Tuesday, February 28, 2012

The good news is I’ve sold a few thousand dollars worth of ads for SiliconHillsNews.com, primarily from people approaching me by e-mail. That’s encouraging because soon I plan a big ad campaign to meet the site’s goal of $50,000 in advertising for 2012.

Bootstrapping is a slow process, but it does work. Bootstrapping makes a business look so much better to potential angel investors who can see that SiliconHillsNews.com already has customers, revenue and a highly targeted high-tech regional readership. Also, I’m actively working on landing more big-name sponsors, particularly a telecommunications company and a computer company. I’ll have more on that in coming months.

Traffic continues to grow every month on the site. February will be our best month ever.

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Wednesday, January 04, 2012

I was selected to pitch SiliconHillsNews.com at yesterday's Startup America coaching webinar. I highly recommend the Startup America (launched by the White House to accelerate entrepreneurship.)


Earlier, I had been accepted into Startup Texas, which helps me focus on the business. They've got great online seminars and discounts on all kinds of programs like Google Adwords - which I plan to take advantage of this year.  I don’t know much about Google Adwords, but the goal is to employ more advertising to spread the word about Silicon Hills News.

Silicon Hills News continues to grow organically through word-of-mouth advertising.  The site has landed its first corporate sponsor: Rackspace Hosting.


The goal is to land five more major sponsors this year for a total in $100,000 in funding to expand operations. I would like to sell another $50,000 worth of ads this year too.


December was the best month ever for traffic to the site. The traffic continues to nearly double every month. And social media efforts through Twitter and Facebook definitely help drive the hits. Today, Silicon Hills News has 200 Twitter followers and 142 Facebook fans.


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Monday, November 21, 2011

I've had some exciting times at SiliconHillsNews.com these past few months.

Traffic to the site has doubled from September to October and then doubled again in November and the month isn’t over yet.

So far, it’s all been word-of-mouth advertising and marketing. The Facebook fan site launched last month and has 111 fans to date. If you get a chance, please go and “like” it.

This month, SiliconHillsNews.com started a Flickr account to post event photos. That generates traffic along with its YouTube channel.

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Thursday, September 01, 2011

SiliconHillsNews.com launched on Sept. 1 and I’ve posted to the site by covering various conferences in Austin, including Startup Week Austin, The Capital Factor’s Demo Day and, most recently, the Clean Energy Venture Summit. I’ve also covered events like BlogathonATX and Dell World.

My coverage plan is to do profiles of individual entrepreneurs in the Silicon Hills area, and I would like to start doing a weekly profile soon.

Meanwhile, I’ve struggled to find a WordPress template that works easily and effectively. I bought two: the Editorial Theme from Woo Themes and the Deadline theme for Theme Forest. But I soon discovered that I needed additional training in WordPress to understand how to use these themes as content management systems. After struggling for hours to try to make the various themes work, I eventually just gave up and I’m currently using “Themify” a free WordPress theme. I’ve decided the technology can take a back end to the content right now.

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