog will work (I know Jason Calacanis says it’s 2 yrs, but I disagree with that) and we can hold out for 9-12 months without any major dramas.
This is, in many ways, a new learning experience for me as well, and I learn more every day. Indeed that’s half the reason I’m doing the site: I love a new challenge, and Medacity was always going to be a challenge from the day I came up with the idea.
We even had our first major exclusive today. The mind boggles how many people will notice it, but it’s one of those stand out posts I love to write, and I sincerely hope that it does find a broader audience because I do believe I broke a major story.
I’m confident going forward, but there is a long road ahead.
Thx to everyone who has supported us so far. I’ll be back in coming months with the good, and (hopefully not) the bad about how the site is progressing
