If you haven’t kept up with changes in the media industry, I can tell you that the world of media is a very challenging world these days. Publishing has become completely democratized and “free.†You, your grandma, and your 6-year-old daughter can publish content for free on Facebook, tumblr, WordPress.com, Google+, and many, many other places.
That’s awesome, but what that also means is that there’s a ton of free content out there that essentially drives down the value of published content. Why pay to read the New York Times when you can read the free blog of a stranger who seems more educated about the topics that interest you?
This has helped to kill many a newspaper and many a magazine. And more are on the way to their death beds. But it also reduces the value of online advertising and makes running a respectable, independent media site or media network quite challenging. I’ve seen a lot of great blogs, news sites, and media networks rise up and then fall back down to oblivion. It’s a shame, but it’s also due to the abundance of good and useful content out there (as well as cat videos, of course).
I feel truly honored, blessed, and lucky that CleanTechnica has been able to grow as it has, that it has not (yet) fallen back into oblivion, that it has actually become the #1 cleantech-focused website in the world. It’s amazing, and I’m very thankful, as I’m sure our whole team is.
There were 1,071 articles published on CleanTechnica when I started here. We were publishing about 3 articles a day at that time. With the help of many great writers, a lot of sacrifices (of all sorts), and some truly wonderful readers (you have no idea how important your sharing of our content is!), we’ve gotten up to about 10-15 articles a day, and we’ve published about 9,000 articles in the past 4 years.
I’m in a bit of awe at the fact that we’ve gotten to where we have. Again, I’m just feeling a lot of gratefulness right now. But I’m also trying to reflect on what we’ve done that has actually kept you all around, or made you recently start following the site, if that happens to be the case. Some of my thoughts are:
- A good mix of regular, uplifting, and useful content about the amazing cleantech transformation we’re in the midst of.
- Some great original and exclusive content. (Click that link!)
- Attention to feedback. We listen to you readers and use your ridiculous breadth of knowledge and perspective to improve our content, and our site as a whole.
- Useful curation of cleantech news and commentary. We go through hundreds of sites nearly every day  in order to find the most important and most interesting cleantech content. It’s time-consuming work, but I think it’s well worth it and has helped to make CleanTechnica what it is.
- The commenting community that has sprouted up (and I’ve tried to nurture). Numerous professional cleantech experts and lay experts regularly chime in under articles in order to provide very useful addenda, questions, answers, and sometimes corrections! We are truly thankful for that.
- Expert opinion. Naturally, publishing thousands of articles and reading many more, some of us have become widely recognized experts on specific cleantech topics. That’s worth something, right? (Don’t worry, we aren’t about to start charging you!)
- Partnerships with other excellent sites. Clearly, as we moved to a more obsessive curation-focused model, we added partnerships with some top websites, industry professionals, and other top bloggers. We try to partner with the best of the best, and I think that has paid off for everyone.
That’s basically everything that comes to my mind. If you have any thoughts on the matter, you know by now that I’d love to read or hear them!
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