Small business mercy killing: When to euthanize a project

Fall of 2010, I launched the Offbeat Bride Vendor Directory, which was immediately one of the biggest business successes I’ve ever had, grossing over $20,000 the month it launched. Listing vendors reported great results (some getting inquiries within hours of their listings being published), and readers loved that they could finally easily view vendors in their area via a big clickable map.

Excited by the success of Offbeat Bride’s Vendor Directory, last year I propagated the directory concepts to both Offbeat Mama and Offbeat Home.

They didn’t work, SO I KILLED THEM.

The Empire’s policies: syndicating and attributing content

This post features what used to be an internal document I created for interns, outlining the general guidelines for posting non-original content on the Offbeat Empire. At this point, I don’t see any reason why this shouldn’t be public — especially since there’s a lot of differing opinions about etiquette around these issues.

There’s a lot of grey area with this stuff (I’ve broken my own rules many times — FOR SHAME!), and obviously we can’t anticipate every scenario … but hopefully this post provides clarity on our general policies for sharing, linking, citing, etc.

Editorial diversity hacks: is tokenism ever ok?

Here’s a sad reality: 90% of the content submissions we receive to the Offbeat Empire’s websites feature young, white, able-bodied heterosexual Americans. When we go out and actively recruit more diverse content for the sites, is that tokenism? And is that kind of tokenism ok if it’s increasing the media visibility of minority communities?

Skimlinks: what it is, and how it makes us money

I’ve mentioned before that the Empire uses a service called Skimlinks to help monetize our content. Here’s how it works.