Jump into your target demographic

6 months or 9 months or a year ago when I started thinking more about what it was I wanted to do next one thing that immediately sprung to mind is that I wanted something to do with blogging. Blogging is a huge part of what’s new and exciting about the Internet these days. While Facebook and MySpace get all the media attention I personally think they’ll either have to change substantially or die off (though that’s a topic for another day).

When I first heard of blogging years back it was mostly of the “Dear Diary” type. I didn’t much get it. I had no desire to either share daily details of my life or read daily details of other people’s lives. Over time the very nature of blogging changed (or perhaps I didn’t understand it at the time). Blogging became simply a mechanism for publishing on a wide variety of topics many of which had nothing to do with what the blogger ate for lunch or where they were going on vacation. Bloggers became in many ways the new journalists - sharing news and opinions that just a few years ago only those employed in news industries would be able to share.

So while the who blogscape excited me and I knew I wanted to do something in that sphere I wasn’t sure exactly what and to a large extent I still didn’t get what it was all about. I dove into reading a wide variety of blogs and immediately some ideas sprung to mind about how to better server blog readers. As I started doing more blogging myself I started thinking about ways to serve the blog authors.

It goes along with the advice to start a site about a topic that you’re passionate about but jumping into the world that you hope to serve is absolutely essential to the modern day independent entreprenuer.