Ask HN: Best way to organize 3 sites? Startup blog, tech blog, Startup Service | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Best way to organize 3 sites? Startup blog, tech blog, Startup Service

3 pointswillpower1012 comments

I'm working on putting together 3 sites: 1. Internet, Tech, Social Media, guides, hacks, etc - Like Mashable or Readwriteweb 2. Startups, Entrepreneurial & Business news, guides, advice, etc - Like Techcrunch 3. A service for early phase startups (currently working on building this)

Originally I was going to combine idea 1 & 2 into a single massive news & info blog, but several people told me they would probably market better if they were more niche and separated, connected by a network at the bottom like gawker media. Otherwise there might be too much unrelated content.

So I was going to reluctantly split them, but then came up with the service idea. I figured combining the Startup Blog with the Startup service would lend more weight to the site and keep people coming back. But since the Startup Service HAS to be the landing page, I run into the problem of monetizing the blog if it's not the primary focus (like in a subdomain or subfolder), combined branding, too little emphasis on the blog, or too little emphasis on the service.

Leaving them separate means I could market them better separately, but I'm afraid of losing the combined impact of one site.

What do you think?

I'd say that you're really over-thinking this. Just pick one of those three site ideas, keep a narrow focus, do a good job executing it, and expand from there.

Nothing "hits the market" as a giant network. It's a process of accumulated growth. Envato, GigaOm, Techcrunch, etc. all started as a single sites which through growth and good content were able to expand into the giant things. If your primary focus is the "service" then just stay focused on that with maybe a simple side blog or something, or an aggregator of different startup news sites with commentary, etc.

Also, there needs to be something that separates your content sites from all of the aforementioned sites. Why would I find the content on your site interesting vs. any of the ones you listed or thestartupfoundry, or sprouter. If you answer that with "my content will be better" then you may need to re-evaluate the market.

As long as you don't decide to completely rebrand the site and call it "quikster," it shouldn't be a problem to separate the content once you see how everything works out.

Thanks I checked out those sites too and added them to my list of competition for startup news that I've been making.

With your advice I think it would be better to focus on my service based website for now, and let a blog / guides develop on there. Since there is no well-made competition that exists for it. (Either it's an implementation failure or there's simply not a market, but we'll find out after I iterate. :)

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