This seven-step plan to get your local online news site off the ground is liberally paraphrased and outright cut-and-pasted from the excellent comment on the excellent Hacker News site that Brad Flora, editor of Chicago’s Windy Citizen, wrote. Read the full comment here.
- Build an audience around a link-based social news site for local information.
- Once your site has some power users, give them blogs.
- Team up with hacker/developers for special projects.
- Once your site has built some momentum, hire a part-time ad sales person .
- Once your site’s earning $300-$400 a week in profit, start contracting with freelance journalists. Scoop local, stuck-in-the-print paper.
- Add more writers to your blogs.
- Build enough audience so a front-page link on your site will deliver at least 1,500 clicks to its destination, your blogs are breaking news that isn’t anywhere else, and you have the ability to set the agenda in the community you cover.
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There are some sites here in Chicago doing those things, but at the end of the day, it’s a two-newspaper town. And those bloggers have full time jobs.
One interesting project: Chi-Town Daily News. Would love your thoughts on that.