I wrote this nearly four years ago:
Anyone who has ever been to Las Vegas has seen Showbiz Weekly and What’s On magazines. One or the other was waiting for you in your hotel room, but there were racks of them at the airport and at the car rental counter, plus single issues in the rental car itself. They’re slick and polished, but they’re free like a TV-Shopper, albeit a lot better distributed.
Functionally, they work like controlled-circulation trade magazines: Elaborate advertising and puff-piece promotional articles inform you of your buying opportunities in Las Vegas at the point where you have become a ready, willing and able buyer. That’s why they’re free: The advertisers are more than willing to comp you for as many copies as you might want, confident that your spending will more than compensate them for their investment.
What’s interesting about these magazines is that you cannot subscribe to them from back home. There are a couple of general interest magazines you can subscribe to: Greenspun’s Las Vegas Life is a city magazine, like New York or Los Angeles; it’s a fun read, but not terribly useful for tourists. Vegas Magazine, also Greenspun, is a confused fashion rag that is doomed to a very costly demise. Neither of these do the kind of job Showbiz Weekly and What’s On do, advising tourists on where and how to get the most Vegas from their Vegas-money.
And that is a market niche, a magazine that promotes Las Vegas tourism all year round, when the tourists are back home.
The Strip is a monthly; more frequent would be annoying. Show news, upcoming concerts, gambling tournaments, Vegas trivia and history, etc., all surrounded by advertising, since, in important respects, the advertising is the editorial product. Very slick, very polished, with a critical edge lacking from Showbiz Weekly and What’s On.
The loosely-focused target market is the frequent Las Vegas visitor, two or more trips a year of three or more days in length. The more tightly-focused target market is the high-roller, people who spend a lot of money when they come to Las Vegas, and who come to Las Vegas intending to spend a lot of money.[…]
At the time, this made sense as a magazine. Not anymore. Later this Summer, I’m going to play with this idea as a pro-blog, an advertising- and affiliate-supported site called TooMuchVegas.com. I love Las Vegas and it turns out I’m pretty good at weblogging. I’m betting I can build a business out of this.
It is utterly fascinating to me that this is suddenly possible. Tom Royce at The Real Estate Bloggers is building a full-time income from his home office. We’re not interested in advertising at BloodhoundBlog, because our undoubted independence is much more valuable to us, but there is a whole world of publishing suddenly open to ordinary people, without a seven-figure investment.
What makes it work? Information value, yes, but also entertainment value. BloodhoundBlog is all about serious stuff, but we’re never about dull stuff. I personally might put you through seven different levels of hell exploring some issue that you’d really rather not explore, but I’m not going to take your attention for granted. I’m going to work very hard to get you to come along with me, especially when I’m pretty sure you don’t want to go there.
Am I writing brochures? Am I writing magazine features? I’m writing, yes, because this is a written medium, but the entertainment medium weblogging most closely resembles is talk radio. Information, surely. Education if possible. Inspiration on our best days. But always, always, always show business. SEO will get people here, but it’s the writing and the give-and-take that will keep them coming back, get them to subscribe, induce them to tell their friends.
TooMuchVegas.com will be a lot more show business than BloodhoundBlog. The topic warrants it, and the SEO prospects for any Las Vegas-related keyword are horrible. But BloodhoundBlog has more than one paw in the world of show biz, and so does your weblog. If you think about it too much, your weblog will reek. But if you forget it altogether — your weblog will reek.
I become more and more convinced that the real challenge — for us, for Tom Royce, for a locally-focused real estate weblog, for any weblog — is building an audience, building an enduring community of dedicated readers-commenters-participants-contributors. SEO is a chancy way to attract flighty visitors. You’re much better off building a community of people who come and stay.
How do you do that? At a certain point — it’s showtime…
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