“The idea from the outset was that we were always going to get money out of advertorial content — brand-funded content as opposed to banner ads. Most normal blogs produce content and expect to make money out of the banner space, or at least that was typical back then. No one was focused on content marketing.
To start, I built an email list of maybe 5,000 people, friends and friends of friends, and launched the site by blasting an email to that database. As soon as I started sending emails out, I had people approach me, because we had a unique design and style and tone of voice, and they wanted us to write about their products. So I had inbound sales inquiries after six months.”
