Garrett Rogers's Page

Holy crap. Yes, yes I did. How's life? :) Strange what the internet does for closing circles.

Life is busy, lots of kettles on the fire. Day job is web development--quit from an advertising company with a few friends to do our own thing. Married, house in the mountains outside Los Angeles. Bemoaning the housing market. Very slowly trying to become a professional writer. Doing some game development (pc, flash, iPhone). Lots of stuff up at http://www.erif.org/ :)

Will do. Thanks for the reply.

No problem ANYTIME!! Planning and Research are the hard parts... once you are up and running it comes together... not saying its easy... My web designer is name Vicky Ayala. Her e-mail is vicky@vickyayala.com, website: www.vickyayala.com and she is also is an internet marketer :) Good Luck!

This is going to be controversial but firstly, I do not think you need to splash out lots of dosh for an expensive web designer. Build the website's content beauitifully first and then add on the visual designs as the website grows. A hot website matters but if the content does not sparkle, the web designer is worthless.

Second, when you say black men, which segment of black men is in your market? Are you only talking about African-American men? Are you talking about African Men or Afro-Caribbean men? Please give some more details.

I think the idea of targeting black men is a good idea - is your pub going to be an online lifestyle magazine? KING folded so there is space for another lifestyle magazine but I think the market is extremely competitive so just make sure your content sparkles!

Your competition will be the massive hip hop blogs as well as sports websites. What sector of black men's magazines will you be targeting? Finance?

Thank you for sharing the details of your venture.

First, it is always brave to SAM. Are you from a publishing background?

Even though you have not solicited this advice from me, I must implore you not to try and aim for every section of black men. One reason: segmentation.

Especially if you are launching the magazine online, advertisers want to know exactly who you are targeting. If you tell them black men the world over, this will confuse advertisers. You may better off choosing just African-American men and staying with that demographic just because as a whole are the most visible segment of black men in the Western media.

There is no reason why your venture cannot succeed but I think you should be thinking niche, not general.

If anything, the Internet has killed general content and made niche magazines the queen of the night.

--Cake